Something's Fishie...

Well it's been nearly a month since my last update. Not a lot has been happening. Alan just keeps growing, and Bruce is just chill. The tetras aren't schooling still not sure what's up with that. Perhaps I just happened to pick up 10 fish that hated each others guts.
Snail explosion is amazing. I'm gonna regret it later but I haven't started any mass extermination plan yet. I lose some every now and then to the gravel vac, but there's got to be at least a couple hundred in there anyway. They don't seem to be messing with the plants in any meaningful manner. But I'm watching just in case.

I might have mentioned the large snail I found a little while back. But I didn't have a decent picture of it at the time so you wouldn't have seen him yet. So behold!

Zoom zoom.

After much deliberating on the internet I have discovered he is a Bladder/Tadpole/Pouch Snail, and potentially as damaging and prolific as the other snails in the tank, which by the way are planorbids.
I nearly lost this cute fellow the other day though. I decided to take out the plastic cave system I had up the back of the tank as Alan was getting rather large and might get stuck or cut himself on some of the edges. So I took it out, left it in the laundry sink and left for work. About the same time the next day I realized why I hadn't seen him for a while. I ran to the sink and found him rather dried up about 3 inches away from the dried out cave system. I put him in some water along with some babies that I'd discovered  underneath chilling in some water droplets. By the time I'd woken up in the morning he was re hydrated and ready to go. So I plonked him back in the tank, which I may regret later, and watched him re settle in.

I can't remember if I'd mentioned the black fluffy algae growing in my tank before but if not I will now. I started noting this black stuff growing on my plants, and didn't really like how much it liked to spread. Looking it up I discovered that there were in fact 2 kinds of black algae I was inadvertently cultivating.
Firstly:

Black Brush Algae

 And:

Staghorn

Nothing in my tank wants to eat them so I looked up other ways to be rid of them. From what I can tell there were 2 main causes for them, bad circulation and CO2 deficiency. Hence my trip to the fish shop today.
I fitted myself out with an nice external filter and set up the output to flow water at all levels in the tank. If nothing happens in a week or 2 I'll head back and grab some "liquid CO2" and treat my tank with it. Though if even that fails then I'll consider a third option they suggested. This was a little catfish that apparently loves to eat the black fluffy algae. Maybe...


Another reason I wanted better flow at the bottom of the tank, is my poor little albino cories (Now called Cory and Dory) are suffering in the barbel area. The big one, Dory, seems to have lost her (just guessing) barbels, and this may be due to mucky substrate and poor circulation at the bottom of the tank. Both seem rather stressed at times and I'm hoping they grow a bit bigger so they don't have to worry so much. Not too hopeful at the moment.


Fish photo time!

Go Cory!

He keeps growing...

Tank! (Pre-external filter)