Film on waters surface?

He is right as always surface agitation

In the sump you can plumb from the return. I actially added a pump in the return area with a hose going to the other side because the water surface was getting a film.. just enough to move the top of the water...


In the 40 I am not moving water as fast ..
 
I have the same problem in my return section in my sump. I've got a tiny little pump that I'll try to keep the surface agitated with.
 
It may also have to do with the direction of the flow. If you have an overflow, make sure you are not creating circular flow in a corner or something. My tank did that for a while even with pretty aggressive survace agitation. So, I repositioned the flow across the surface and the problem went away. A wide flow pattern vs. a small stream will also help eliminate scum/film buildup across the surface.

Surface scum/film will cause less oxygen in the water. Maybe not to a critical level, but it will be somewhat reduced.
 
It could even be due to the way the baffles are installed in the sump. If the final baffle is an "under" baffle (water flows under it), the top surface will almost be stagant.

A great tip from Ramin at Exotic Aquatics: Take a sheet of printer paper, and lay it on the filmy spot. Peel it off and all the crud sticks to it. Printer paper is always on hand since we all have a printer on our computer, and it is pretty darn cheap per sheet of paper. Just use one sheet after another until all the film has been blotted off.

And FYI, if you happen to spill some purple PVC primer into your system, it blots that off as well. :roll:
 
:shock:
I'd figure that if you did that, and it was runing with livestock, you'd have a lot of croaked critters!

Mine is a under-flow baffle. I'll try that paper trick, then put in that little pump to stir stuff up some.
 
@Darby wrote:
:shock: I'd figure that if you did that said:
The purple primer spilled into the sump full of water when I was connecting new plumbing underneath. Interestingly, it did not mix but floated on the surface like a Rorschach test.

http://www.stupidstuff.org/main/rorschach.htm
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. It was indeed the baffles. :oops: They didnt appear to be clogged. But were just enough at the top to create an under flow. I cleaned each one and in about 20 minutes all is back to normal. Did a 30 gal water change just to make sure thou. Thanks again for all the feed back. Jesse
 
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