# Foamy Water?



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

I just finished setting up my first Terrarium. in a 12x12x18 exo terra i got for 15 at petco. everything lookds perfect. you cant see anything unnatural in the tank. 3.5 inches of leca and 3 inches of water. TONS of sphagnum on top of that( on top of the screen really). then my substrate...4 coco, 2 peat, 2 sphagnum, 2 fir bark, 1 crushed slate(more drainage). all of my cuttings are looking great so far and so is the viv. minus the foamy water...i can barely see my salvinia natans! is this normal? will it go away? ive done pretty much everything i can with a reef tank and know a bit about proteins. the foam doesnt smell bad but could it just be proteins that have bilt upo becuase there isnt enough beneficial bacteria in the leca yet or what?


----------



## Julio (Oct 8, 2007)

Threason why the water would foam up is because there are too many nutrients in the water, if you add some java moss to the water it will absorb it in a short time.


----------



## sports_doc (Nov 15, 2004)

I agree it likely will go away in time, plants and more plants...

it isnt a 'foam' of green slim/air bubble right, just a froth on the waters surface?

Personally I dont use Sphagnum in tanks (other than some live sphagnum in bog sections), IME it rots in time...

S


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

thanks shawn, IME? yeah just a froth...ive got some small lily pad type of thinbgs in the water. which are a kind of fern im told...salvinia natans. im guessing they will take care of it. 

It rots over time!? i was told that it doesnt rot! the tank looks great and all but i certainly want to being this right and not have to gut it a few years from now. i already gutted it once becuase i didnt have a think enough layer of leca. is it direct water contact that makes it rot or just being moist for a long period of time? what does the rotting of the sphagnum do to the tank?

Nate


----------



## Marty71 (Nov 9, 2006)

Sokretys said:


> thanks shawn, IME?


In My Experience. Well not mine, Shawn's in this case....


----------



## dom (Sep 23, 2007)

i had this problem for a little bit until more alge grew on my log and slowed down the water flow were it meets the water and crashes into the rocks.. it will go away in time


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

Thanks Everyone. Its good to hear that this is more or less common. Could I some live sphagnum and put that in the crevices of where the waterfall meets the water to dampen the blow to the water. 

Nate


----------



## dom (Sep 23, 2007)

try it out the spagnhum moss might rot tho sitting in the water im not sure tho i only have it mixed in with my subsrate. i put some leaf litter in mine and kind made the leaves around the area of the water meeting wood


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

Thanks again. ive heard from a few dif solid sources that sphagnum moss will rot over time. im using it as a bottom layer between my substrate and my leca. im also using it for filling in the gaps in the woodworking. in other words...i thought it was fine to have in water and that it wouldnt rot. therefore...i have a lot of it in the water...what should i be using instead?

back to the foamy water...haha, well after a few days its still foamy. im seeing many micro bubbles in the water rising to the surface(obv), therefore im have an educated guess that it is a combinations of dissolved organics such as proteins with some other crap. 

how often should i be doing water changes? testing it and doing it as often as fresh water aquariums? can i ad bio spira, enzyme, or cycle to the water to add some beneficial bacterial to speed up the process?

Happy Holidays everyone
-Nate
e


----------



## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

I believe you are right about the foam being from dissolved organic matter and proteins or even some minerals in addition to this that it's picking up. I almost always get it with new water falls. My own protocol is to do one or two water changes until the foaming stops, but this may not even be necessary. 

As far as sphagnum "rotting," any organic substrate is going to break down after a while. (This is just part of the process of recycling nutrients, and is not undesirable.) I find that the long brown sphagnum lasts longer than many other substrates, and will occasionally come alive on wet backgrounds such as cork bark and tree fern panels, or on seed beds. It has decidedly good qualities in helping to prevent stem rot in living plants. I've had many, many (too many) years of experience using it for various purposes such as germinating difficult seeds, (where it prevents stem rot) rooting cuttings that have convinced me of it's usefulness. I have compared it with many other methods over the years. 

In talking of sphagnum, there is a difference between the long, light brown sphagnum, and the dark brown "sphagnum peat moss" that is used in outdoor gardens. It is the former that has the "antibiotic-" come-alive qualities. I personally do not like using the latter straight in vivariums, as it tends to get too soggy unless mixed with other substrates.


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

Nice. Any idea with the addition of beneficial bacteria?

N


----------



## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

I've added the nitrifying bacteria to a few of my vivariums and not to others, and haven't noticed that this affects the initial foaming one way or another. It certainly doesn't seem to hurt anything to add the beneficial bacteria, and logically, one would think they might also be of benefit for competing with other less desirable organisms, colonizing the waterways and tubing more rapidly for some added filtration. 

The last tank I set up, 55 g. with a pool and false bottom and a water fall running over some flat, shale-like limestone rock I got from Nevada, never foamed at all, even in the very beginning, but most others where I use an internal circulating pump, no matter what the base of the falls or drip walls have been, have shown initial foaming. (Lava rock, cork bark, tree fern panel, sealed "Winterstone," driftwood, petrified wood, CocoTek, to name a few.) I even got a little of it when I first set up the 180 gallon paludarium with a large external canister filter with a return over a fern tree panel drip wall into the aquarium section. I had not added the nitrifying bacteria to the latest 55 g. tank. 

