Aaaarrrrggggghhhhh!

oogpister

Cleaned the tank with ammonia, ran the filter, no soap! The water is beautifully clear! This afternoon we add rocks.

oogpister

] Sorry if this doesn't work, I am trying to post a photo of my soap bubbles....

Here is a different veiw. They showed up when I put my NEW ROCKS in the tank. I put water in the tank, no problem, I added decorations, no problem. I put rocks in ....problem. I used dedicated new buckets to rinse the rocks. What am I doing wrong? I am SOOOO frustrated!!!!

Tommy Gun

You might want to try raising the water level until in order to limit the distance the water coming out of your filter has to fall to see if that fixes the problem. I will see if I can get a picture of it, but I have a very similar looking 'foam', for lack of a better term, that forms under my HOB filter when the water level drops.

When you say "rocks", are you referring to 'rocks' in the form of a substrate (e.g. gravel) or actual decorative type rocks? If decorative, the problem may be as simple as you using a type of rock that will dissolve in water. From what I can see though, if you are speaking of what looks like a gravel substrate, you should be ok with what you have.

You might want to take a closer look at your water source as well. I can't really remember exactly right now but I believe that the hardness and/or softness of the water will play a role in allowing bubbles to form so perhaps your water source is at one extreme or the other. IMO, that might be relatively unlikely but probably not impossible seeing as how you have addressed quite a few other probabilities already.

oogpister

okay, I will raise the water level. Yes, I was speaking of the gravel substrate when I said "rocks", sorry. I do believe the water I am using is very hard. I know that the ph level is reading 8.4. I am not sure of the hardness level, but it is household water. We have a softner system, however, we bypass it because it severly limits the flow of water because the filters keep getting clogged with debris, or some such. Just a few more questions for today...
Can I carry on (start) with my fishless cycle, even with the foam? How do I find out about the water hardness? What do I do about the water hardness? Do I need to address the elevated ph? when i find all this out will someone tell me what kind of fish will live in that water?

raised the water level and that appears to have fixed the problem. Also much quieter, duh. Anyway a little perplexing as to why the foam when the gravel is in the tank, there was no foam when it was empty, or just had the decorations in it and the water level was approximately the same. Just curious. I am grateful for your help. Once again I am hopeful of eventually having fish.

Tommy Gun

I am not a chemist or anything but I think the gist would be that the gravel probably contained some sort of material that increased the surface tension of the water to the point where the air couldn't escape the bubbles that were formed. I really don't think that this is going to be a big deal for you in the long run and you should probably know that you might see this while cycling and from time to time afterward due to the biological functions that occur in the aquarium (e.g. proteins in the water will make bubbles...which some of us take full advantage of).

I am sure you will eventually have some fish...and I do feel a little bit bad about the fact that you might have been able to save a lot of time and energy if you raised the water level from the start - although I do think you did the right thing to make sure that there were no bad chemicals left over from your cleaning the tank and such. In fact, I am 100% sure that you are about to experience a lot of success simply because you are not only willing to learn, but willing to take the time to start things off right...which makes an absolutely huge difference IME and IMHO.