Soapy bubbles/foam on surface????

Between an eye's blink the surface of my aquarium all of a sudden has this huge foam layer as if soap or something is contained in the aquarium. The surface of the bubbles reflected on the light shows that colorful plasma that occurs on soapy bubbles. It has been like that for around 15 minutes and there are no signs of dead fish yet, however around an hour ago fish began swiming crazy for a bit, don't know if that has anything to do, however I never remember pouring soap or some chemical to the water. Has this happened to anyone?




BTW I'm treating for ich (among other diseases, etc) and today I decided to do a complete water change and clean the tank for once and all, and remove my about to die gourami and put it in a separate container with water for the remainig of its time (I could euthanize it but where I live there isn't clover oil, and I find no other way of making it peacful, so I'll let it die naturally).

Also, because of the complete water change I know the water is white and ammonia levels must be spiking high, and the water is very cloudy. Does this have anything to do? Anyone recommend me any ammonia-clearing products? I know theylll just delay the cylce but my tank has 5 3-week old molly fries and today another 4 were born, so ammonia levels right now can be lethal.

Now is that I remember that the ich medicine pellet I deposited today didn't do any work because I forgot to remove the carbon from the filter when I re-cleaned eerything, so probably today doesn't count as an ich-rid day.
Theres this unusual amount of bubbles on the surface that originates from the air pump and when they reach the surface they keep on cluttering. Pleaseeeee help!

 

The only way to know how much ammonia is present in the aquarium is to use a liquid ammonia test & monitor the results closely. Many people recommend using Tetra Safe Start to help with ammonia issues when doing a fish in cycle. As for the bubbles I would guess they have come from the Ich medication you are using or that you did not dechlorinate the water when you refilled the tank. Did you use Prime to detox the water? I don't use Prime personally but I believe it also helps detox ammonia for 24hrs. Check with other members on that one. Best to stop using meds to treat the Ich. Just raise the temp to 84086f & do a few thorough gravel vaccuums over the next couple of weeks. Ich can't survive at high temps & the gravel vacuum will remove many of the spores that are present in the substrate.

 

thanks, sorry I didn't mention this but I actually don't use tap water, I use bottled water (not the tiny bottles btw) because where I live tap water isn't safe even if dechlorinated (had bad experiences with that recently). I hope those high temps don't kill the baby fish. Also I don't have a testing kit curently I'm in a budget (college) and can't afford it yet. The water is getting more and more milky with the moment, I'm worried and removed the bigger fish (except pleco yet) to a smaller container with clean water. I also removed the carbon (I guess it's also time to replace the carbon, I have it since feb. 15), however tomorow I'll se if I can buy a testing kit, an ammonia clearer (I know it isn't effective but for the moment I don't want my newbron fry dying all of a sudden).

I also removed a ceramic decoration with a cave and stuff but that doesn't seem to help the water keeps on getting milkier and bubbles once they began they don't seem to stop ???

I notice that when I turn off te air pump the bubble acumulation stops but anyways that doesn't mean that the chemical present in the water goes away,

 

I would start doing a few small water changes over the next couple of days & put some carbon back into the filter. The fry should be fine with the raised temps so long as you bring the temp up slowly over a couple of days. The fry are probably at more risk from the meds & the Ich than from the higher temps required to kill Ich. The white cloud is probably a bacterial bloom at a guess.

What's wrong with the tap water where you are? Have you checked to see if the tap water is treated with chlorine or chloramines? If it's treated with cloramine you need to get something that detoxes chloramines, not just chlorine & you will need to use more of it than you would to detox chlorine.

 

Yeah I used a chlorie and chloramine treatment, but tap water isn't drinkable, I began using it and 3 of my gouramies ended very sick, 2 are dead and one is very near, and there's no way I can get info of ph hardness etc, I'm better of using drinking bottled water. Well here where I live its almost 2am so this is it for me for today, I hope that soapy foam or whatever doesn't kill my fries and pleco. I'll leave the pleco cause the small container is already overcrouded with the 4 swordtails and the molly. Ill keep the temperatures up and hope that by morning all those bubbles go away and the newborn fries are alive. Meanwhile the 3 week olds can enjoy the whole tank by themselves without any bigger swordtails in their way

 

I couldn't see the pic when I posted earlier but now that I can, that's a pretty big bubble problem!! Did the bubbles start to appear soon after you added the Ich medication? If so then that is what the cause of the bubbles will be. If not then I think you need to consider the possibility of detergent somehow getting into the tank either from yourself or from another person.