From past posts on this subject, the experience of foaming seems pretty universal, so individual water quality, while it may contribute, is not the major factor. People using RO have reported it. My own well water from a deep aquifer was just completely tested by the State this summer, and has very low organic content, so the foaming is probably from what is picked up after it's introduced to the tank.


----------



## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

My protocol for treating foaming water is the same treatment I use for most other "problems" that crop up in new vivs. Ignore it and it goes away.

Beneficial bacteria are pretty much ubiquitous so there is a 99.999999% chance you've already introduced everything you need unless you have autoclaved everything, including frogs, plants, and insects, before adding them to the viv. Unlike with fish aquaria, there is no need to build up a mature nutrient cycle before adding the animals. The microbes and resulting cycle will develop just fine long before nutrients build up to toxic levels without our help.... provided, of course, that you don't overcrowd the frogs to begin with.


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

nice. i turned the flow down a few hours ago. still some foam but not as much. also fewer micro bubbles in the water column. 

Im going to do a water change once i get a reply to this...Should i be cleaning the bottom of the water body? clean it like a freshwater tank...or saltwater( where you just remove water from the surface)...?

N


----------



## AlexD (Sep 19, 2007)

LOL. Autoclaved frogs...


----------



## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

Sokretys said:


> nice. i turned the flow down a few hours ago. still some foam but not as much. also fewer micro bubbles in the water column.
> 
> Im going to do a water change once i get a reply to this...Should i be cleaning the bottom of the water body? clean it like a freshwater tank...or saltwater( where you just remove water from the surface)...?
> 
> N


I just do a partial water change--like siphon off about 3/4 and replace. But as bbrock pointed out, you can also just ignore it until it goes away. This may just take a little longer to get rid of the foam. I'm not sure the initial water changes are more beneficial to establishing the biological recycling of the tank than just ignoring the foam until it goes away by itself. It certainly wouldn't advance anything to do a complete fresh water tank cleaning. You'd just be back to ground zero.


----------



## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

slaytonp said:


> I just do a partial water change--like siphon off about 3/4 and replace. But as bbrock pointed out, you can also just ignore it until it goes away. This may just take a little longer to get rid of the foam. I'm not sure the initial water changes are more beneficial to establishing the biological recycling of the tank than just ignoring the foam until it goes away by itself. It certainly wouldn't advance anything to do a complete fresh water tank cleaning. You'd just be back to ground zero.


I think whether you do partial changes or ignore it, the end result in biological balance will be the same. You likely will hit the mythical "balance" slightly quicker with water changes because you most likely would be removing more nutrients from the viv than are added with the new water. This means that the microbial population doesn't have to grow quite as large before there are enough living cells to lock up all of the excess nutrients. My guess is that you might be able to shave a week, maybe two, off of the process with water changes. One way or the other, the microbial community in the viv will adjust to deal with the nutrient load. 

As a side note, adding some sugar to the system would lock up those proteins in a hurry. The sugar fuels the microbial growth into overdrive so it consumes any available nitrogen at a rapid rate. Nitrogen is the key element in an amino acid or protein which is what causes the foamy film. But I don't recommend adding sugar because it would likely result in a massive growth of fungus.


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

Cool. thanks everyone. i did a 50 percent water change last night. which i know is a bit more than i should have but i was getting out a bunch of the crud left in the water from the initial construction. as of now there are still bubbles. but i would call it water with pea sized bubbles ontop. i no longer have foamy water! haha, thanks again.


----------



## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Even a 100% water change isn't going to hurt anything. Unless I missed it, I didn't see any mention of fish or tads living in the water portion of the viv. The only reason water changes are done in small percentages is to prevent sudden, and drastic, changes in water chemistry that will shock fish and other aquatic inhabitants. Without aquatic inhabitants to worry about, you are pretty much free to change as much or as little of the water as you like. The frogs won't care.


----------



## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

I second Brent's thoughts on this. Actually, I do the partial water changes in paludariums where I have fish, for exactly the reasons he mentioned, and more extensive water changes in those that have no fish, as you mentioned, just to get rid of some of the crud. By the way, I've had fish in two of the frog paludariums, one for 10 years and have NEVER done a complete water change or take down. Prior to this, my luck with tropical fish in a separate tank has never been as good. Believe it or not, I still have a few of the original tetras in the old tank. So something is going right with this protocol.


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

i appreciate all your help in getting rid of the foamy water. but the majority of a tropical fish tanks filtration is in the water body...not just the filter. so by removing 100 percent of the water in a fish tank you are removing all of the nitrifying bacteria and then you have an amonia spike afterwards which leads to dead fish. freshwater fish deal with changes in water chemistry everyday. but they never experience amonia in the wild. the ammonia burns their gills and then the ammonia is converted into nitrites. the nitries make the gills work less efficiently making the fish more stressed and breathing harder etc etc. fish 

i did a partial water change so that some beneficial bacteria would stay behind to populate the new water. id be removing more proteins by a full water change. but i wouldnt be leaving any bacteria to take care of the next round of proteins..cuz im assuming there will be much more to come.


