After months and months of water changes, cleaning the gravel, testing testing testing, the tank looks to have recovered from old tank syndrome. The PH is good (I’m using water through a water filter which has a little bit of backing soda to keep it near 7.0), ammonia is zero, every other measure is in the good zone, except nitrate, which is still a bit too high, but, that should be no problem. The big fish you see, two golden gouramis and 2 Australian rainbowfish, have been there through it all. I had lost one rainbow. I got rid of the really big plant, was taking up too much space and leaving lots of dead debris. Replaced it with smaller live plants (left side near center.) Made sure the bubbler is working well. Getting a bit of algae buildup, including on the live plants, but, better some algae than none).
I added 3 small tiger barbs (can just see one in the bottom right, one is hiding behind red plant and the other is behind a rock in the back) and one pleco (up on wall). When I tried putting in fish previously they died within an hour. So far so good.
