What to do after a rip clean?

[bozo]

I just took out all my rock and removed all GHA from the rock. I used a drill and a wire brush and removed it completely.

I even took 12% hydrogen peroxide and sprayed them all down afterwards

Sizzled the F out of all the GHA

All the rock are completely white

Now.... what do I do next?

I do have coralline algae growing on the bare bottom tank. Actually I have a piece of HDPE sheet on the bottom. It’s growing on that

But what’s next?

How do I prevent the GHA from coming back?

50 gallon total volume tank

My PO4 has always been undetected on a Hanna ulr phosphate tester

Nitrates I have to dose to get up to 5-10 ppm

So I’m not sure where the GHA came from. I thought it was lyngbya for a long time. I still don’t know. I have to get a sample and see

Should I use bacteria products or more established live rock?

Not sure

Tagging @brandon429 since he’s the rip clean expert


Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

post pics

all fun work threads open w piccers

show before, after

I like challenges too for sure, appreciate the post for sure.

as one veer from the norm/ the initial opening attack was 10/10 for non passivity (which we can work with better than passivity that's for sure) but it strips off areas of growth we keep when using knife tips and precision rasping

coralline repels algae vs white surfaces, we aim to keep it where possible.

but what fun is live time reefing if it's not got a twist I am very happy to work with you after all these years!

pics mane

 

[bozo]

post pics

all fun work threads open w piccers

show before, after

I like challenges too for sure, appreciate the post for sure.

as one veer from the norm/ the initial opening attack was 10/10 for non passivity (which we can work with better than passivity that's for sure) but it strips off areas of growth we keep when using knife tips and precision rasping

coralline repels algae vs white surfaces, we aim to keep it where possible.

but what fun is live time reefing if it's not got a twist I am very happy to work with you after all these years!

pics mane

 

[bozo]

1st photo has all the green and red algae. It almost looks like cyano.

But that was taken after a light brushing. The strands were longer

The other 3 photos are from yesterday.

I might dose hydrogen peroxide daily for maintenance.

What do you recommend?

Thanks again!!

 

[brandon429]

first consideration strategy based on 100 work priors that helps: potentially being sandbed free for a while depending on tank specifics/challenge parameters. there's a reason why not catching and holding ten diaper's worth of waste in a rehabbing reef tank is beneficial. especially with white surfaces that catch and distribute light very brightly which feeds early invasion

for sure less lighting power. whatever degree of lighting that factored in as a co-driver in the prior eutrophication series can be reduced and the same quality of corals kept, it's go-to #1 in the rehab. less light power will run your corals because we make up for that with targeted feed quality. your new system/free of waste/allows a lot of good coral feeding catch up.

 

[brandon429]

**we posted at the same time. you don't have to remove your sandbed currently but I'll leave that above as options if the battle steps up.


that looks much easier than I thought it would be, that still looks like a matured reef

can u do a whites only pic to see distribution details real quick

things that come to mind based on your unique after pics above:

you already have strong coral growth to support, clearly your current feeding approach is fine and strong and dang good

reducing the lights and sustaining that new degree a while is still my top recommend, what other physical parameters directly implicated by plant growth can we alter with that much coral on the line, and years in place to earn it.

if you have the rarest sps ever, down in the middle at the bare known par ever seen to support them and we can't drop the light power then we should relocate the colony upwards, in my opinion based on prior sustain checkups less lighting than the initial grow is a desirable thing to try.

I'm always against the use of fluconazole as a cheat in gha tanks because it degrades rotting plant growth into the crevices on top of waste already there in any sandbed that clouds when a test handful is dropped.

but you don't have the plants in place, the rotting mass that usually turns into dinos you robbed that out which makes me so happy about the prognosis for the tank in my opinion.

fluc can be a powerful preventative now, if the meanest gha on the planet has seeded into your tank and is destined to regrow after your first tuneup gardening as needed, fluc can be dosed and not turn your tank into a cyano farm like it does in 88% of fluc + gha + two months later threads.

-it is crucial in my opinion you maintain removability of those rocks, any rock in the scape if needed, as a priority for preserving such an old reef tank. if we can pull those rocks like a tooth from a big dinosaur's mouth, lay it on the counter and work it with a knife as needed, then you're always free of algae and we are not tinkering with params that clearly grow big corals in that home above


I sure won't waste any time trying to ID your growth: that has no bearing on action whatsoever.

I won't be asking about water parameters, because what one person reports here differs by 60 ppm there.

we're dealing clearly with someone willing to command compliance from a reef tank vs take a back seat to one so in the end, simply do not allow algae and you'll have none.

we can spend 100% of our time making your gardening work less and less, hopefully.

