Please be kind. I just want the best for him. This wasn't exactly impulsive. I just saw him looking sad. 

 I've had this tank for a while, granted my betta was a center piece at a baby shower and since he looked miserable I took him home. I've been slowly upgrading him since May 2025. 

In the first months I got him a 5 gallon, live plants, snails, shrimp (he killed those). I was just missing a filter and a light. Since the place he was didn't have a socket. 

When I moved (4 months ago) I got him a 150 lumens lamp, that I would keep on for like 8 hours, in my previous house he was next to a window, so he would get light from curtain opening to night basically (I didn't know what I was doing). I also got him a betta filter, around the same time (4 months ago). I don't have a heater cause I live in a tropical island, and his water is naturally in the 70's°F - 80's°F. And I don't want to boil him alive. 

Long story short, my tank crashed. Most of my live plants turned black and when I did some research it said algae had overpowered my system. I had java ferns, anubias, and guppy grass. I decided that the best decision was to clean the tank, that way I could also add sand. I threw out the javas (they were black but had green leafs growing at the top, idk if that helps). The anubias survived without turning black, and some of my guppy grass did as well. I anchored the left over guppy grass but recently I noticed that it's really stemmy. Not bushy or fluffy like others. I week or two after cleaning I added a rotola colorata and it's growing fine, not melting or anything. And yesterday I added some elodia. 

I also added some safe house plants at the top to help fight future alage. They have no stems yet, they are propagating, so their leaves also look sad 😭

I'm just worried that I'm doing something wrong, my parameters are fine. Coral (my fish) is fine. The new snails I added (he killed most of the old ones) are fine. And even some of the old pest snails survived the cleaning and are going on and about. 

We've been together for a while. He's gone barely moving to being pretty active and friendly. I have noticed that when I temporarily had him in a two gallon (after getting him out of the flower vase he came in) he used to do a lot of bubble nest. In my new house with the upgrades he hasn't. I'm worried. Please help and be gentle. ❤️💙❤️💙❤️

Help. What's wrong with my guppy grass? History in description, please read.