What The Heck? My Filter!

I am cycling three tanks, one 5 gallon and two 10g. I was lying in bed a few minutes ago, when I realized my 10 gallon community was making a little slosh noise, so I checked the water level and it was a little bit lower, making the filter louder. while I was filling it up a little bit more, I noticed some little weird substance on the output, then I decided to open the top and look at the filter cartilage. holy ****! I have no idea what this is! here's a background on this tank

bought, added rescue betta, not cycled, betta was just living his last few days out. after he passed, I started to set up to cycle for a community tank. I tried fish food but realized how impatient I am, so I drained and siphoned our the whole tank, filled, and then started cycling with ammonia. I left someone with clear instructions and showed them how to add ammonia and test, they did pretty well, I got back yesterday and I was gone for 10 days, so I was a little concerned about my tanks. anyway. here is the cartilage from about a month ago, right before I filled the tank up after cleaning the fish food out.



anddddd here it is right now.



what the heck is on my filter! ill be really upset if I have to throw it out, as i've been waiting to cycle this tank for three months

also here's the weird filter stuff


and my tank


I checked out the filter in my 5 gallon that has been cycling the same amount of time, and nothing. it's completely clean. then again, i've had the 10 gallon filter and cartilage for almost 3 months, and the 5 gallon for almost two weeks.

someone help!

 

it looks to be the same colour of your sand? what kind of sand is it? that cartridge looks pretty gross lol. could the input have sucked the sand up? if the filter's doing that then it's probably clogged.

I would take some tank water out into a bucket and rinse the cartridge as best as you can. rub most of the gunk off.

 

I agree with midna. Also, I could learn a thing or two from your aquascaping cause I'm terrible at it

 

HI - Nice looking tank.
Filters are strange living creatures....... that have two functions:

1. mechanically remove dirt - so that is what you see. All you need to do is take some water out of the aquarium and rinse the filter cartridge in it. It will be fine.
2. biological filtration - the bacteria colony that builds up does the work of .

Having said that, I guess the take away is the filter will get dirty (like the door mat at the entrance to your house does) and it just needs to be rinsed in water from your aquarium (NOT tap water) once a month.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with the filter - maybe you did get some gravel in it initially, but that is something you can easily rinse out. I think that it is good that the filter is trapping dirt. That is what is was designed to do!

 

Looks like your filter is doing its job?

As others mentioned, just rinse it with tank water when you do your water change. Don't need to panic looking at a dirty filter, I'd actually worry if its clean tbh.

 

I agree with RSababady: I see absolutely nothing wrong with your filter. What is a definition of a filter? It doesn't matter if it's an air filter, water filter, or an aquarium filter. It has the same definition, the difference being the adjective preceding it to describe its specific function.