micro-bubbles help

[lonnie taub]

i recently added a new fish to my tank. it soon became sick & died. i lost a fish that had been in the tank x1yr. as soon as the first fish looked bad i dosed the tank with api melafix. it appears to have stopped the problem with the sick fish, but now i have a microbubble problem. I can't run my protein skimmer because it is making to many bubbles. the water returning to the sump also has a lot more bubbles in the first compartment. i have done 20% water changes 4 times without sucess. i have attempted to use multiple layers of a 50-micron filter pad without sucess. if i run the skimmer it puts a ton of bubbles throughout the tank and i'm scared if i leave it on that i will kill everything. it is a 75 gal. tank. this problem is 2 wks. in the making. please help before all is lost.

 

[natclanwy]

My guess is your skimmer needs to be broke in again since it has been off for several days. Also unless your tank water looks milky the bubbles are not small enough to cause problems with your fish, the microbubbles that cause problems with the gills of fish are smaller than you can see with your eye. Aside from making a mess with salt creep the larger bubbles are okay, for a short term solution you can put a piece on the outlet of your skimmer to catch the bubbles until your skimmer breaks in a stops releasing bubbles.
In the future you may look into setting up a hospital tank and dosing your medications there rather than your display tank, many medications have severe reactions with your other tank inhabitants or equipment.

 

[lonnie taub]

thanks for the advice about the hospital tank. i did fix the bubble problem. dont know if it was breaking in ps again or malingering melafix. again thanks.