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starry night - bubbles won't break at surface

Cor

Cor

Member
Joined
3 Nov 2015
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389
Location
The Netherlands
In the morning the surface is nice and clean. The soon the CO2 starts it's widely spread by a external pump into the aquarium, but the tiny bubbles won't break at the surface. So it looks like a stay night :sour: During the night the bubbles disappear.
What can I do about this? Is it harmful for the fish?

(co2 pressurised - 120 bpm - glass diffuser )

IMG_20160302_134558_zpstde6qa14.jpg
 
Do you have any surface film? I only see this in my tank when the skimmer has not been running and some film has built up on the surface which interferes with gas exchange.
 
"Evening,

Adopting a Skimmer or other artfact is covering the problem and not solving it.

You´re doing a wrong or bad injection of the Co2 into the tank and that´s why you have that issue.

You better explain in detail how you´re doing it and with photos much better for us to make a good.

Also the rates of injection.
 
As i said in a previous post:

"Morning,
The less bubbles you see the more is being dissolved in the water. The more bubbles you see the more is being wasted...

That´s why an excelent difuser (ADA or DOaqua!) is the best solution. Or a reactor of course.

The less quality of the material the hard will be to get a proper and effective dissolution.

As good hardware costs a lot of money, you´ll find people trying to get a good dissolution of Co2 by incrementing the flow of the filter, pointing the Outflow in the direction of the Difuser.

Ok, they will have dissolution and drop cheker pointing good in those 30 PPM or more, but with a lot of waste of co2 of course.
And in the end get viscous water cause of those amounts of gas being realease to te surface.

Compliments"
 
Paulo Soares said:
"Evening,

Adopting a Skimmer or other artfact is covering the problem and not solving it.

You´re doing a wrong or bad injection of the Co2 into the tank and that´s why you have that issue.

You better explain in detail how you´re doing it and with photos much better for us to make a good.

Also the rates of injection.
Click to expand...

Hello,
I have pressurised CO2 with a glass ADA diffuser - bubble rate prox 120 a minute (tank is 120 liters)
Dropcheckers are lime-green and the fish are doing fine.
Have a slight skimmerfilm on top

CO2 goes up and a part is absorbed by internal flow-pump and then circulated through the tank.
I have a internal filter(juwel) so a inline diffuser or reactor is unfortunately no option for me :(

cheers

IMG_20160302_165605--_zpsmio6giza.jpg
 
Hello John

Yes the filter flow. He´s using a pump to suck and spread the bubbles.
 
I've had surface film even with strong flow via a spraybar, (discounting the break up of the plants themselves and animal food/waste) it was worse when dechlorinator was added that contained aloe. If any frying (cooking variety) is done in the house and the tank is in the kitchen and is open top then any aerosolised fats that can land on the surface of the tank will add to any film.

I saw all these things when I changed over from using a Lilly outlet and air to control CO₂ content (by blowing off excess CO₂) to fitting a spraybar and having strong surface flow, the removal of the air during the light cycle caused build up of film that even spraybar jets interacting with the surface wouldn't shift. A surface skimmer sorted the surface film out rather than resorting to putting the air back on an upping CO₂. The reason the air worked to keep the surface clear is by fractionation causing any surface film to clump together and sink away from the surface and to suspend it in the water column to then be carried away by the filter or sink to the bottom.

If your surface is free from film then any excess CO₂ will gas off immediately and not be trapped in the tank, if the water is really clear then you may see CO₂ sparkle on the surface when it leaves like it does in a glass of lemonade. If CO₂ has difficulty in getting out during the light cycle then O₂ will have the same difficulty in the other direction, this depletes the tank of O₂ if animals are present. When the lights go off and the plants uptake O₂ they will be competing with the animals. If the plants get enough O₂ overnight they will be happy when the CO₂ comes back on in the next injection phase, the animals in the tank might not like it so much as the plants had a good feed and the oxygen is even more depleted. Consequence of this is you end up dialling back the CO₂ when you see the animals struggling, the plants won't be happy with this so they may struggle more and slowly break down adding to the surface film.

You need to break that surface film up any way you can, surface skimmer is better as it degasses CO₂ less than an airstone running 24/7.
 
Thank you all for the responses

The pump wasn't a good idea after all, I only spread the bubbles through the tank instead of breaking them.
So I've removed the pump and within the hour the tiny surface bubbles were all gone... Next thing is to buy a electric skimmer to get rid of the small oil like layer on top.

So, this whole situation makes me thinking of a possible solution;
I don't have a external filter to integrate a inline diffuser. But maybe it's possible to connect a little submerged pump onto a CO2 reactor?
For example see the pic: will this work?

reactor2_zpsrggb4aky.jpg
 
Cor said:
Thank you all for the responses

The pump wasn't a good idea after all, I only spread the bubbles through the tank instead of breaking them.
So I've removed the pump and within the hour the tiny surface bubbles were all gone... Next thing is to buy a electric skimmer to get rid of the small oil like layer on top.

So, this whole situation makes me thinking of a possible solution;
I don't have a external filter to integrate a inline diffuser. But maybe it's possible to connect a little submerged pump onto a CO2 reactor?
For example see the pic: will this work?

reactor2_zpsrggb4aky.jpg
Click to expand...
yes this will work as long as you use the correct size power head for the reactor

when I had surface film i added more fertz and it went away
 
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Cor said:
Thank you all for the responses

The pump wasn't a good idea after all, I only spread the bubbles through the tank instead of breaking them.
So I've removed the pump and within the hour the tiny surface bubbles were all gone... Next thing is to buy a electric skimmer to get rid of the small oil like layer on top.

So, this whole situation makes me thinking of a possible solution;
I don't have a external filter to integrate a inline diffuser. But maybe it's possible to connect a little submerged pump onto a CO2 reactor?
For example see the pic: will this work?

reactor2_zpsrggb4aky.jpg
Click to expand...
It seems that you got the pump on the outlet, it should be on the other one, the one you say is the outlet is actually the inlet.
 
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