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Something on water surface

  • Thread starter JMurphy97
  • Start date
I filled my tank the other day and I was looking at it and I noticed that there is something on the surface of the water. It's I would say grayish. It looks like oil but not oil. When I put my finger in the tank to try and see if anything would happen it went away but then came back as the water settled. I thought maybe it could be from the florite substrate since the water was real cloudy at first but I dunno. I'm trying to get a pic up but my phone is not working now but any ideas would be good. Thanks.
 
You may be able to soak it up by applying a paper towel over it.
 
It's proteins and lipids. DOC's are bipolar and one end is hydrophobic while the other is hydrophilic. These usually stay dissolved unless there's not enough water circulation near the surface.

Either A: get rid of them by using Purigen and/or more water changes, or B: increase surface agitation enough to not waste too much co2, but enough to keep it broken up and dissolved. A paper towel/newspaper is a good band aid but if you don't fix the root problem you'll run out of towels lol

In layman's terms, it's the stuff that makes up sea foam before it's foam :) If you use yeast for co2 instead of pressurized, that doesn't help unless you have a bubble counter/gas separator.
 
I'm concerned to if it's gonna hurt my plants or fish. That Purigen stuff says it has to go in the filter so I don't know how that would work with mine.
 
No, it's just gross.

Why don't you have a filter? That's your problem right there.
 
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