I’ll never understimate the bioload of snails again

I just cleaned out the little 2 gallon tank to prep for the Triops. I was going to move them over next week, but it turns out we’ll have to be away for the weekend, and I don’t want them to starve. So I started dribbling a bit of tank water into their critter keeper last night and set to clean the tank out today.

There hadn’t been anything significant in it since the brigs, I’d just been using it as a holdover for plants and as an emergency QT or nursery, but there hadn’t been any emergencies, so all it held was some MTS and pond snails. That also meant it hadn’t been cleaned in ages. With the high plant content the water parameters were fine, and I’d originally planned to just clean the glass, pull out the algae (it had been sitting by a window) and do a complete water change, but the muck I stirred up changed my mind. Ewwwww …

I ended up rinsing the gravel in significant amounts of clear, but tank ready water, filled it back up only a quarter and dumped a handful of Elodea back in.

I brought the critter keeper upstairs to adjust to the temps in my office (30°C right now) and will be trickling fresh dechlorinated water in until it’s full. Tonight or tomorrow morning I’ll move the terrible two over with all the water and plants they were born in and hope that will make their move as gentle as possible, and that they’ll find enough left-over detritus in the gravel and plants to survive until Monday.