Bubbles Suds at top of tank

[hexcolor reef]

Am I dealing with some sort of bacterial issue in my water? I’m getting foam bubbles at top of tank. Water temps has been 80F. I’m running a UV Sterilizer 24/7.
my Acans / micromussas seem to bubble up when lights out. The polyps aren’t close to skeleton with feeders out like normal. Instead they are ballonish.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

How is your surface skimming?
Not sure there's anything wrong with the acans, but could they have sand or detritus on them that they're trying to remove by changing shape/puffiness?

 

[hexcolor reef]

How is your surface skimming?
Not sure there's anything wrong with the acans, but could they have sand or detritus on them that they're trying to remove by changing shape/puffiness?

I turned skimmers off, it dropped my nutrients to much. No sand in my tank, I have gravel in the back away from Acans, bare bottom in front of tank. Not to sure about detritus as I do give the corals and rocks a good dust off once a day.

I think the coral are use to being fed daily. When I feed them they look normal during lights out but when I don’t feed they ballon up at lights out. The surface suds is what’s starting to throw me. I just changed filter socks out

One of my acans polyps started dying off so I called it a lost and removed it from the tank. Not sure what sparked that.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I turned skimmers off, it dropped my nutrients to much. No sand in my tank, I have gravel in the back away from Acans, bare bottom in front of tank. Not to sure about detritus as I do give the corals and rocks a good dust off once a day.

I think the coral are use to being fed daily. When I feed them they look normal during lights out but when I don’t feed they ballon up at lights out. The surface suds is what’s starting to throw me. I just changed filter socks out

One of my acans polyps started dying off so I called it a lost and removed it from the tank. Not sure what sparked that.

Surface skimming is done by the overflow... I'm not talking about a regular skimmer.

 

[hexcolor reef]

Surface skimming is done by the overflow... I'm not talking about a regular skimmer.

I just looked up overflow agitation and came across a thread here on R2R. It mentioned moving power heads around to break the water surface more. I’ll give it a try. I just added the vortex so I may not have it angled properly

Im still not sure if the Acans ballooning is normal or not. Have you ever seen this happen? Im thinking it’s high lipids / organics

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

its called protein foam, it collects on the surface because you turned off your skimmer so the skimmer is not pulling any organics out, and it also indicates low flow.

Turn your skimmer back on and have good flow in your tank to move more water into the protein skimmer. Or get a big spoon or a ladle and scoop it out.

 

[hexcolor reef]

its called protein foam, it collects on the surface because you turned off your skimmer so the skimmer is not pulling any organics out, and it also indicates low flow.

Turn your skimmer back on and have good flow in your tank to move more water into the protein skimmer. Or get a big spoon or a ladle and scoop it out.

it was adding another power head, I added a hygger low profile wave maker and problem solved

 

[Keko21]

it was adding another power head, I added a hygger low profile wave maker and problem solved

Good to know. I am actually getting some foam in my 5 gal deskmate which started showing up today. I have a small 396 GPH wave maker coming in tomorrow so hopefully that helps out. No skimmer and I really don't want to add one since nutrients are pretty low at the moment (NO3: 5-8ppm, PO4: .03ppm , pH: 8.3)

Additionally, the water is very cloudy right now- I am assuming it's a bacteria bloom and have the return pointed up for surface agitation and aeration, and running activated carbon- inhabitants are fine and not breathing heavy but it is VERY murky. Hoping more flow might help out here as well.

Thoughts?