Day one of taking down the cryptic... its composed of three layers and sits in the middle of my sump.
The topmost layer is the algae zone. It's made of eggcrate and nylon mesh (like used for ATS). The water mostly flows over this zone from end to end
The second layer creates a baffle zone between the algae zone and the deep zone. Again- eggcrate and mesh. This channels any remaining medium flow to the other end but allows some exchange into the lowest zone.
The last layer is made up of 2quart buckets of sand/mud. Two layers of these buckets separated by eggcrate and mesh.
In this lowest zone, water trickles through the surface layers but does so slowly.
Today, I removed the first two zones...
Here's what I found.. fast zones have feather dusters... thousands clumped together to make "rock"...
In the top eggcrate squares, sand collected forming tiny sand beds protected from flow. These had.... tiny sea cucumbers! Less than 3/4" long! They we so small I thought they were sponges.
Lower down ... three kinds of sponges... first white, then yellow, then on the bottom pinkish purple?. These aren't "attractive" sponges. They look like wet napkin paper with holes and striations. Inside and around them are tiny serpent stars..
I haven't gotten to the buckets but here are the pics:
