What is the junk in my canister tubes?

[dapellegrini]

Anyone know what the brown junk is that grows all over the inside of canister tubes? Some kind of algae or diatom? Does this have anything to do with dosing ferts?

I was playing around with one of my filters (again) and as it was ejecting air (self priming) it shot a bunch of this stuff out into the water... My SAE seemed to kind of like it... Cleared up pretty quick, but got me wondering what it is that makes those things go from nice and new, to dark brown after a couple months of use...

 

[An t-iasg]

I have a planted tank with a canister filter also, and I notice this stuff in my tubes too. It may be some kind of algae. The tubes don't get good light, but they get nice, CO2 and fertilizer-saturated water through them all the time. My tubes are pretty easy to change out, so I may do that in a few more months.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

It's just a mixture of algae, dissolved organics that have solidified, and other stuff, lol. Mine are always brown, and I don't bother changing them out, they don't hurt anything. And if you have a good flow rate, it won't plug up the lines. It just coats the surface of the tubes. Nothing to worry about.

 

[dapellegrini]

I was thinking of maybe changing tubes out as part of an annual maintenance (next Sept)... Stuff is always so nice when it is new... before the calcium deposits and murcky brown gunk

The only problem I had so far with this stuff in the tubes was when I decided to cut a tube length back, I had to get a pipe-cleaner to remove the gunk around the joint area, to get a good seal. Oh and when I clean the filters now, blowing air through there seems to dislodge stuff that gets shot out into the water. Not a big deal though.

 

[kaz]

how you clean the inside of the joints where the tubes connect with a sample of xp3?

 

[Lonewolfblue]

I cleaned mine once, but may not do it again, lol. I just ran a tube brush through the hose. I had some network cable lying around, so I ran it through the tube, as it doesn't bend real easy, and had the bruch hooked to the other end. I pulled the filter out, removed all the hoses, and ran it through the tubing, and rinsed out under the faucet. The brush I use came with my Emperor 400's, worked really well. Even though the brush was just a little smaller than the tubing, when I bent the tubing a little, I was able to completely clean out the tubing.

 

[BillD]

I use a bamboo garden stake as a ramdod to push a piece of J-cloth through the tube, to remove the build up. It is one of the downsides to cannisters.