 

[bozo]

**we posted at the same time. you don't have to remove your sandbed currently but I'll leave that above as options if the battle steps up.


that looks much easier than I thought it would be, that still looks like a matured reef

can u do a whites only pic to see distribution details real quick

 

[bozo]

Here are some white photos I just took right now

I really have to give credit to this package of wire brushes I got at harbor freight

Engine Brush Kit, 20-Piece

Amazing deals on this 20Pc Engine Brush Kit at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

I literally got all of this done in 1 hour.

Granted it was easier because I don’t have coral on the rock. I knew I would battle GHA for a while, that’s why I held off in gluing things to the rock

Thanks !

 

[bozo]

I’ve ran fluconazole twice in this tank for 3 weeks each time and it didn’t do much.

Which led me to believe that it was lyngbya. I was going to ask my doctor for a azithromycin prescription.

But I think I’ll try another dose of fluconazole, as you mentioned, now that I have removed 99% of the pest algae/cyano.

I will do this along with daily hydrogen peroxide 1 ml per 10 gallon at night. I’ll put that on a doser

I have a nyos 120 skimmer that’s over sized for the tank. And I also have a Aqua UV 57 watt UV that’s been running since the start of the tank 1 year ago. That’s probably why I haven’t seen dinos at all despite my low nutrients

I usually just feed pellets 5 times a day on the AFS and one healthy squirt of frozen foods mixed with selcon, twice a day. 12 pm and 5 pm.

I was dosing nitrates and phosphates due to dull coral colors, but I stopped and just decided to feed more.

Thank you for your advice so far!

 

[brandon429]

I can see you have starboard on the floor I'll go reread above too to make sure I caught those details. such nice pics. that's just an aged perfect reef it's so seriously balanced already. it's just got cleared zones of growth

rambling off things that are even better than coralline as algae prevention:

flesh of corals other than zoantharia

typically, sps and lps flesh is 100% algae exclusive. I'm 100% sure that no gha is ever going to grow off the mouth of my fungiid coral as long as flesh remains healthy there. same for my war coral

keep in mind the option of planting corals in those spots of the variety that are doing well in your tank, that's untakeable real estate pretty much. it's the top-tier of real estate defenders in the hierarchy of suppressing algae on reef tank surfaces without concerning over invader ID, tank params or use of dosers.

 

[brandon429]

the tank is currently at perfection condition regarding plant balance, you've used precision surgery on it already, kept your original cycle in place, and have large established corals years-set already in place. it's just plant-free

talk about resolve, we can't get owners of a 32 gallon tank to do that much less a tank of that size

done to that degree of quality

the bottom of your tank is catchment-free compared to a normal reef

we can pump food and waste across that easily, up n out

you've been doing that already, the corals are huge and diverse in there. the gonis, that's so much on the line for sure.

 

[brandon429]

since you mentioned gha/fragmenting regrowth driven to some degree and strong UV you might could employ would be highly indicated, if regrowth proved to outpace allowable maintenance work on the scape.

cheap jebao's off amazon have helped me 200 times in work private messages with substantial results and they're best started right when fragments from plants would be present depending on degree of plant push back one wants to start v2 with

they may not last years but they're cheap, $150 ish for a big one. these physical means are the boundaries to which I'd work a tank with that many valuable years in it.

a preventative run of fluc sounds ok to me but I'd use half a dose, see if the lesser degree can kill leftovers

if your tank doesn't see a full dose for a while, if it ever has to that will sting better

 

[brandon429]

what I would eliminate as an option for your setup:

-I would not introduce any animals as cuc. never put anything directly in a display without a disease plan in place and in action for a system like that / I know u already know this

and even with a disease plan, I wouldn't trust them. one reefer's margarita snail who cleared a forest is some other poster's waste pellet machine / x 200 per hour lol but doesn't actually touch the plant. the degree of compliant ones aren't worth the disease vector risk in my opinion, I don't use cuc's in any of my threads. that allows for non compliance. a person willing to cause compliance directly with the rock removed will win every time.


there is likely a winning combo of cuc but that's not predictable tank to tank, its the x factor possibility.


-I wouldn't dose fluc any more after this for a long time in my opinion, make it's presence rare now if ever. it's all rock extraction and guided detail surgery until that just doesn't work, but I bet it will sustain for a long time if the lights are cut and sustained a while, and feed pass-through is the comp for the reduced lighting. we don't have to drive the corals to change color, but they tolerate less light typically than where they're set at and light it just a massive driver in gha battles of any species in my opinion.

if we dehabituate your system to fluc, it can be a powerful catchup cheat there's no other additives I'd try either. I would in the least manually keep that system free of invasion using dentistry on the counter alone until some other magic cure comes about in a few years. they'll find one eventually.

 

[bozo]

what I would eliminate as an option for your setup:

-I would not introduce any animals as cuc. never put anything directly in a display without a disease plan in place and in action for a system like that / I know u already know this

and even with a disease plan, I wouldn't trust them. one reefer's margarita snail who cleared a forest is some other poster's waste pellet machine / x 200 per hour lol but doesn't actually touch the plant. the degree of compliant ones aren't worth the disease vector risk in my opinion, I don't use cuc's in any of my threads. that allows for non compliance. a person willing to cause compliance directly with the rock removed will win every time.

