Oily film on the surface...?

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C

ChannelCat

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 29, 2008
192
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Tuscaloosa, AL
I have a tank with two oscars in it. It has an AQ110 and a marineland 125(mainly to help move water). The water stays clean and I do weekly cleanings of everything. Recently this oily substance has shown up on the surface of my water. It leaves no residue and it is almost colorless. What could it be?

Possibly something from my arm when I am cleaning the tank?

Its hardly noticeable and the fish dont seem to mind it. How can i get rid of it?
 
surface skimmer

You can get one for $15 shipped on ebay. I added on to my fluval 404, it sucked in all the film in ~30 minutes. If the intake gets clogged though, it will start sucking in some air.
 
cool, ok thanks. I thought those were for SW tanks only. Ill be ordering one tonight. Anybody got a clue what caused it? I mean, the tank has been up for a year now and this has shown up in the last month or so.
 
you're thinking of a protein skimmer, which is completely different. Surface skimmers just pull water from the surface instead of underwater.
A protein skimmer uses lots of little bubbles to remove dissolved organics from the water (or something like that)

I'm not sure what the cause is, more surface agitation seems to make it go away though. In my 29 gallon, the power filter keeps it away unless the water level is too high, because then the filter doesn't disturb the surface as much. In my 75 though, even with the canister output pointed across the surface it didn't go away.
 
Its probably your food. If your feeding a high protein, high fish content food its likely giving off some of the oils before your fish get to them. Does your food ever sit in the tank for a little while before the fish eat it?
 
uncwnells;3601029; said:
Its probably your food. If your feeding a high protein, high fish content food its likely giving off some of the oils before your fish get to them. Does your food ever sit in the tank for a little while before the fish eat it?
Click to expand...

agree, i noticed the same thing in my tank, when i switch foods it gets better or worse, and more surface agitation does make it go away. Unless it bothers you i don't believe it is a problem though, i wouldn't worry about it unless it starts getting worse.
 
FSM;3601003; said:
you're thinking of a protein skimmer, which is completely different. Surface skimmers just pull water from the surface instead of underwater.
A protein skimmer uses lots of little bubbles to remove dissolved organics from the water (or something like that)

I'm not sure what the cause is, more surface agitation seems to make it go away though. In my 29 gallon, the power filter keeps it away unless the water level is too high, because then the filter doesn't disturb the surface as much. In my 75 though, even with the canister output pointed across the surface it didn't go away.
Click to expand...

thanks for the clarification. Gotta be the food. I just wanted to make sure it was not toxic. Thanks!
 
I feed them hikari cichlid gold and they eat a ton of it. When I run out I want to go to something bigger. They eat roughly 30 pellets a day,and I have the biggest pellets our lfs carries. Whats a good food I could stock up on that would not go bad? Something bigger than hikari.
 
People are going to tell you massivore, it seems really overpriced to me though.

You can get big bags of cichlid gold (2.2 pounds I think) for around $20 on the internet
massivore is double that

edit: 22 pounds of cichlid gold is $140 on DrsF&S


you could also try http://www.kensfish.com/
or http://www.xtremeaquaticfoods.com/
they are making 9mm pellets, not sure if they're available yet though
 
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