Algae/Cyano Issue Not Improving, Help Please?

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UKR33f3r

UKR33f3r

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Firstly I want to thank @brandon429 for his help and guidance on this RIP on my Red Sea Reefer 250 - first class advice my man!

So you could see what I was dealing with; horrendous black slime that kept returning within 12-24 hours, I was at my wits end with it. That’s when I found this forum and the legendary advice from Brandon - he knows his stuff!

I started by draining the top 100 litres into water containers and put them to one side, at this point the tank was two thirds empty
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I partially filled some fish boxes with tank water ready for removal from the system ensuring that I had everything on hand to start cleaning straight away - minimal delays meaning minimal stress on fish and corals alike
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Carefully I removed corals still on plugs and then the rocks ready for cleaning. I made sure all corals and inverts were submerged and worked quickly to minimise temperature variations.
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The fish and shrimp were rounded up and housed in my ATO (filled with saltwater obviously) and covered with a towel to prevent any carpet surfing.
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So then I’m faced with this; a bare tank full of dirty algae/Cyano filled coral sand - I used a piece of half inch symphony tube to remove 99% of the offending crud. dang I was disgusted by how filthy it was considering I vacuum cleaned it every few days!

I scrubbed the whole interior of the tank with a scourer pad and 3% perx paying particular attention to the corners and back wall and all the sealant lines. This was rinsed in RO and cleaned until dry.
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At this point I put the 100 litres drained at the start back in together with the fish, inverts and CUC. dang did they look confused!!! :D

Turning my attention to the rocks I scrubbed and cleaned them to within an inch of their lives - they were rinsed in RO. Again I was shocked at how much crap and detritus came out of them but much to my amazement in among the crap was a quantity of ‘pods - awesome!

They were carefully placed back and rearranged in a new layout. Corals and plugs were cleaned and dipped before being replaced also. Salt Water was topped up from my 150 litre bin in the garage kept at the same temp and salinity as my tank using Instant Ocean salt. Almost straight away a lot of the corals opened setting me at ease - it was a tense time ripping your beloved tank to pieces based on the advice of someone you’ve never spoken to before on a forum you’ve only just found!
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Pumps and wave makers were switched back on and I think the following pictures say it all - pristine tank with very little chance of a recurrence of the algae/Cyano bloom ever happening again.


Thanks again @brandon429 and thanks reef2reef community!



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brandon429

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I believe this work he's done will help others tremendously. He's removed the concern over pod loss, recycling, spreading an invasion and light handling exchanged for total control, and he's done it in a big tank such that it didn't matter we weren't dealing with a small nano

It's sheer cloudless perfection and what I like too is the delayed put back option

You can sprinkle in any or pre rinsed sand and then turn around and take it back up later via shop vac siphon, because the system will still be so clean by then it won't have eutrophic states to risk about the tank.

He can now blast feed every coral here and they gobble up

Then easily remove waste off glass

This can be an exercise in positive mass gain specifically by feeding which takes direct advantage of this clean and hungry condition, the forced clean condition

We cleaned to also make room for twice the protein waste to be handled, like a bodybuilding phase. We can't do that in the invaded condition

All filtration surfaces are re energized because he forced open pores that were formerly blanketed. He did this without bottle bac purchase, gentlemen don't use cycling bottle bac on post cycle reefs. Mother nature will not unstick cycling bac from wet surfaces he made complete use of the tenet with big cash on the line

Identification didn't matter though I'd love to know what that stuff was


Param measures didn't matter before nor or after. That's hesitating compared to above


For future params, set them to what corals want. If cyano shows up, be meaner than it
 
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UPDATE: so we’re five days after the RIP clean and I thought I’d give you all an update…

Water parameters are perfect with no fluctuations. I’ve done my usual weekly 20% water change today.

I've had no recurrence of the black slime anywhere in the aquarium; not the glass, rocks or frag plugs. Zero fish or coral losses. It’s been a win win for me here and I’m back to being proud of my mini reef :D

5440FE50-3601-4BF1-A423-B51D316FD42A.jpeg
 

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UPDATE: so we’re five days after the RIP clean and I thought I’d give you all an update…

Water parameters are perfect with no fluctuations. I’ve done my usual weekly 20% water change today.

