Hi guys,
I recently posted about finding a cheap way to add substrate for a planted tank for my 240g and am rethinking this whole idea after seeing new creatures showing up in my 37g planted tank. I started a planted tank a little bit ago to practice for our 240g. I'm guilty of having at least one the lights on longer than 8 hours with this tank since I don't have a timer as of right now. I was well aware that it could add algae to the tank and didn't mind it much. I was using my magnet specifically for this tank to wipe it down but wasn't getting it super close to the substrate because I have sand in some spots now and didn't want to scratch the glass. I figured I would wait to get OCD about the esthetics until I got some new toothbrushes to scrub the hard to reach spots since I didn't want to cross my other scrubbing and cleaning products from my other tank. I've got 2 scaleless morymrid in the planted tank and am trying to be careful cross contaminating since they are hard to treat (not saying my other tank has anything, but just in case.)
Anyways, I've had this planted tank up for a month now, have done on light vacuuming to help get rid of the extra crumbs left from initially planting with a scrub of the glass once (normally I do it biweekly) holding off until I could spend the day trimming and scrubbing. I've done water changes, but strictly just water nothing more. I figured algae was simply an esthetic thing and the dolphin couldn't be harmed by a little algae on the glass for a little. WELL last night I went to say hello to the friends and examined the glass I planned to scrub all afternoon and to my displeasure the glass is literally crawling.
I am so grossed out because I've seen about 4 different species of critters inhabiting my tank right now. I've identified different size hydra, a pinkish worm swimming (think it's a nematode) hundreds of little white microscopic flea-like bugs crawling around and the worst...a bug nobody at work can even identify. Did I create a new species with my filth!? It looks like a flatworm (with the tongue moving like a snail) in a little clear bubble with some sort of brown stuff on it's back. I thought snail at first since we have a new egg sac from my applesnails, but the brown isn't round and looks like algae or something and it moves. It almost looks like a nudibranch.
I haven't really been overfeeding these dolphin, especially since the snails do an awesome job cleaning up after them but they've been getting frozen daphnia, frozen bloodworms and live cleaned black worms (not at the same time.) How did these horrible creatures show up in my tank and how do I get rid of them? I want to clean the tank but now I'm afraid of making the problem worse with scrubbing and potentially multiplying. I'm debating on removing the dolphin and somehow nuking the tank and dipping all the plants in a bleach mixture.
I recently posted about finding a cheap way to add substrate for a planted tank for my 240g and am rethinking this whole idea after seeing new creatures showing up in my 37g planted tank. I started a planted tank a little bit ago to practice for our 240g. I'm guilty of having at least one the lights on longer than 8 hours with this tank since I don't have a timer as of right now. I was well aware that it could add algae to the tank and didn't mind it much. I was using my magnet specifically for this tank to wipe it down but wasn't getting it super close to the substrate because I have sand in some spots now and didn't want to scratch the glass. I figured I would wait to get OCD about the esthetics until I got some new toothbrushes to scrub the hard to reach spots since I didn't want to cross my other scrubbing and cleaning products from my other tank. I've got 2 scaleless morymrid in the planted tank and am trying to be careful cross contaminating since they are hard to treat (not saying my other tank has anything, but just in case.)
Anyways, I've had this planted tank up for a month now, have done on light vacuuming to help get rid of the extra crumbs left from initially planting with a scrub of the glass once (normally I do it biweekly) holding off until I could spend the day trimming and scrubbing. I've done water changes, but strictly just water nothing more. I figured algae was simply an esthetic thing and the dolphin couldn't be harmed by a little algae on the glass for a little. WELL last night I went to say hello to the friends and examined the glass I planned to scrub all afternoon and to my displeasure the glass is literally crawling.
I am so grossed out because I've seen about 4 different species of critters inhabiting my tank right now. I've identified different size hydra, a pinkish worm swimming (think it's a nematode) hundreds of little white microscopic flea-like bugs crawling around and the worst...a bug nobody at work can even identify. Did I create a new species with my filth!? It looks like a flatworm (with the tongue moving like a snail) in a little clear bubble with some sort of brown stuff on it's back. I thought snail at first since we have a new egg sac from my applesnails, but the brown isn't round and looks like algae or something and it moves. It almost looks like a nudibranch.
I haven't really been overfeeding these dolphin, especially since the snails do an awesome job cleaning up after them but they've been getting frozen daphnia, frozen bloodworms and live cleaned black worms (not at the same time.) How did these horrible creatures show up in my tank and how do I get rid of them? I want to clean the tank but now I'm afraid of making the problem worse with scrubbing and potentially multiplying. I'm debating on removing the dolphin and somehow nuking the tank and dipping all the plants in a bleach mixture.
