bayberry94
New Member
Wow! Some of you use terms that we are completely unfamiliar with. I have been keeping freshwater my entire life, but this is our first salt tank. Thanks for all the suggestions.
6 Month Old Tank Lots of Algae- Suggestions?
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BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
CALL IN THE TOOTHBRUSH TROOPS!
Brandon429 coached me through a rip clean on my nano after an unstoppable dino infestation....I think I had every strain you could get. lol. It worked, allowed me to get a foothold and "start over" without having to worry about cycling etc. I had a weeeeeee speck of dino pop up afterwards within a week, but it quickly disappeared. On tanks that small, it's easy and just takes a couple hours of elbow grease. Nothing will teach your daughter about maintenance like a rip clean. lol.
Bayberry I want to use your tank as a specific model of tank restoration technique if you will study Sadie’s link, and know the work she did, we can fix your tank above overnite as a live-time job.
see the prep she had to endure to rinse sand. You’d rinse even cleaner, completely clean sand is waste free and grows no more algae.
rocks that you scraped free of algae in an empty sink, rinsed as pour over in saltwater, are then algae free saving you weeks of wait for the current mass to die, rot, and then turn into Cyanobacteria.
study her job, prepare for tank surgery is the recommend and prepare here live time to initiate it.
Banjo I thought you did a great job a lot of people saw and copied your rip clean thread
see the prep she had to endure to rinse sand. You’d rinse even cleaner, completely clean sand is waste free and grows no more algae.
rocks that you scraped free of algae in an empty sink, rinsed as pour over in saltwater, are then algae free saving you weeks of wait for the current mass to die, rot, and then turn into Cyanobacteria.
study her job, prepare for tank surgery is the recommend and prepare here live time to initiate it.
Banjo I thought you did a great job a lot of people saw and copied your rip clean thread
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
You remember that mess....I was at my wits end. Hard reboot took me about a month to finally accept my fate. It was well worth it and was that immediate fix we often dream of in this hobby. I had that thing packed with corals and some livestock too, they all made it out alive with no issues. I'm a believer in a rip clean for nanos. Heck, at this point if the big system gave me that kind of trouble I might even do that. The bottom line is "something is wrong" and on a closed system it's nearly impossible to coax it back from the edge without aggressive tactics. DO NOT SETTLE. ERADICATE. DESTROY.
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
I agree. I’m invested now.
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
Lol we are all lunatics on this side. It’s the salt. It makes you crazy.
Razorback reef
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Once it gets started, it's hard to control. But you do need to add about 20 dwarf cerith snails. Even in near ZERO nutrients a little bit of light will grow algae unless something is constantly grazing. Also a lot of good detritivores in the sand bed and rocks help to keep the nutrient level down.
bayberry94
New Member
So are you suggesting I tear down the entire tank and start fresh? I don’t have another salt tank to house my shrimp and feather duster in during that time. I’m not really sure what you’re suggesting?
Sadie's link shows her not starting over, using all same rocks and sand.
Her link shows every step you can run in your home to fix the matter, she has a tank like yours.
she cleaned her rocks and sand
The items you need to complete the repair to your biosystem:
A cheap tote to hold fish and animals, covered so they don't jump
Tap water
Knife, cheap peroxide
16 gallons all new saltwater for the final 100% water change, matching temp and salinity to the old water
Her link shows every step you can run in your home to fix the matter, she has a tank like yours.
she cleaned her rocks and sand
The items you need to complete the repair to your biosystem:
A cheap tote to hold fish and animals, covered so they don't jump
Tap water
Knife, cheap peroxide
16 gallons all new saltwater for the final 100% water change, matching temp and salinity to the old water
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ZombieEngineer
Valuable Member
I honestly stopped listening to Brandon and he is the one and only person I have used the ignore button on. He gives pretty wacky advice in broken English Then just repeats himself over and over until everyone gives up on the thread.
Your tank has a manageable level of algae that just needs some manual removal, nutrient control, and something to eat what you can't remove yourself. Telling you to rip everything out of your tank and start over is just dumb.
You can see we didn’t use bottle bac, nor cycle testing. She didn’t start over, or we would have used those items.
all you’re faced with is draining an easy sixteen gallons of water and putting it into a tote or two.
then moving rocks into a tote
and separate other tote, fish and shrimp
you clean out the glass tank to bone zero dry new while stuff is being held elsewhere
sand is put into an open five gallon clean paint bucket from home depot etc
you’d rinse your as Sadie did, taking it one step further and rinsing to complete clarity. once clean you do a final rinse in RO water
you glass test the sand as Sadie did. For clarity proofing.
you’d clean your rocks like Sadie showed, now your rocks are clean vs fully invaded and plugged up.
you now have all clean surfaces to reassemble. New water, rinsed sand, prepped rocks rinsed off in saltwater after scraping free of algae
after the tank is back up and running, give it one hour to run fully assembled and then lastly add your corals and fish and shrimp back in. This is exactly what Sadie did, and there aren’t any other options other than this mode because all that mass needs exported that has allowed to grow and plug up the surface area.
let’s say you introduced ten urchins to eat it
you convert that same mass into urchin waste pellets, littering all rock crevices and inside the sand grains, in need of rinsing still. It will turn into a cyano battle if you leave that growth mass inside the tank, in any solid form. Ten wet urchins, or 39 new cerith snails from a reef cleaners order, is a disease risk import to your fish.
a rip clean never causes disease.
