Amoebas?

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Amoebas?
From: Stephen.Pushak at saudan_HAC.COM
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 95 15:53:22 PST
In-Reply-To: <199512122039.PAA18396 at looney_actwin.com>; from "Aquatic-Plants-Owner at actwin_com" at Dec 12, 95 3:39 pm
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]

I've had a curious problem for a couple of weeks. In one of
my tanks, the Whisper power filter started getting plugged up.
This is usually a symptom of too much crud or algae which can
accumulate depending how much is in the water. I performed the
usual cleaning of the filter media only to have the problem
recurr only a couple days later. Cleaning the filter reveals
very little dirty material; just a kind of sliminess that I'd
associate with a healthy amoeba colony. I had a lot of Salvinia
in this tank which also had a general sliminess which I took
to be the same stuff. I removed some of it to my other tank and
it developed similar clogged filter. I then removed almost all
of the Salvinia and recleaned my filters and turned off the
aquarium lights. The situation seems to have improved although
I still had a clogged filter again yesterday on the original
tank. Could this be amoebas? Is there a good way to deal with
this? What causes this kind of a problem? I'm not overfeeding;
the fish are supposed to be eating algae right now. (SAEs,
ottos, platys)

Steve