White Chalky/Air Bubble film on Surface. Protein film? Minerals? Tiny single cell algae?

rsmbudgetbuild2024

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Hi All,

Posting this here I have a RSM130 and everything on it is all doing well touch wood. All happy inhabitants good parameters and I am in control of my parameters. I am right around the 2-3 week mark from initial startup.

Have one thing that’s more of a nuisance it’s this chalky white film on the surface of the tank. I’ve read through a bunch of threads stating it’s a protein film. I’ve tried the temporary fix with paper towel but now after 20 mins of paper toweling and my third attempt with the paper towel and burned through a whole roll, it makes no change if anything it makes it worse by leaving behind fiber strands that look like little hairs at the surface.

IMG_3674.jpeg


It leads me to believe it’s a combination of air bubbles and minerals (potentially calcium carbonate , it is mostly very white in color.) The air bubbles are a second part of the problem I believe they could also be reflecting light to make me believe there’s something white at the surface as well.

IMG_3671.jpeg


The air bubbles are coming in a variety of forms. Some clearly will come from a jet stream on one or both of my return pumps. These are larger bubbles which are easily detectable. I don’t find them to be super problematic as they are not constant or that frequent and provide a bit of excitement for the fish when they come ( blue cleaner wrasse loves riding the jet stream coming out of the returns all day long and my clown pair are hosting that corner during evening).

But a different type of bubbles in the form of escaping gas also appear to come in a much more microscopic form from my dry rock.. and in the millions. It’s hard to capture a photo but if you look close at the border of the rock you can see as the gas is escaping from the dry rock at a constant and large rate:
IMG_3675.jpeg


A third type will also come from a protein skimmer I’m told, like the one I have, this brand spanking new Tunze 9001 DOC Skimmer. This is more so an anecdotal type of bubble and I have yet to prove my unit is releasing bubbles into my tank. The unit is about half inch above the surface of the water producing a full cup every 2-3 days and the skimmate is slightly off colored. I have never seen it much darker than the off color that it is. What I will say though is that the sump chamber holding the Tunze has a crystal clear surface which is completely clear of any surface film of any kind:

IMG_3679.jpeg



My levels are largely in check. I never ammonia spiked, touch wood. Always read a clear yellow zero. My nitrate is reading 0. I did have issue with nitrite getting as high as 2ppm but I’ve reined it in to 0.5ppm with a large w/c last week and today I’ll be doing another one. Calcium is 350ppm and climbing with dosing until 420-430ppm which I should reach by end of next week. Ph at 8.2-8.3 kh 9-10dKH while I dial in my calcium and should stabilize to 9dKH. Temp at 78F.

Happy and healthy coral LPS and SPS (you can see the new growth of SPS tips on my birds nest + acro in the pics) and my calcium is not even at where it needs to be yet. LPS corals all extend nicely and are growing new heads.

These bubbles and gas escaping from rocks is really consuming more of my attention than I’d like. I’ve tried a few different things like repositioning the return pumps. Here’s a picture of the pumps aimed at the surface for reference. The might clear a small path of clear water in the film layer but it makes no difference with them aimed at or away from the surface , the film or whatever it truly is remains.

IMG_3682.jpeg



I am putting a lot of faith into a UV sterilizer. I have had good success with one in the past for clearing the water. I will hopefully order a submersible one this evening and will be submersing it in the sump chamber with the tunze. If anyone has any other recommendations on reducing this up to completely eliminating it , I am very interested to find out and am all ears. Thanks again! IMG_3682.jpeg
 
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Jekyl

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Weird that it's not being removed with a sump
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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What was weird to me was that the paper towel had very little effect on it, if any at all. I’ve used paper towel on surface film on other tank before and have clearly visualized the improvement. Whatever this is, is different.
 

Jekyl

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What was weird to me was that the paper towel had very little effect on it, if any at all. I’ve used paper towel on surface film on other tank before and have clearly visualized the improvement. Whatever this is, is different.
A HoB filter with surface skimmer will clear it up.
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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A HoB filter with surface skimmer will clear it up.
Thanks. The UV sterilizer I’m looking at has a pump on it. It is something that will fit in this sump. It will increase the flow I imagine by a noticeable amount but a similar upgrade to the dual-returns replacement with a single pump is already doing the same.

thanks for tip regardless I’ll look into that.
 

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Thanks. The UV sterilizer I’m looking at has a pump on it. It is something that will fit in this sump. It will increase the flow I imagine by a noticeable amount but a similar upgrade to the dual-returns replacement with a single pump is already doing the same.

thanks for tip regardless I’ll look into that.
Unless you have something to pull surface water the UV might not even help
 

Nerdist Aquarist

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I'm not familiar with the design of that aquarium, but it sounds like you probably have a bit too much total water in it. You need to have the water level in the back chamber lower than the level in the display area. This will allow the scum floating on the water to "fall over" into the back chamber filtration areas.

Bubbles are typical to form on new sand/rocks, sometimes to the point where it almost looks like when water is about to boil. This is just oxygen being released by photosynthetic organisms growing. They will phase out after some days.
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I agree with Nerdist about making sure the surface is going over the overflow.

The material is likely organics of various sorts and dust that settles on top of it. Minerals such as calcium carbonate, once wet, will not adsorb to an air water interface unless they are so coated with organics that they become hydrophobic.
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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I'm not familiar with the design of that aquarium, but it sounds like you probably have a bit too much total water in it. You need to have the water level in the back chamber lower than the level in the display area. This will allow the scum floating on the water to "fall over" into the back chamber filtration areas.

Bubbles are typical to form on new sand/rocks, sometimes to the point where it almost looks like when water is about to boil. This is just oxygen being released by photosynthetic organisms growing. They will phase out after some days.

