Changing Ph - answered my question!
Glad I was able to answer your question, although if you are now deciding not to remove all of the sludge, you have apparently misread my recommendations. I also found Lenny’s reply to be helpful too, although I can’t say if it completely filled in your question. Sometimes in trying to get important points across, we may miss something not quite as important to us at the moment, and with it, not realize the importance of a lesser point to the questioner. Perhaps this may have happened here.
You are right to remove (and should remove) any and all such gunk you see as physical residue in your filter, up until yesterday, and should continue to remove it. (You may need to re-read my post on this subject). It serves absolutely no purpose there if its decaying matter, even if helpful bacteria are colonizing it (the filter can well do without this sludge). Even if the helpful bacteria are successful in rendering this substance relatively harmless, the by- products (nitrate) of this procedure will only go back into your water column, adding to your waste end products for all intents and purposes. And . . . there’s always the possibility of denitrification if the sludge is viscous (no, not “vicious”) enough so as to harbour anaerobic bacteria within it.
Not needing to go into this process further here, but for those who may be curious, in time (and if left in place) the nitrate would eventually get broken down further into nitrogen, but as this process would take too long for the amount of nitrate that can build up rather quickly in an enclosed environment, its best in our case to remove this excess periodically via PWC’s. Ray
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