I managed to capture and bring home a filter pump today

for the fish tank, since the last one (and a few fish) went belly-up.  The new one is a biofilter with the cascading water that has been taken in and filtered through foam, charcoal, and biofilter material, all of which is easily replaced.  It's superior to the biowheel one I had.  It took a little while to figure out (at one point I thought I was missing the leveling lever, but it was still in the box, thankfully. Everything's working fine.  While I was at it I cleaned out a lot of the duckweed and java moss--so you can really see the fish--and also scrubbed some of the algae off the glass.  I also added some water treated with priming stuff to take out the harmful chemicals so now the tank is completely full. I'm concerned because the nitrites are high (nitrates, my fish survive; nitrites can be deadly).  The chlorine's okay, but I went ahead and treated the tank as a whole to help with the nitrites and added a bacterial solution that helps with both nitrites and nitrates.  I think it's from not having a filter going for nearly a week, so the filter should help, especially as it gets established.  In the meantime, the fish do not appear to be in distress, and are quite active.

Here are some near a patch of java moss, for example:

These are swimming by the gargoyle:

(Sorry, it's hard to get really great pictures with a phone camera and moving water and fish.) Wish me luck with getting things balanced. I've got several large platies, but some tiny ones as well, so somebody's having babies. :)