Would you recommend a Carbon/GFO reactor?

I found a hang on back internal media reactor made for all in one style tanks . Would it be worth it to run a carbon/gfo reactor here to slow algae growth and any associated bubbles from that+photosynthesis process?




Also found this surface skimmer to help pull stuff from the surface:
IMG_3689.jpeg



In regards to the display tank water level being higher than the rear chamber. I believe that is the case here. I’ve tried searching for reference pictures and other tanks are setup like mine. There is a modification to this intake that I stumbled across before that may also help with surface skimming. Here’s what my intake currently looks like:
IMG_3691.jpeg
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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I agree with Nerdist about making sure the surface is going over the overflow.

The material is likely organics of various sorts and dust that settles on top of it. Minerals such as calcium carbonate, once wet, will not adsorb to an air water interface unless they are so coated with organics that they become hydrophobic.
I have the in tank media basket with Tunze 9001 attached. It seems to be configured exactly like this photo and I can see water getting pulled into the in tank media column because there is hair algae growing off the intake and I can see the direction it’s moving in.

IMG_3692.jpeg
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I'm not familiar with the exact devices you are using, but if the water level were lower so that the top of the water was at the intake (presumably that is the part just above your arrow with the vertical plastic separators), and not above it, would it still work? That way the surface would be skimmed as water went into the device.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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Silt from unrinsed New use sand can be part of the complex. Simply ignore this and don't react to it and the system will floc it out over time if that's the case. Few people pre rinse their sand out of learned fear of bacterial loss
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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Silt from unrinsed New use sand can be part of the complex. Simply ignore this and don't react to it and the system will floc it out over time if that's the case. Few people pre rinse their sand out of learned fear of bacterial loss
Thanks. I am using arag alive crushed Hawaii black sand. It said not to rinse it as it had beneficial bacteria and minerals in it apparently.

I think you’re right, as I’m starting to see an improvement to the surface film. It takes up about half of my surface area now compared to when I started the post. I still don’t think the aim/position of the return jets being aimed towards or away from the surface makes a difference as I think a lot of this film is caused by the off-gassing of nitrogen/oxygen gas from the dry rock transforming into live. I think the bubbles and any single cell algae/brown-green algae on rocks is a bigger concern.

I am definitely considering that mini hang in rear chamber carbon/gfo reactor I posted earlier. I wish there were more threads from people who tried it around. I found only one dedicated thread about it on this forum since 2014 about someone wanting to try it on a Red Sea tank. Which has generally positive review but not many posts on it.

It’s the Aquamaxx Carbon/GFO/Biopellet reactor for AIO tanks it attaches to the glass with suction cups.

There’s generally positive reviews about it on this forum but I just wish there was better instruction regarding setup/ideal media setup in chamber etc but I’m sure if I do go ahead and order it the instructions would include all of that.
 
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brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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none of the things about gas above are what's happening

best advice:

ignore the chalky stuff until it naturally flocs and gets bound and or removed

then, when you get uglies on the rocks by starting with dry rock/known to guarantee uglies/don't respond by altering any chemistry. remove the rocks, set on the counter, wipe off the invasion or scrape it off if its an algae, and set it back

when the rock is full of coralline or corals you'll get to work less, it's the 3 year price for opting for a dry rock start. if you do what the masses do, you'll get dinos. if you want to see how poorly the masses can help you when you get dinos, pick any dinos control thread you can find and post it here and we will click through the pages to see if they're getting fixed or just turning into alternate invasion algae farms, it's that bad.

your current plan aligns you with the masses, prepare for an extended dinos battle. gotta be opposite of the masses, to get opposite outcomes from dry rock starts.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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do not use biopellets at all is the recommend

study this thread: a guy who matured a dry rock system with no chemistry chasing, all physical:



study that and copy it for the win

it involved no parameter chasing at all, no gfo, no pellets, no focus on filtration.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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acropora at two weeks total time elapse from start + bright lights and up high in the scape is a true challenge. it's kept some color on it there's still a good chance it can work but this is a rare start indeed. those corals usually bleach out if the feed and nutrients aren't carefully planned. stripping the nutrients would be opposite of my approach for that tank, which is why I'm thinking gfo and pellets should never be ran on it. I'll never need those two items in reefing that's for sure.
 
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rsmbudgetbuild2024

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do not use biopellets at all is the recommend

study this thread: a guy who matured a dry rock system with no chemistry chasing, all physical:



study that and copy it for the win

it involved no parameter chasing at all, no gfo, no pellets, no focus on filtration.

Realizing your tank may never look as clear and clean as day 7 again:
IMG_3710.png


Vs. Now:

IMG_3712.png



In all honesty I am not opposed to yanking dry rock out of the tank and scrubbing it down with a wire brush regularly or something along those lines to make it look nice and purdy like the day 1 photo.

And my dirty little secret, it’s been over 2 weeks and I have yet to siphon rocks properly during a w/c (usually just stir them up a bit). My Amazon searches right now look like “30 inch aquarium siphon with thumb pump” I am trying to find the ideal unit to work around all the rock work in the back.

I wish I could get my hands on some live rock :/ I definitely would’ve started with that. I went to my LFS after years not running a tank turns out they no longer sell actual live rock anymore just painted purple liferock and white dry rock.

Gonna stop thinking about the reactor then in that case. You’re right again, throwing all the money in the world at a tank doesn’t necessarily mean it will do well.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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hey that's a really clean scape. for sure it's accessible, most people don't think to guide a reef that way but in your case that's such a clean install you can just lift out a rock as needed and make it comply outside the reef then set it back

that euphyllia is healthy and very large for such a new tank, it's happy for sure. the animals are happy that's a nice setup
 
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