I got bugs in my tank... bugs.

(I know Becky will get the title of this post.)

I don't think I told my blogger peeps about my new tank. I bought a 10-gallon tank to put plants in and grow snails for my puffers. Here's a pic:



Those plants brought in some nice little creatures... copepods. They're tiny white things that jump around in the water like little bugs. Here's a pic:



I first noticed them about a month ago, and ever since, I've been trying to get rid of them by feeding the snails less, since the copepods pretty much eat anything. When I got the plants for the 10-gallon, I also purchased some plants for my puffer tank. The puffer's tank was growing algae faster than I could keep up, and I was really tired of cleaning it. Plants generally overwhelm the algae for resources, so I had hoped that the algae would eventually disappear.

Big mistake. The plants shed their little needles everywhere. I had dead needles all over the place, and they clogged the intakes on the filters. And the algae kept thriving. I finally gave up several weeks ago, threw out all the plants from the puffer tank and cleaned it. And the hated algae kept growing.

A couple of days ago, I noticed the water becoming cloudy, looked closer, and realized I had HUNDREDS of those nasty little copepods in the puffer's tank. So I cleaned the filters, siphoned the gravel, did a huge water change, and then it suddenly dawned on me that the glass was practically spotless. And not just the glass, but EVERYTHING in the tank was nearly free of algae. The heater has always been the worst, but nope, it's actually pretty spotless. The copepods have been cleaning my tank! Look at how spotless the thing is! SPOTLESS! I didn't clean a single thing in the tank when I changed out the water. The nasty little copepods are no longer my enemies.

SPOTLESS!