masonryx

Greetings all this might sound like a dumb question but I need clarification. I have an Penguin Bio Wheel 100, with the square foam filter pads installed in it. I shined my flash light inside of my filter and noticed these brown looking seaweed looking tentacle like stuff, which I'm assuming is beneficial bacteria? Anyway it looks cool. Also on top of my filters media cartridge are these white spots in clumps not much but a few. Was wondering what this was, my instincts tell me its mold but I'm not sure if that's possible?

click

Bacteria is so small you can't really see it. Maybe it's algae? A pic would help.

Shawnie

sounds like diatoms attached to something..do you have any live plants in the tank? as click said, you will NOT see the bacteria...have you counted your shrimp lately? if you dont have a sponge over the intake, it could be one of
them sucked up also

as far as the white, sounds like hard water buildup ...

masonryx

So I took my filters media cartridge out and it definitely had brown gunk which appears to be algae on the sponge part and on the back part of the media inside the compartment. Swooshed it around tank water in a bucket and took most of it out. Quick question could brown algae give a high spike in "NITRATES"? This is day 3 and I just did a 35% water change. Hopefully everything is ok, I should of caught this. Thanks all.

jdhef

No but high nitrate can lead to a spike in algae (since it is basically algae fertilizer).

masonryx

Awesome well the cartridge no longer sludgy. My water seems to be a bit clearer now too. Also I have no brown algae in the tank it was just in the filter.