-I wouldn't dose fluc any more after this for a long time in my opinion, make it's presence rare now if ever. it's all rock extraction and guided detail surgery until that just doesn't work, but I bet it will sustain for a long time if the lights are cut and sustained a while, and feed pass-through is the comp for the reduced lighting. we don't have to drive the corals to change color, but they tolerate less light typically than where they're set at and light it just a massive driver in gha battles of any species in my opinion.

if we dehabituate your system to fluc, it can be a powerful catchup cheat there's no other additives I'd try either. I would in the least manually keep that system free of invasion using dentistry on the counter alone until some other magic cure comes about in a few years. they'll find one eventually.

Thank you so much for your detailed advice !!

I will not add anymore CUC to the tank and will not add and anymore fluconazole after this last dose.

I think I’ll be taking the rock out very often once a month to give them all a deep scrub with the drill wire brush, but at which point can we start attaching corals to the rock?

Lol. Maybe when coralline starts taking over the rock.

Thank so much!

Your rip clean and hydrogen peroxide advice has really helped tremendously

I wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t for your posts!!

 

[brandon429]

I would not scrub we need to cure the aging back in place, the coralline, the primary rejecting surfaces that deposit over time. only a knife tip is safe because it has the least swath and can be precision on target but avoidant of the new purple spots. like a dentist does on plaque, exacting and thorough but avoids gums.

u can't do any more landmining for a while he he but can I say this is such a breath of fresh air, someone wanting to go so nuclear on algae they will employ a chainsaw if needed

it's the passivity from today's reefers that is the hardest to work with, this is like breathing the air from 2006 again

 

[jda]

You are either going to be doing it again, or you need to change the ecosystem. What allowed the GHA to thrive the first time will still be there.

Those super sterile rocks might get some dinos now instead of GHA. This depends on how much of the surfaces you killed with the oxidant.

More mature live rock can help since it has things that actually might spread to these surfaces. The GHA and dinos can sometimes move in faster, though.

Algae consumers are super important.

Algaecides and yeast/fungus meds have unintended consequences but some people use them.

Only live coralline will keep other types of algae from growing on it. Dead or dormant coralline can be covered in GHA - it still looks purple. If you are seeing new spots all of the time and have to scrap the glass constantly, then this is a good sign.

I cannot see what some of the rip clean folks say anymore, so no idea if they are around. If you want to listen to them, then just say so and I will disappear. For those of us who reef, you have to have consumers to eat the algae since if you can grow coral, you can grow algae too. I have a fuge attached to my acropora reef and it would be covered in hair algae, bubble, etc without the urchins, crabs and snails. You cannot biologically limit algae growth without harming coral. Scraping it off without addressing the other things means that it will come back.

 

[brandon429]

jda

you already know what our results look like in rip clean threads, it's searchable, yet you never lead with work examples you concluded recently

have u noticed that trend

I really would like to see things you've completed recently involving tank restoration it helps reefing in general to see closed out work examples. that's helpful when posted to threads. dinos are not a risk here, if you have encountered that as a real threat we need to see those links you were in and completed the fix job. we need contrast linked pls, not to take the bait from you but to enrich br's save options for that tank of high priority.

since you're posting, we need to see some jobs you completed that match this one.

 

[Garf]

one reefer's margarita snail who cleared a forest is some other poster's waste pellet machine / x 200 per hour lol

What are these pellets made from, scotch mist?

 

[bozo]

What are these pellets made from, scotch mist?

lol

 

[homer1475]

You are either going to be doing it again, or you need to change the ecosystem. What allowed the GHA to thrive the first time will still be there.

Those super sterile rocks might get some dinos now instead of GHA. This depends on how much of the surfaces you killed with the oxidant.

More mature live rock can help since it has things that actually might spread to these surfaces. The GHA and dinos can sometimes move in faster, though.

Algae consumers are super important.

Algaecides and yeast/fungus meds have unintended consequences but some people use them.

Only live coralline will keep other types of algae from growing on it. Dead or dormant coralline can be covered in GHA - it still looks purple. If you are seeing new spots all of the time and have to scrap the glass constantly, then this is a good sign.

I cannot see what some of the rip clean folks say anymore, so no idea if they are around. If you want to listen to them, then just say so and I will disappear. For those of us who reef, you have to have consumers to eat the algae since if you can grow coral, you can grow algae too. I have a fuge attached to my acropora reef and it would be covered in hair algae, bubble, etc without the urchins, crabs and snails. You cannot biologically limit algae growth without harming coral. Scraping it off without addressing the other things means that it will come back.

100% agree, Couldn't have said it better.