• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Oily film between red root floaters!

DD1880

Member
Joined
12 Jul 2019
Messages
156
Location
Us
I have these red root floaters and like them. Wish the roots were red and maybe the tops a lil but not yet. I need to raise the light but every time I do I get algae on the glass and have some hair algae on my java fern and Anubis now! They stayed to flower despite what I thought was impossible unless it had high light and lots of ferts or being outside! I want to keep them but this oily film in between them is really nasty looking and just makes the tank look dirty which it’s not cause I clean it once a week and almost daily scrub the glass if there’s any algae! Any way to get rid of this film without causing to much surface agitation that would get the tops of the floaters wet and ruin them? Thanks for any help cause I’m almost ready to just trash them cause it does not look nice!
 

Attachments

  • 5C794812-76A8-4E11-8573-FC5EBC2D6236.jpeg
    5C794812-76A8-4E11-8573-FC5EBC2D6236.jpeg
    1.5 MB · Views: 230
  • A911C4A2-DD97-4194-96AE-E8DA3A4CAD66.jpeg
    A911C4A2-DD97-4194-96AE-E8DA3A4CAD66.jpeg
    2.7 MB · Views: 196
It's something pretty common and it obviously likes to accumulate in the stagnant places between the leaves of floating plants. It comes and it goes on its own devices. What the true cause is remains a a bit of mystery.. It's a bacterial/proteine biofilm, the source it comes from could be the plants for what ever reason extreting excess sugars and oils or it could be something bacterial. I don't believe it ever was scientificaly investigated to come to a conclusion.

As said it comes and goes and nobody realy knows why or what the trigger is. In very few cases it can be caused by the filter since in some cases people reported improvement after thoroughly cleaning it out. But in my personal experience i once had it to and rather long periode, did a rigorous filter clean, saw improvement for a few days and than i was back to square one again. And is was in the tank that has 2 skimmers installed one left one right, not even skimming did take it all off.. And than i just waited it out, as usual it went away after a while and it yet didn't reapear for over a year.. Obviously in this case it wasn't realy the filter. It could be once it develops the filter also plays a role in it during this periode, since it obviously is in the water and ends up in the filter too. But the filter likely ian't the root cause.

Some aqauriums never develop it, other do regularly.. Best educated guess also quoting experiences from others, the most likely culprit are the plants.. Yet i'm not sure there is any evidence for it. :)
 
As Zozo said a good filter clean can get rid of it for a while, at least that’s what I’ve found. Most folks increase surface flow so it gets broken up and sucked into the filter. Others lay kitchen towel on the surface of the water to temporarily remove it. Not sure what you can do having floaters though.
 
Thank you for the info! Yeah it’s pretty unsightly and annoying trying to move the floaters around to get to the water flow and break up the oil! I will do a deep filter clean as I have yet to do it! Hope it helps! Thanks
 
Back
Top