# Bubbles forming on top of water



## F. Jeppesen (9 Jan 2016)

The tank has been running for a week now. And i've done waterchanges everyday.
But this morning 25% of the surface was covered in little bubbles.. Co2 has not been running over night, and my lilypipe is sitting so the little whirlpool is forming.
Any idea what is causing this? Protein on the surface making the bubbles staying there? It is not pretty 
I can post a picture if it helps


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## F. Jeppesen (9 Jan 2016)

I hope this is the right sub btw, didnt know where to put it.


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## Greenfinger2 (9 Jan 2016)

A photo would help


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## F. Jeppesen (9 Jan 2016)

SIgh. .I cleaned out the tank a few hours after i posted.. Without taking a photo 
I'll get a picture if it happens again tonight.


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## Martin in Holland (10 Jan 2016)

Sounds like protein on the surface is trapping bubbles..... but a picture would help indeed


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## zozo (10 Jan 2016)

I sometimes have this too  not often but once in a while it just occurs.. White foamy bubles traped at the floating leaves edges or at the glass.. Providing the tank with proper surface agitation by lifting the filter outlet makes it go away soon. I have actualy no idea why this happens all of a sudden and goes away again to reappear again without any obvious reason. Sometimes once in a few weeks and sometimes it takes months..

I guess it's a plant or several plants doing that in certain given circumstances leaching an extra amount of proteines and oils in the water. I talked about it with a very experienced fellow aquarist and he experienced excactly the same in one of his tanks, as i do only sometimes and also had no real explaination for it.

If it keeps comming back when surface agitation is lowered again, it could be you are over feeding and therefore have a protien buildup.


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## F. Jeppesen (18 Jan 2016)

It "finally" happened again.. But i think you are absolutely correct zozo.. But the surface agitation from my lily pipes is not enough. Even when it forms the little whirlpool.. Ill get me a surface skimmer of some sort at some point.


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## zozo (18 Jan 2016)

It all come down to tank (surface) size too of course.. In my case it's just 60 x 30 cm loaded with floating vegitation. So there aint much water surface to move in my tank.
Maybe a spray bar will help in your case.. ??


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## Martin in Holland (19 Jan 2016)

A high TDS content can also result to bubbles on the surface, think of it as foam you see at the beach sometimes, obviously not as strong bubbly as that.


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## Manuel Arias (20 Jan 2016)

The problem was reported by Takashi Amano itself some years ago. It is really common and almost every tank with a lack of right surface agitation suffers it. ADA recommends to increment agitation during the night and one of the reasons is this one. The reason behind not increasing the agitation during the day is to optimize the CO2 levels in the water and reduce the degasification process within the lightning period. However, during the nights O2 is favored so more agitation is convenient, as well as avoiding this issue.

The top layer of the surface tends to accumulate some proteins and fat acids coming from plants, fishes and microorganisms. This happens because they have less density than water, so if the surface is quiet, then they just accumulate there by pure buoyancy. The problem easily disappear by increasing the agitation of the surface as proposed. This allows these components to mix up with the water and then eventually passing by the filter and being degraded by heterotrophic bacteria, so the effect is double.

A side effect of that layer is that, if not removed, interferes over the normal exchange of gases between the surface of the water and the air, and for some reason, that favours the growth of algae.

So it is not critical if appears but it is good to remove it in this way.


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