LeighMo wrote:

* There's a black shrimp hiding in the removed Anubias. You
have never purchased a black shrimp.

Really? How big is it? How did it get in the tank? Is it just a ghost or
Amano shrimp that's been chowing down on java moss? Or a new species?

It looks an awful lot like an Amano shrimp, with the same yellow stripe down the
back, but the body is black. It is not a ghost shrimp, red cherry shrimp or
singapoor shrimp, all of which I have seen. It is very attractive. I believe it
is an Amano shrimp that has turned black for some reason. It looks healthy.

The only shrimp that I have knowingly added to this tank are Amanos (two dozen)
and Red Cherr (one dozen)

I'm hoping this solves the mystery of why the fert dosing that used to
be adequate to promote fast, algae-free growth has recently seemed
inadequate-I had far more plants than I had realized!

I know the feeling. Remember when I posting here about how I had to put 4 Tb
of TMG a day in my tank, and people were suggesting I add Epson salts or
calcium or iron, that the plants couldn't possibly need that much fertilizer?

Well, I did a massive pruning, and have tried to keep things cut back since
then. Amazingly enough, the tank is now fine with about 1 Tb a day of TMG.

Thank you for the validation! I just couldn't figure out why everything had
slowed down.

You know, there's a definite progression of problems that lots of people
encounter. Mine went like this:

* Planted lots of plants. They grew fast for a little while, then stopped.
* Figured out they needed Potassium. Added Flourish Potassium,
plants started growing again, then slowed again.
* Figured out they needed trace. Added Flourish, plants started
growing again, but soon started to look yellow.
* Figured out they needed Iron. Added Flourish Iron, plants started
growing again, but soon slowed down again.
* Figured out they were low on Nitrate. Added KNO3. Plants started
growing real well, for a long time. LFS traded cuttings for ferts and
fish and equipment. Life was good.
* Finally, inevitable horizontal and diagonal growth fills in lots of nooks
and crannies with plants, and you have double or triple the plant
mass you used to, even after pruning. Now the ferts that were fine
a few months back are inadequate again. Algae starts resurging.

That's the stage I reached recently. Now I've got three full buckets of cuttings
and I'm amazed that it all came out of my tank, which is still heavily planted!

Again, Tom Barr's latest recommendation (The Estimative Index) is starting to
look smarter and smarter. You won't keep hitting these plateaus. But you will
have to prune a lot.