Life is full of learning: Fish tanks and fun

Well, last night I got home, proud to have my first oficially bought bottle of fish food, so all was happy. But as I walked in the door, I heard a horrible noise coming from the fish tank, one of the filters obviously.

So I opened the lid of the fish tank and saw that my new(ish) Dolphin filter was not pumping water. Weird. This was also after the tank started looking quite dirty over the past few days. So hence the dirtyness of the tank, the water filter has not been working. Oh, and the fact that I had reached the end of the previous bottle of fish food, and so all that was left was these tiny tiny flakes which the fish most probably weren't managing to eat because they were too small.

So I think I need to clean my tank. And I wanna find a snail. Or two.

Anyways... I took the filter out and found the problem. In my excitement of installing the filter, I had put the little protector on the bottom of the inflow pipe, and then stretched the input pipe down into the tank as far as it would go (its retractable). The only problem with this was, as I discovered last night, it started sucking in the loose strands of the material holding the roots of the plant below the filter. And so these strands clogged up the protector, which then in turn meant that no water could flow into the filter.

So I took the protector off, cleaned it up, put it back on, retracted the inflow pipe, put the filter back in, refilled the filter and switched it on again. And now everything seems better. But I'll have to check when I get home this evening.

And that's a water snail, not a garden snail, to all those who thought, "Just go into the garden!"