Wildlife in your filters

[Dave 54]

Our own filters have quite a bit in the way of aquatic wildlife with insects , snail larve, worms, a leach and pill bugs as well as a type of mayfly larve (plus the caste's of an unknown insect which have appeared in great numbers on the filters sides and between the quilt batting sheets ).
We are more than happy to see all these lodgers (so to speak), as It all goes to indicate that our filters are fully matured healthy and capable of maintaining aquatic insect life in them as well as helping keep the pond clear.
How many others have noticed the same with their own filtration do you have anything in the way of little critters living in your on filters ?

Dave

 

[Mmathis]

Lots of scuds and the occasional leach (yuck!)......

 

[Priscilla]

I have blood worms, dragon fly larva, various unidentified bugs, some type of weird clear worms ..... snails. They all live in there.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

IN my filter system the last filter I use before the pump is my polishing filter, which is basically a sort of cartridge filter made of wrapped quilt batting that catches most of the stuff small enough to fit through a window screen. When ever it's time to change it or clean the quilt batting I always check out the inside where all the debris gets trapped and the muck is essentially alive with living things just big enough to see, too numerous to identify. I can only imagine what else I'd find if I put some of that stuff under a microscope.

 

[CometKeith]

I used to see a lot of cool things when I cleaned my filter including something that looked like fish with wings ( baby dragon flies), but now I have the kind that you scrub when it gets dirty and you never open it during the season.