Ever forget to clean out the innards of your filter?...

[Bottomfeeder]

I did

Been kinda busy lately and haven't cleaned out the ol' churners in a while... I saw how much organic sludge was in them so I did a little experiment, strung up a towel over the toilet seat, rinsed the filters out into a bucket of clean water, and put it through the towel... and... DAMN

It's not dirty or anything, it has no smell and didn't mess with the water at all so I'm guessing it's mostly plant matter (I have a lot of unrooted plants - don't ask) but wow...
If anyone ever tries this experiment, beware of spouses and/or parents... this stuff stains see the towel under my tank in the last picture.

 

[knifegill]

Nice haul! Stick it in a plant pot for fert!

Don't feel bad. My 55g once had enough digested wood and other waste on the floor of it to fill a shot glass by the end of a week of heavy feeding. Params were fine, but it was weird to think of the ratio of turd to water volume.

 

[Bottomfeeder]

Yeah that's the thing, it's not nasty or anything, I'm almost sure it's predominantly plant root material and probably driftwood scrapings (damn Plecos)

 

[fishmamma]

Wow I didn't even realize that was a toilet till I read the posting... that was a lot of crap.. How long you think, since you'd last cleaned them.. ?

 

[Bottomfeeder]

No idea. That stuff wells up at the bottom of my tank, I can't get rid of it

When I smell it, it smells like wet grass. So it seems to be more of an eyesore (and possibly a filter obstruction) if anything.

 

[Piscine]

My sump is like a settling chamber for this stuff. There is probably a 1/4" blanket of this stuff on the bottom of the sump.

 

[_Jessica_]

Wow, nice haul . The other day my filter was making a weird humming noise...so I flipped the lid up and pulled the filters up and down and it stopped. I stepped back and glanced at the tank...oh boy, I guess I really need to rinse those filters..there was so much crap shooting into the tank. I blame it on the pleco's scraping the driftwood.

 

[Bottomfeeder]

That's what I think too. Know when Panaques scrape the driftwood and it makes those brown rice-looking things on the ground? That's probably when they go through the impellor of the filter.



Eeeeeeeeeeewwww.