Bubble factory

[jroescher]

Why does it do this?? I have a rock that constantly creates bubbles. I can brush off the bubbles and it takes about 15 minutes to be covered again. It's about 6 months old now, and was put in the same time all the rest of the rock was. It's the only one that does it.
All the coraline has grown on it since it was put in. It started with none.

[Reef69]

Early stages of algea??

[jroescher]

The bubbles don't stick. It's like an airstone without a pump. Constantly putting microbubbles in my tank.

[akm]

Do you have any bubbles in your the water column? If it's only on that rock then It sounds like some kind of algae, maybe cyano. This happens on my rocks some times when cyano shows up.

[Reef69]

Maybe bubbles in the water get trapped and constantly flow out of the rock..

[jroescher]

I'm pretty sure the bubbles are coming from inside the rock. It comes from all over the rock. When the crabs crawl across it there's a pretty steady flow of bubbles rising from it. Most of the bubbles in my water column come from this rock steady putting out. They rise up and then get caught in the current.

[pickle311]

gas bubbles from denitrification? I doubt that though, you normally see those in the sand bed and nothing remotely close to the number you are getting out of that rock. Could be some form of alge like previously stated. Weird though

[GaryP]

More likely those are O2 bubbles from the algae. I've never seen coraline algae do that though. Are you sure its coraline and not red cyano?

[jroescher]

It doesn't show up well in the picture. The coraline is only in spots, the bubbles are coming from all over. Nothing scrapes off with my fingernail. When I move my glass cleaner across the glass near it, hundreds of bubbles are released.

[GaryP]

OK, that's O2 bubbles from algae then. Its a good thing. It means the oxygen level in your tank is saturated. Oxygen has a pretty low solubility in salt water at around 7-8 ppm. Fresh water is around 12 ppm. In comparison we live in a world where oxygen is present at 210,000 ppm in air. Fish will only survive in a very narrow oxygen range. When its gets below 4 ppm they start to stress. If you aren't having any sort of major algae outbreak I wouldn't really worry about it. Its just part of the life that is inhabiting your system. If you are having an algae problem, come to this month's meeting. Guess what we are going to be talking about?

[jroescher]

Glad to hear that it's a good thing. Algea is not a problem except in the overflows where the critters can't get to it.

[Ram_Puppy]

in the freshwater side of the hobby we call this 'perling' little pearls of air... it's quite desireable in a planetd tank though I can imagine how it might be annoying in a saltwater tank.