I planned on redoing the tank anyway, so no problem, it just had some snails for a future puffer, some RCS, and a few little fish. Redoing it went fine, but after redoing it I used a different filter, and had a brown algae explosion. That kind of subsided, though the plants were still doing poorly, and then, just before vacation, VERY green water. I couldn't to postpone my vacation, and from everything I've heard, green water can be very hard to get rid of. So I put one of those little 6-8 day feeding cubes in there on recommendation of my LFS when looking for an electronic feeder and left for San Francisco.
I got back a few days ago, expecting the worst, the fish to have ignored the food, and the green water to be worse, and the plants to be dead... upon opening my door I was greeted with crystal clear water, and all the fish were still alive - excepting the two batches of baby guppies born just before leaving. They had not really touched the cube, so I guess it's good there were babies for them to eat, but they are all back to normal now. The plants were doing fantastically as well!
The only thing I did was change my light timer to 6 hours on and 18 off, so like 10-4, though it's by a window so there's some very low indirect sunlight during the rest of the day!
