Excessive duck weed growth after I had neglected to remove it for some time.

As with many other stores, when you buy plants from Pete Mang (The Fish Place, 141 Robinson Street, N. Tonawanda NY), two things are guaranteed to come with them for free: snails and duck weed. Snails are not really an issue as long as you don't overfeed. An explosion in the snail population in my experience is a sure sign of drastic overfeeding. In addition, most cichlids will eat snails, or can be conditioned to eat them, if you don't remove the undesired snails from the tank, but squash them, thereby showing the fish that this is food. With a bit of luck after a while thy will find that they can crush the snails themselves.

In short, I don't mind the snails, but the duckweed I should never have introduced to the 240G, because I don't like the look of it, it competes with other plants for light throwing shade on them, and I can't get rid of it. It sits on the rocks of the background, and is a pain to remove from there. Also, as long as one tiny leave is left in the tank, it is sure to spread out again as soon as you leave it alone. Whenever I do tank maintenance now, I scoop off as much as possible. I guess it's a good way to remove some extra nitrogen from the tank, but I'd rather not have to worry about it at all.

Another photo of excessive duck weed growth after I had neglected to remove it for some time.