rob, wendy, thx for your responses; only new plant is at least a month
old now, and was repotted and dunked and washed and ultrafined the day
i got it home and kept away from the other plants for a good two
weeks. the critters are in several trays and literally appeared in the
space of a few hours on sunday; i may take a crack at the bleach
thing. i always use water straight from the tap for the trays (i air
off the water i give the plants) in the hopes of keeping the algae
down; while i have a certain morbid curiousity as to what these things
might grow into, i guess i better not find out. (they're way too
small to be mosquito nymphs, thanks heavens.

i'd been hoping to avoid having to ultrafine all the orchids again
(had to do the amaryllii last month for scale but, well, -sigh-.

--j_a