White foam along tank surface edge

[mdoran11]

Hey guys, I've recently got into the whole aquarium hobby after really enjoying taking care of my betta, Walter. I've been keeping fish for a few months now and have a couple questions. My current tank is five gallons with Walter, a ghost shrimp (probably adding more soon to replace the causalties), a couple of small leopard cories, four neons, and a guppy. I've just purchased a ten gal too.

1. Over the past few weeks, I've noticed this white foam/ bubble kind of stuff along the edge of the water surface and even coming out of the filter at times. I was wanting to know what it is and how to get rid of it, if its harmful.

-I've been doing more partial water changes and replaced my filter cartridge (but I cut up old one up and left the filter floss-like stuff and rocks for bio filtration next to the new cartridge). This has helped the problem, but not been a complete fix. Suggestions?

2. Would buying making my own filter cartridges be better for my tank? I could use filter floss, a bag bio balls, and maybe a bag of the carbon chemical filtration stuff. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Marc

[ilovemyplaties]

Could you post a picture? And I think it has to do with the betta.

[mdoran11]

Like a bubble nest? I attached a photo for you to look at.

[mdoran11]

I can't see the photo, but hopefully you can. Do you know how i could get it to show up? There's another thread about this same issue, though, and a lack of surface agitation seems to be the likely culprit. What do you think about that?

[ilovemyplaties]

Not like a nest, it just looks like really thick, kind of bubbles. and no i cant see the picture! i have no idea how to make it appear. I have no idea what you mean by that haha. When that happened in my betta tank, there was really not much i could do. i just did more water changes. i also noticed whenever there were bubbles, the tank was pretty warm. is the temperature normal?

[mdoran11]

I try to keep my temperature in the 76-78 range and pretty steady. I moved my filter closer to the center of my tank and it seems to have helped the problem almost completely disappear since my filter agitates the surface. I'm not sure about a relationship between temperature and foam? Do you have an issue with that? And I'm giving up on the pictures haha.