----------



## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Sokretys said:


> i appreciate all your help in getting rid of the foamy water. but the majority of a tropical fish tanks filtration is in the water body...not just the filter. so by removing 100 percent of the water in a fish tank you are removing all of the nitrifying bacteria and then you have an amonia spike afterwards which leads to dead fish. freshwater fish deal with changes in water chemistry everyday. but they never experience amonia in the wild. the ammonia burns their gills and then the ammonia is converted into nitrites. the nitries make the gills work less efficiently making the fish more stressed and breathing harder etc etc. fish
> 
> i did a partial water change so that some beneficial bacteria would stay behind to populate the new water. id be removing more proteins by a full water change. but i wouldnt be leaving any bacteria to take care of the next round of proteins..cuz im assuming there will be much more to come.


But there is a huge difference between vivaria and aquaria which is why the methods don't always translate well. Mainly, those same bacteria that process nitrogenous waste are present throughout the substrate profile of the vivarium and the plants themselves also compete for uptake of ammonia and nitrate. So your water feature only makes up a very tiny percentage of the nitrogen processing "machine" of your vivarium. In addition, the frogs are not emersed in their own waste and forced to breath it the way fish do. So frogs only absorbed nitrogenous toxins through contact with the substrate surface. I guarantee that draining all of the water will not have a significant effect on the nitrogen processing capacity of the vivarium other than the fact it will remove nutrients from the system so the microbial population never gets as high.

Also, even in an aquarium, the bulk of the bacteria, and thus nitrogen cycling capacity, is in the substrate rather than in the water column. So draining the water doesn't really remove a significat number of the microbes. What actually happens is that you drain off a lot of the dissolved nitrogen that is in the water column. This sudden drop in nutrients starves the microbes living in the substrate which causes a population crash. When those microbes die, the nitrogen contained in their cells is released into the water column which is why you see a spike in ammonia and subsequent nitrogenous compounds. It's not an issue in vivaria. Terrestrial vivaria are WAY more efficient at cycling nitrogen waste than aquatic systems so you have a lot of wiggle room to work with here.

edit: Perhaps I should add that what you are dealing with here is the establisment of "balance", which is different than maintaining a balance. Here you have a microbial population that has not grown enough to handle the total nutrient load of the system. That's why you are seeing the foaming water because all those organics are forming complex molecules and protein chains. Eventually the microbial population will grow enough that they are consuming the organics as quickly as they become available (resulting in no more foam). But by removing water, and thus nutrients, you are lowering the microbial population treshold needed to create this "balance". The beauty is that it is that you can't fail. No matter how much, or how little, of the nutrients you remove, the microbes will eventually come into equilibrium with nutrient availability and end the foamy water problem.


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

i think ur just making that microbial thing up...haha. yes yes?


----------



## Minois (Dec 28, 2007)

Sokretys said:


> i think ur just making that microbial thing up...haha. yes yes?


That would actually be hilarious as everyone who was trying to sound smart by using this word and that word would be exposed as weirdos who want to feel smart but aren't. But I am sure everyone knows what they are talking about... Supposedly


----------



## flyangler18 (Oct 26, 2007)

> i think ur just making that microbial thing up...haha. yes yes?


Hardly. Brent knows what he is talking about.


----------



## slaytonp (Nov 14, 2004)

The word "microbe" comes from the Latin and Greek word roots "micr or mikro" meaning small or minute, and "bios" which means life. Bacteria are microbes. (But not all microbes are bacteria.) Microbiology is the study of microscopic life. It's not a particularly esoteric, show-off word at all. (Although "esoteric" is.)


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

haha ive taken college bio so im familiar with the term. i just didnt make the connections that brent had. but cummon...brent? ...anyone seen the big lebowski?


----------



## yours (Nov 11, 2007)

I noticed some foaming/froth in my exo terra medium waterfall.........think it's caused by the motion of the water running? It's on a couple of levels...in just a few areas of the surface..........It's been running for almost a month, i will be moving red eyes in within two weeks.....I have not changed the water yet...i use aquatize and biotize to "condition" it however.....

Thought I'd comment/ask in this appropriate thread....


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

try turning your pump down a notch. that helped me out a bit.


----------



## yours (Nov 11, 2007)

It's not going to be a problem for the frogs is it?


----------



## MonopolyBag (Jun 3, 2007)

I already told Sokretys in person, but the foam does go away, takes a while in new vivs, but mine did. I agree it is nutrients in water


----------



## Sokretys (Dec 16, 2007)

yeah...i send sports doc a pic of my viv.

his response...haha, interesting foam you have..try turning your pump down. hahaha

im a nubb. what can i say. haha.


----------

