Hey all,
Don't come around here often because I consider my turtles healthy and happy. But a co worker of mine bought a RES for her grand daughter last year as a present and then shows me these pics today asking if it was normal. I assured her it certainly wasn't, but couldn't offer much more advice other than that. Her filters have these weird looking worm things on them, and she says that flies are coming out of the worms, which doesn't make any sense to me, but I do know they don't look normal and Ive never seen anything like this on my filters. Additionally, the turtle's shell looks absolutely terrible. Looks like algae to me, but I'm no expert, again Ive never seen anything like this on my tank.
I told her just guessing, that the tank is exposed to direct sunlight and possibly algae growth due to that. I also told her make to sure the turtle can get completely out of the water and sun himself. Not sure about the worms though.
Any advice that I can pass along to her though regarding either of these would be greatly appreciated.