Good lord, it was a long week and I didn’t anticipate staying away from home the majority of it. This caused the nitrates to spike when my leech trap wasn’t taken out fast enough – the leech trap that doesn’t have any leeches in it but does have a ton of eggs??? I don’t know what laid them.. I am down to 1-3 shrimp but they are finally exploring the whole tank and not just the top since I put a bubbler in. The danios are also doing great and spend every daylight hour breeding like bunnies. Some of my plants melted in the chaos and the duckweed which is literally supposed to be THE easiest aquatic plant has mostly disappeared??? While the more fragile plants are for the most part thriving. Also my one snail and the fish have doubled in size in a week and the water is finally mostly clear! (Although tea colored but this is by design – that’s tannins leeching out if the dead plant matter. Its supposed to be really healthy for the fish.) Waiting for the nitrates to go down and then we should be good to get schools of fish in the coming weeks. Woohoo!