I've had no recurrence of the black slime anywhere in the aquarium; not the glass, rocks or frag plugs. Zero fish or coral losses. It’s been a win win for me here and I’m back to being proud of my mini reef :D

5440FE50-3601-4BF1-A423-B51D316FD42A.jpeg

I can only say best of luck, brace yourself for whats ahead which is a lot of instability.
 

brandon429

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legit though if you have any predictions + onset timing to watch out for let us know, we're in this to help reefs vs just push rules for action with no benefit.

my two main hedges for safety are the lowered light levels initially and better directed feeding. i think just those two alone cure all negatives from sandbed removal in reefs, nobody needs whats in a sandbed they're merely something our reefs tolerate in terms of oxygen sinking, waste acid production for many (but not all, clearly there are some awesome hands off sandbeds)
and yes, the six worms we can see tracking in the bed. some folks feel these little guys are the critical link to life and death in a reef tank



the reason the untouched sandbed trend of the 90s didnt persist is because it works out long term successfully about 25% of the time, the other 75% it causes a massive problem within about a year or three of setup. in large tanks where they can't efficiently access, all kinds of partial actions are taken and that's the real instability...because the tank had a sandbed.

we are up to fifty pages of sandbed rips in our study thread, can report from the field its all good for months after.
 

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Want to know an ideal use for this thread: on a nano reefer with dinos issues


they nearly always follow what large tanks do: a partial change to a param or a doser, test, wait, hope

it'd be neat to see a nano reefer utilize the rule of active surface area in reefing and just dispense with all the wait. Even for dinos...
 

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but this is the five thousandth rip clean





this thread is awesome we have about five new rip cleans going on because of it.

haha, 5000 is a nice round number. You have a nice way of grouping everything as RIP.

Did all 5000 do all this in on go ? a) remove the sandbed at once, b) wash their Rocks in RO c) Rinse and Wipe the tank clean with H2o2 ?
 

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Why, yes.







we have handled a couple reefs before recommending the procedure.

now in turn, you show me a failed one. A single post, showing the consequence you imply :)


I wasn’t going to ask Elora for input, they don’t have anything pertinent. It’s easy to troll when you’ve never put any work on the line. But you sound researched, so let’s see one example.


im only asking for one example for you to google, that you weren’t part of, from any random forum search, any number of years ago, for any proof you’ve seen a negative outcome from whatever angle you were clearly hinting at above.

if we get one single example vs more critique I’ll be amazed. Even if Elora googles someone’s else’s work, we don’t want that. Only your findings
 
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brandon429

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So when you say instability, in what way?

not asking for a prediction, asking for a link to show what way you mean, let’s see someone’s before and after where the outcome was bad as you clarify what form the instability will take


you can see that in our examples we are big on knowing the completion date for any job, unlike the type of assessment that is open ended and conveys risk nonspecific


when do you expect problems? We are able to name anyone’s cycle completion date before they begin (have as many links for reading) and they always meet the deadline, and when are always able to part down these tanks and move them to new homes on the assumption date. We grossly rearrange and handle peoples surface area and make predictions on whether the cycle will be affected, for example.

only fear advocates get the totally open window for problems, just wait longer is the mode

what we don’t get is a single link where an evaluator shows us their own work, in a subject they critique. For example, if you click on someone’s post history and it’s all about their tank, with no works from others tanks, you begin to wonder how deep the armchair quarterbacking goes.
 
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Deep

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So when you say instability, in what way?

not asking for a prediction, asking for a link to show what way you mean, let’s see someone’s before and after where the outcome was bad

I dont think you understand. Show me one thread ( you said there were 1000s) where they have done all 3 things that the OP has done - and 8 weeks later there was still no Cyano/Dinos/Coral growth issues.

