brief tank notes

I had serious overflow on the main tank again this week- sigh. I let it go for a few days, thinking well if it's just a trickle maybe I'll just ignore it. This morning it was overflowing more than I've ever seen. Tested the water quality- that was fine- but the fish were hanging around not swimming much which was alarming. I rinsed out the filter media again- more normal-looking mulm and some fine white hairs- decaying plant fiber? or dropped hornwort needles? (but that plant looks really healthy). I also siphoned out the back of the filter box in case some debris is stuck there. Runs fine again now and the fish look happy with the clean flow and a small water change. Maybe I need different filter media that won't clog so quickly...

Oliver's hospital tank got a large water change today- two, actually. I set about to do the first one this morning because it's the end of his med dose with General Cure. Noticed up close that there was a lot of pale mulm on the tank bottom. It looked gross. And the hornwort is all dying, needles everywhere and falling-apart stems. Not sure if it just ran out of nutrients and gave up because there's so little light, or something to do with the medication. Regardless, I took all the hornwort out and siphoned the bottom well. But shortly after finishing the water change more mulm had settled, so I did it all again. Spirodela polyrhiza in here doesn't look healthy- I picked out lots of yellowed and decaying leaves. Subwassertang in here is doing okay- but collecting some pale hairy algae. Oh well. They were all goners anyway, when I tear down the tank and sanitize.

To keep a decent amount of live plants in here while Oliver finished out his hospital time, I'm moving over handfuls of spirodela polyrhiza once or twice a week. Float them in a container for half a day in case there's any parasite on there that left a snail and wants a fish (supposedly they die w/in a few hours if they don't find the new host).