For the past few months I have been dealing with a deadly brown matter formation in my filtration system. It first formed during a fishless cycle in which the only thing entering the tank was pure ammonia on a daily basis (this was not ammonia derived from fish waste; it was bottled pure ammonia). It seemed to have formed in the cylinder that surrounded the impeller, and from there, it had spread onto the filter walls, biological filtration, filter baskets, inlet/outlet tube and inlet/outlet nozzles. A more weighty deposit of the same brown gunk was sitting and spreading amongst my hemanthius plant carpet and forming in rock crevices.
As you can imagine, I was very shocked and stressed, especially so because the gunk was zapping all of the oxygen out of the water leaving only 1 mg/L of oxygen. Thus, I knew the tank was not viable for fish. I therefore threw £50 on plants away, £10 of play sand and had to extensively disinfect equipment and the filtration system.
Despite having cleaned the filter it was apparent within 3 days of having the filter up and running again that bits of brown gunk were forming on the filter baskets and up on running a white cloth across the aquarium glass, I could see a brown deposit (I can tell you that this was certainly not brown algae or diatoms!).
Due to not being able to disinfect the filtration system effectively (it is impossible, for instance, to get my hands into the hole in which the impeller sits) I decided to throw it away. That was another £130+ lost.
On the 30th of January I filled the aquarium up with water again, but omitted to use de-chlorinator in the hope that the chlorine would kill some of the gunk bacteria. I also applied some 'Interpet Pond Disinfectant' to a white cloth and scrubbed all of the glass. Lastly, I placed an internal UV filter into the aquarium to help stop any mitotic division of this brown gunk.
I am now on Sunday the 3rd of February and despite my previous efforts I found small traces of this brown gunk on the intake grill of the UV filter and the pane of glass which the water hits as it is coming out of the filter had a light brown stain on it.
My question, therefore, is, what I am dealing with here? How do I remove this bacterial growth for good?
It would really take the biscuit if I had to throw away a £200+ custom made aquarium as this would take my losses up to over £390!
As you can imagine, I was very shocked and stressed, especially so because the gunk was zapping all of the oxygen out of the water leaving only 1 mg/L of oxygen. Thus, I knew the tank was not viable for fish. I therefore threw £50 on plants away, £10 of play sand and had to extensively disinfect equipment and the filtration system.
Despite having cleaned the filter it was apparent within 3 days of having the filter up and running again that bits of brown gunk were forming on the filter baskets and up on running a white cloth across the aquarium glass, I could see a brown deposit (I can tell you that this was certainly not brown algae or diatoms!).
Due to not being able to disinfect the filtration system effectively (it is impossible, for instance, to get my hands into the hole in which the impeller sits) I decided to throw it away. That was another £130+ lost.
On the 30th of January I filled the aquarium up with water again, but omitted to use de-chlorinator in the hope that the chlorine would kill some of the gunk bacteria. I also applied some 'Interpet Pond Disinfectant' to a white cloth and scrubbed all of the glass. Lastly, I placed an internal UV filter into the aquarium to help stop any mitotic division of this brown gunk.
I am now on Sunday the 3rd of February and despite my previous efforts I found small traces of this brown gunk on the intake grill of the UV filter and the pane of glass which the water hits as it is coming out of the filter had a light brown stain on it.
My question, therefore, is, what I am dealing with here? How do I remove this bacterial growth for good?
It would really take the biscuit if I had to throw away a £200+ custom made aquarium as this would take my losses up to over £390!