I dont want you sending me one thread for wiping the tank peroxide with peroxide, another one for sand removal and third one for rinsing rocks with RO water. All 3 in the same thread - same as the OP.

Oh and wiping the tank with peroxide is not the same as dosing peroxide.
 

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you have two rip clean threads there above. The other two cover peroxide applications, you’re not very specific in your assessments.


I was not expecting a single link for any aspect of your disagreement. Merely hang back and watch, we will add some of the new ones taking place now here, for your approval


the number one thing you should garner from those links is we make predictions and then log the outcomes…then when we relay a prediction to a new reefer and it pans out, that wasn’t luck. It’s the result of years of actual work where mis calls would kill peoples reefs


can you at least clarify what aspect here is unstable, no link required
 
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remember as we go back and forth in the end we only want what works to produce happy reefers, sustained.


We werent using peroxide, sand removals, rock removals and rasping above just to earn the ire of every old school approach reefer, it was because we needed to address ways that old school reefing was causing problems.

If you read intently, any action taken in a tank risked recycling, that's the #1 thing old school reefing got wrong. you couldnt clean or remove a sandbed without that fearsome api .5 ammonia crash


You had to buy something retail for everything you needed in the hobby vs handle it yourself, free, as we log.


old school cycling rules said we couldnt remove sandbeds, that bacteria had to ramp up to take on more numbers on leftover surfaces to make up for lack of sand, all that is just plain made up by forum posters and you can see above we have proven it for years in these outcomes.


You could at least, for example, find a time you helped someone fix cyano in their reef and post it...

Im aware chemiclean has done just that, but there's also chemiclean killed my tank threads and some are recent.


still waiting for the one time our method harmed a tank, you're searching fifteen years of logged online work to find one single loss example, and you can't. I think that means we aren't dealing in luck or bad science.

You can see in furious clicking that our form of failure is growback. we take all these big calorie tank moves, and a small % have the target grow back, darn it.

But instability :) I don't think so.

Remember on our work logs, you can simply message any participant years later and ask them about outcome then post that here. Its a benefit of providing links to folks, accountability for claims.
 
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elorablue

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Why, yes.







we have handled a couple reefs before recommending the procedure.

now in turn, you show me a failed one. A single post, showing the consequence you imply :)


I wasn’t going to ask Elora for input, they don’t have anything pertinent. It’s easy to troll when you’ve never put any work on the line. But you sound researched, so let’s see one example.


im only asking for one example for you to google, that you weren’t part of, from any random forum search, any number of years ago, for any proof you’ve seen a negative outcome from whatever angle you were clearly hinting at above.

if we get one single example vs more critique I’ll be amazed. Even if Elora googles someone’s else’s work, we don’t want that. Only your findings

Please leave me out of your bad science madness. Thank you.
 

brandon429

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but you like to insert into the threads? its only fun until we ask for work examples I know...

you can still post laugh emojies on the coat tails of others posts and I wont ask you for work links, dont want to stifle self-expression. you get a work pass.

Deep Im interested in knowing what you feel will be unstable, you could be meaning phosphate sinks etc. we always have some fun with link battles but in the end if you have a helpful prediction its good to log it so we can weigh and factor.
 

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but you like to insert into the threads? its only fun until we ask for work examples I know...

you can still post laugh emojies on the coat tails of others posts and I wont ask you for work links, dont want to stifle self-expression. you get a work pass.

Deep Im interested in knowing what you feel will be unstable, you could be meaning phosphate sinks etc. we always have some fun with link battles but in the end if you have a helpful prediction its good to log it so we can weigh and factor.

More than the substrate removal I was more concerned with wiping the tank over with H2o2 killing all bio-film and also washing rinsing rocks causing reduced benthic bacterial load.
Also I have removed sandbed completely myself, and you are correct. Loss of substrate means there is less buffer for Phosphates and in my tank also I have phosphate fluctuation which inevitably led to Cyano which I have been battling for months. Recently I dosed hydrogen peroxide 1 ml/10 gallon of 6% twice a day to bring cyano under control.
So keen to see how this will play out after 8 weeks or so,
 
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