# Brown surface scum



## ADA (29 Mar 2015)

anyone know if its bacteria or algae?


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## The_Iceman (29 Mar 2015)

Brown?

Never seen the brown stuff... only milky/cloudy surface scum (bacteria). We are talking about the surface of the water right?


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## ADA (29 Mar 2015)

Yeah, it's brown on my tank and comes back after a couple of days and I'm about to up my lighting by 50% lol hoping it will help the plants out compete the scum growth as they're growing very slowly at the moment, may up my CO2 a bit too but last time I did the fish were gasping.


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## The_Iceman (29 Mar 2015)

Try placing the Lily Pipe higher at night.
This will bring in more oxygen and remove the scum.

I had some problems with the cloudy stuff first, but since I do this procedure every day, it's gone.


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## ADA (29 Mar 2015)

I wonder if night oxygenation will help via air stone or something


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## Ghosty (29 Mar 2015)

Just increase surface agitation, I get scum in my ten gal if the spray bar is to low on water level


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## ADA (29 Mar 2015)

Yeah but is it brown tho?


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## Stu Worrall (29 Mar 2015)

mine appears as a bit milky on a new tank.  Since fitting an eheim skimmer to the new tank its all gone in a matter of minutes


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## Ghosty (29 Mar 2015)

Mine looked like a rainbow so,.. Lol
Could be a number of things of witch is out of my skill level, I would however try and remove it,
Get a paper towel, (scent and chemical free) rest on top of scum  and quickly remove,
And add more surfice ripples, I'll do some research and see what I come up with

Could be brown algae, could be oils from your skin or the air in your house,


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## ADA (29 Mar 2015)

It's not oily lol I do remove it every day and do wc every other day at the moment so hoping after adding some media from the missus tank tomorrow it will help speed things along a little as it's only been flooded few weeks so might be as its new tank.


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## parotet (30 Mar 2015)

Have you recently changed the substrate? AquaSoil maybe? During the first days when I use this sold in a new setup I find some brown bubbles on the surface (looks like bubbles from the substrate with aqua soil powder). I suppose that if you have some oily surface scum (this is cell death, plants melting, etc.) it can blend with it

Jordi


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## Jose (30 Mar 2015)

Something is adding colour to your surface film. It can be as Jordi suggests some soil or some wood leaching tannins. Also could be leaves. Anything brown in your tank?


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## alto (30 Mar 2015)

It may be related to soil powder but also algae, a surface skimmer is likely the quickest solution though its likely time will resolve it as well ...


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## ADA (30 Mar 2015)

Well substrate is Florabase black which does look dark brown once wet but I will keep up wc's and see how it goes


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## alto (30 Mar 2015)

If this is substrate that you moved from your other tank, it's quite easy to generate these "fines" - if you have some very fine netting (I have an ancient fish net), you can also just rest this on the surface at night & remove & rinse in the morning - from what comes out, you'll know whether it's worth repeating


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