Help! Cooking Oil in tank water with fish!

Dukkie

While changing water in the Goldfish tank(20+ gal), vegetable cooking oil got in the water. How to I get it out ?!?! It's probably only a teaspon or less but I don't want the fishies to die.

fish_4_all

Paper towels on the surface is the fastest way I know of. Lay them across the oil and then quickly remove them repeating until you don't see the sheen from the oil anymore.

Dukkie

Thanks! At least I had the right idea. The papertowels on the surface was the only thing I cold think of to do. Luckily the oil didn't make an oil slick on top. It was just some oil "bubbles" floating on top.

There are only a few teeny specks of oil floating now. Do you think the filter will clean out the rest? We have a second nature Whisper rear mounted filter without carbon chips.

fish_4_all

I don't know exactly what could come from it nor what it could do to the filter but vegetable oil should break down in the aquarium and not cause too much of a problem overall.