Fish Update And What Next

Hiya, thought I'd give a bit of an update. You might remember I had a sick cory that recovered and seemed to be getting on well, but unfortunately either he didn't make it or another one gave up the ghost  no idea what happened to him, one minute there was 10 now there are only 9, but I've not seen any remains he just vanished! Well you know what I mean!  Kind of hoping it was quick as I didn't notice anything untoward, or at least that what I'm clinging to.

The good news is I finally got round to getting more female pearl gourami. When I just had the three of them the male bullied the smaller of the two girls and eventually the bigger female was bugging the wee one too. Now I've got 5 females to the one male and he doesn't quite know what too do with himself, but at least all the females are out and about now. Two of the females are a bit bigger than the others but doesn't seem to be too much of an issue.

Tank at 64% in the community creator, and wondering if I should get one more shoal, or something that would help with the Algae although its not really that bad it is starting to build up on the logs. I did think of shrimps but I'm assuming my water would be too soft for them? Then thought of Oto's but think these wee guys might be too small? and my water temp would be right at the top of what they can take so thinking that's not such a good idea either? Any ideas, or should I just go with another shoal, maybe black neon tetras?

ah good to know about the shrimps never thought of them getting eaten, that would be so awful! Might leave the Oto's out too and stick to another shoal.

On the snail topic, is there one type you'd recommend? I've got a few pest snails, but they don't seem to last very long so I thought their shells couldn't take the soft water?

I have nerite snails, they eat algae. I have some several years old and I've never actually fed them. There are several species, some larger than others.

Amano shrimps are quite a bit bigger than shrimps like red cherries. The downside to them is that they can't breed in fresh water. They do produce fertile eggs but the larvae that hatch from them need salt water to develop.