Hi everyone, this is the first post I've made here. I discovered el natural tanks about 6 weeks because I wanted to plant our a 55G I have that use to grow out my baby pond goldies and wanted an alternative to CO2 set-ups. Anyway, I decided to practice with a 1.5 gallon that I got at a garage sale for $2. I dug dirt out of the yard, then did pea gravel with hornwort and some creeping jenny (stuff I had on hand). Never had any ammonia or nitrite problems, or even tea-colored water. It's been up and running for about 2 weeks now, and last week I put in 10 red cherry shrimp.
Yesterday I noticed this stuff on top of the gravel:
I thought that the CRS weren't eating my dropped pellets and this was the mess, but then when I looked more closely i saw that there were a ton of teeny weeny white things that are ALIVE!
As if that's not enough weirdness I have a few of these things:
To give you an idea of the size, the leaves in this pic are hornwort:
They seem to move by extending a feeler and pulling themselves along.
Does anybody know what these things are??? Do I need to clean the whole thing out? Thanks much for any help!
Yesterday I noticed this stuff on top of the gravel:
I thought that the CRS weren't eating my dropped pellets and this was the mess, but then when I looked more closely i saw that there were a ton of teeny weeny white things that are ALIVE!
As if that's not enough weirdness I have a few of these things:

To give you an idea of the size, the leaves in this pic are hornwort:

They seem to move by extending a feeler and pulling themselves along.
Does anybody know what these things are??? Do I need to clean the whole thing out? Thanks much for any help!