New 10gal recommendations

He's using 2 15w CF lights, a good amount of light for a 10g tank and around where CO2 becomes more important.

The best way to fight algae is to have a large mass of healthy plants, and the best way to get them growing is to add CO2. This is true in both low and high light levels, adding CO2 in a low light tank will not promote algae. I can't think of a scenario where lack of CO2 is a good thing.
 
Algae on the glass is easy to keep in-check, just clean it daily or every-other day. CO2 has been the magic bullet for Algae for me lately. I still keep my lights on 12+ hours and my algae eradicated, save for some accumulation on the glass every 3-4 days that I wipe off and some bits still clinging to a few plant edges here and there.

Cherry shrimp (and ghosts for that matter) do fine with many types of fish, especially Corydoras, Otos, and Tetras. You can keep them with many more types, but if you want to breed them effectively you need to stick with fish like those mentioned above and a few other select fish as the baby shrimp can get gobbled without really good hiding places. The babies are smaller than adult brine shrimp when first released from the mother. I've found floating Riccia clumps (large-ish) to be the mother and babies' best defense. One of the breeders I have come to trust says that Guppies in particular will relentlessly hunt baby Cherry shrimp.

If your water is that hard you can reasonably mix half tap and half (or less of course) with RO, distilled, filtered, etc. water.
 
I keep my lights on for about 12 hours right now (I don't have a timer yet). I was just reading up again about the DIY CO2 reactor. If I make one for my 10gal, would even 1/4 tsp of yeast be too much?
Also, when I bought my Rotala, there was a very fine plant wrapped in it. It seems to be growing very fast, and has what appear to be very small flowers, almost like cotton balls. It is like bright green stems with no leaves. When I say it's small, I mean really small, like threadlike stems with the "flowers" smaller than the size of a pin head. I don't want to keep it if it's a pest, any ideas? I can't get a pic because it's too small.
 
I just wanted to thank you all for your advice so far and provide an updated pic. Everything seems to be going good. I don't have any Cherry Barb fry, but the male still chases the females around quite a bit, along with everyone else. Two of my Rasboras actually jumped out of the tank by the filter because he was chasing them so bad. I replaced them with Lemon Tetras, so he should have a harder time bullying them. I also just added some ghost shrimp to eat the food that makes it to the bottom. Let me know what you think. I still have that really small plant everywhere. It is kind of like a vine and climbs everywhere over everything. It doesn't have roots. I have to pull it out every week or two or else everything just looks messy. I guess it's probably good because it is taking the nutrients away from the algae, but I would still like to know what it is if you have any ideas. It's too small to take pictures of.
Josh

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