It might pay to use the search feature to search the forums for threads about similar problems. I know people have had similar issues before & there might be some usefull info in those threads for you.

 

Some ICH meds will say on the label that will create a layer of foam on the water.

 

what kind of filter do you use? it may be protein skimming if the water is moving fast enought

 

I researched and its something like there is a lot of protein in the water something like that. Today I woke up and the bubbles are present but at a much lower amount, only like in corners and stuff. All fish that are in the tank are alive. I don't think it was the ich meds because I dropped it probably around 4 or 5 pm and later in the night around 11 after I got out of the shower all of a sudden there were the bubbles, and it never happened before.

Nutter, the problem without using meds is that if I only raise temperature and do water changes then it'll have to be 50% water changes, and even for a 20gal tank I think that's A LOT of water going to waste, and not worth it. And because it's bottled water, for me it's also very expensive.

BTW I'm going today to the fish store to buy some stuff like the charcoal and maybee a small net to tie around the filter entrance so it doesn't suck any of the free roaming fry. (There 2 groups, a slightly bigger one that can fend for themselves and another born yesterday I tried putting them together inside the fry net but the bigger ones tried to eat the newborns, so I let them roam, besides theire mollies so theyre pretty chubby and get big rather quickly.)
Also a testing kit, does anybody recommend me any of those water clearing tablets or something?

Oh also one more thing usually when tanks are cycling you have to limit your fish feedings, but what about fry? Arent they gonna starve to death rather quickly or stunt growth?

 

The fry won't starve. There will be plenty of microscopic food for them to eat getting around in the tank. They will also happily nibble away at tiny particles that are left over from feeding your other fish.

It is best to avoid using any chemical other than dechlorinator in any aquarium at any time but especially while you are trying to cycle the tank. Chemicals typically play havoc with the establishing bacteria colonies & you may well find yourself with worse problems than you started out with. I would not recommend using any water clarity product ever. Your filter will clear the water, you just need to have a little patience. Adding some carbon can help speed up the process.

You shouldn't need to do a 50% change each day just to clean the gravel of whitespot spores. Just enough water to give the gravel a bit of a vac every 2-3 days for a week or two should be enough. Seeing as your doing a fish in cycle without using a bacteria product like Tetra Safe Start, you really should be doing daily 50% water changes to help keep the ammonia levels under control anyway so the cleaning of the gravel shouldn't take up any more water than you already need to be changing. Just restricting the feeding isn't going to be enough to allow you to do reduced water changes.

 

What if I get that tetra safe start? Will that harm the fry?

 

I don't see why it would but I have only used Safe Start once & there were no fry in the tank so I can't say fro certain one way or the other. It would be best if you got advice from other members about that.

 

I'll keep it natural then. However changing water everyday from thr aquarium won't just delay the bioligical filtration process more? I mean after all I don't have to change the water every day for ich, just every 2 days or something. Why not keep at that? Also the heater broke, but i've managed to keep the temperature to a steady 28 celcius. Will that do any help to kill the ich or does it survive perfectly in those conditions?

 

Daily water changes are necessary during a fish in cycle to keep the ammonia levels under control. Even very low ammonia concentrations can cause long term damage to the fish.

Start a thread in the Freshwater Beginners section of the forum asking if the Tetra Safe Start is safe for use with your fry. The thread will soon get noticed there & get some responsed by members more knowledgable with it's use. If you can use the Safe Start it would help you very much. Not only will it help with the ammonia it will speed up the cycling time of the tank as well.

 

I posted some links below that you may find useful.

https://www.fishlore.com/Articles/CuringIch.htm

https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/some-meds-that-have-saved-my-fish.24033/