bugs? Algae?

[EvilVOG]

recently i went away For the holiday, i was gone a little over 2 weeks. When i left my 10 gallon looked like this:



When i returned, i found the tank completely overrun with some sort of algae. Pretty much killed off the horwart that was in there. The Betta however was quite fat and healthy, and the mystery snail about doubled in size. Also there seem to be a lot more smaller snails.

I did a water change right away with some heavy siphoning as the tank was overdue anyway, and removed most of the horwart.

It's been a couple days since then, long enough for me to notice some sort of water strider bug unlike any i've ever seen before as he snatched a bloodworm i was feeding the betta. in addition to that, there are orange-ish specks on the surface of the water that seem to move like they are alive, kind of like fleas. I also still have some of the algae as i haven't had a chance to scrape it off yet. Plus there's still some horwart needles i didn't get vacummed.

I also haven't fed the betta for a couple of days now and he's still fat... so i think he's eating either the tiny bugs, or the small snails as there are a lot of tiny empty snail shells on the bottom.

Now the plan was to use this tank as my breeding tank, and i'm almost ready to begin breeding. So do i need to completely strike this tank and start over? I believe the tank is cycled, so maybe i save some water and the sponge filter? Any help would be appreciated.

Some "after" pics from after i did the 75% water change:

[dramaqueen]

Were the plants pretty new? I'm wondering if they had some sort of infestation.

[EvilVOG]

not really, they were a few weeks old and never had any sort of problem. A couple of them were a few months old and trimmed off another plant from another tank.

I've never seen an algae bloom this fast. out of 5 tanks this is the only one that did this. Only my planted tank had any algae to speak of an it was just a couple normal brown spots, nothing like this green stuff that just encased everything.

[vilmarisv]

I would clean everything and start over.
Hongwart is really not a good plant for spawning tanks because the needles fall off everyday and the rot in the water quickly. I used it once and HATED the thing.
If you're looking for a floating plant, check wisteria out. If you're just wanting a plant to create infusoria, any will do. I use 1 sword and just leave it in the tank for a few days with a bright light before adding the fish I'm spawning. By the time the fry are free-swimming your tank will have tons of infusoria.

[EvilVOG]

thanks Vil. didn't know you could just float wisteria. I had the Horwort from overgrowth in another tank, and i had some more for my planted tank i decided against using it in. since i wasn't going to be breeding for another month at the time i put it in here to keep the one betta temporarily housed in here covered.

going to try the lettuce trick to see if i can save some of the snails but the little pest snails have ignored the "people food" i've put in in the past.