the surgical cleaning is easy, it’s what works we can see in the link. Imagine if it was a 100 gallon. This is the price of delay.
all you’re faced with is draining an easy sixteen gallons of water and putting it into a tote or two.
then moving rocks into a tote
and separate other tote, fish and shrimp
you clean out the glass tank to bone zero dry new while stuff is being held elsewhere
sand is put into an open five gallon clean paint bucket from home depot etc
you’d rinse your as Sadie did, taking it one step further and rinsing to complete clarity. once clean you do a final rinse in RO water
you glass test the sand as Sadie did. For clarity proofing.
you’d clean your rocks like Sadie showed, now your rocks are clean vs fully invaded and plugged up.
you now have all clean surfaces to reassemble. New water, rinsed sand, prepped rocks rinsed off in saltwater after scraping free of algae
after the tank is back up and running, give it one hour to run fully assembled and then lastly add your corals and fish and shrimp back in. This is exactly what Sadie did, and there aren’t any other options other than this mode because all that mass needs exported that has allowed to grow and plug up the surface area.
let’s say you introduced ten urchins to eat it
you convert that same mass into urchin waste pellets, littering all rock crevices and inside the sand grains, in need of rinsing still. It will turn into a cyano battle if you leave that growth mass inside the tank, in any solid form. Ten wet urchins, or 39 new cerith snails from a reef cleaners order, is a disease risk import to your fish.
a rip clean never causes disease.
the surgical cleaning is easy, it’s what works we can see in the link. Imagine if it was a 100 gallon. This is the price of delay.
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BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
I would argue he’s not starting over just doing the greatest/quickest CUC process possible. So would you rather just fix it in an afternoon or spend countless days and dollars trying to slowly bring it back to center? It’s small enough to plow through. Regardless of the decision the algae needs exported and the biome needs corrected. Brandon might be “crazy” but he might also be correct in this case in terms of effectiveness and rapid improvement. He’s also been published. He’s got some street cred with nanos.
if he ops to not rip clean it, then he’s still going to have to scrub all that rock and clean the sand…suck out all that algae and detritus…or kill everything with fluc or some algaecide…then suck it out…spend weeks maybe months trying to curb the invasion and find the problem (my guess is it’s neglect)…most likely losing any livestock in the process.
it just seems like going halfway and not fixing the issue. You have an infestation of algae. This is beyond “problem” scenario.
so do you wanna fight with it and risk the livestock over the coarse of weeks with intensive treatments or just do the dang thing?
Nanos aren’t like big systems, you can’t nudge them around and deal with issues in a relaxed manner. You have to be militant and dedicated. This is that “experience” everyone in reefing talks about. Until you’ve had this happen in a nano (and it can happen QUICK) you don’t understand.
if he ops to not rip clean it, then he’s still going to have to scrub all that rock and clean the sand…suck out all that algae and detritus…or kill everything with fluc or some algaecide…then suck it out…spend weeks maybe months trying to curb the invasion and find the problem (my guess is it’s neglect)…most likely losing any livestock in the process.
it just seems like going halfway and not fixing the issue. You have an infestation of algae. This is beyond “problem” scenario.
so do you wanna fight with it and risk the livestock over the coarse of weeks with intensive treatments or just do the dang thing?
Nanos aren’t like big systems, you can’t nudge them around and deal with issues in a relaxed manner. You have to be militant and dedicated. This is that “experience” everyone in reefing talks about. Until you’ve had this happen in a nano (and it can happen QUICK) you don’t understand.
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
Zombie….side note…can I PM you an APEX question????
ZombieEngineer
Valuable Member
Yes, but it's better to just make a public post. That way the lurkers that Google search to find answers instead of making an actual thread can be helped if they also have a similar problem. Obviously if there is any personal information involved PM for sure.
BanjoBandito
Valuable Member
Ok cool- didn’t mean to hijack this post. We are way off the rails anyway. Lol.
bayberry94
New Member
Ok, thank you! Phew! Haha! I’m going to do a clean up/water change this weekend and order some clean up crew online. I got a lot of good suggestions on here!
Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread
Ok, I move in one week. In preparation, I took the sand out of both tanks a while back (several months ago for the 20g and about a month ago for the 29g). Everyone is doing fine, I like how I can see detritus buildup in real time and remove when necessary. My next most pressing question is how...
www.reef2reef.com
There's sixty more pages of tank work exactly as above
People like Zombie make it less fun to post up top vs chat only because they replace experience with vehemence. In chat, friendly posters restore reefs and collect the pics.
How does what Zombie wrote square away with the sheer number of disassembly cleanings we've done in that link
Zombie, post just one remote job you've done for tank restoration.
Contribute.
Algae Identification
Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?
www.reef2reef.com
before rip clean
during the clean
after
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all that above is the same rocks and sand, but cleaned. See how everything becomes vibrant, fast?
Bayberry
The nice part about a nano is you can try any other method first, above is the one you use to win when you're ready. If other methods like fluconazole trade off into cyano invasions, you can see above for seven years ongoing how easy that will be to beat.
we never used bottle bac. For ten years…see how consistent tank filter bacteria really are? They don’t need help. They need only clean water and clear open rock surface area
Bayberry
The nice part about a nano is you can try any other method first, above is the one you use to win when you're ready. If other methods like fluconazole trade off into cyano invasions, you can see above for seven years ongoing how easy that will be to beat.
we never used bottle bac. For ten years…see how consistent tank filter bacteria really are? They don’t need help. They need only clean water and clear open rock surface area
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