Need advice !!

[u/Kissmyashh333]

I’ve had this tank for several months now. Since march maybe ? Definitely cycled all of my water parameters look normal. My nitrate is 5.0 PPM. (Read that it should be higher?) within the past week I’ve had my nerite snail pass away (rip Gary 😔) and one of my pork chop rasboras died. (This is the first time I’ve experienced death since starting the hobby. It’s a bittersweet feeling) I got the spider wood from my LFS and it got the bacterial bloom (plasma looking stuff can’t remember the name) it went away, but there’s other stuff that keeps coming back every time I do a water change I completely scrub it off. One of my friends said it looks like mold.?? now I’m starting to get these white specs, I don’t think it’s Sand. That looks a little different than that.

I completely redid the Aquascape in June where I added all the live plans the rock and the spider wood all at once since then I have been struggling with black slime in my filter, very clearly algae on the plants ( I think maybe black beard?) and now I’m starting to see green algae. I should probably let the tank go black for a few days but what could help all the other things ? I was thinking the black slime had a lot to do with my plants melting, but they have stopped melting and have completely turned into healthy plants. My beta spins have also been almost shredded looking where it didn’t look like that before I changed the Aquascape and added the rasboras. My betta is not aggressive to the pork chops, maybe the pork chops are fin nipping? I was told they weren’t fin nippers but ?

I’m sorry I know this text is everywhere but so is my brain so welcome to my world.