oogpister

YES! I have FISH!..... So, after a long summer of ups and downs, we finally have fish.... We have had fish for several weeks now, we bought 3 pristella tetras and 2 upside down catfish. Then a week ago we bought 2 dwarf gouramis and 3 long-finned leopard danios(lost 1 a few days later). We are running an Emporer 400 filter on a 55 gal tank. Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite all 0's. Did a small water change today, looked at my filters ( the pads with the charcoal and the blue pad ) and they were COVERED in a gelatinous slime. I rinsed one out in the sink, and the other two in the tank (I know,3 is an odd number but there was a reason for it) anyway, now the water is really cloudy, but clearing. I was wondering if that slimey stuff is the "good bacteria"? Should I not have rinsed them off in the tank? can someone please enlighten me?

Tommy Gun

The slimey stuff is not bacteria. My guess is that you are probably feeding too much flake food or feeding it a bit too quickly and it is winding up in your filter media. You would not want to rinse this stuff off in the tank itself but instead, in another vessel which contains water from the tank...just before discarding it during a water change. Make sense?

oogpister

okay, possible I'm overfeeding. Let me ask you this, why do I need to rinse the filter in the water from the tank and not in the sink? When I change the water in the tank, I put in water from the tub....

Jay

Tommy is telling you to rinse the filter media in tank water so you will not kill the beneficial bacteria growing on the media.

Rinsing the media in the tank defeats the purpose of filtering, you just put all the filtered gunk back in the tank.

I agree with Tommy that you are probably overfeeding, but in new tanks you still have a lot of micro critters blooming and competing for a niche. The formation of bio slime is not uncommon it is merely a huge blob of organic activity.

Jay