Custom rip clean thread for nanos, top cure for dinos and cyano above any method.

[brandon429]

Thank you so much for the post, and the pre read prep! I can't wait to have your tank surgery logged here. I'm at work, here in a bit ill respond exactly to details above I'm positive this will work great for those plans

W be right back

 

[Ef4life]

I kind of wish I did a full clean on my biocube a couple months back. It would have been easier to clean the back chambers out with an empty tank vs the pumps, turkey blaster, sponges etc I had to use to get them emptied out and clean. Then pouring bleach in them while the tank was still inhabited up front was terrifying but all worked out fine.

 

[brandon429]

1. Is the general idea to syphon out tank water to a couple buckets to house rock/coral and fish? In Sadie's thread she said she had mixed up fresh water but I couldn't tell if that was for housing the livestock during the process or for refilling the tank in the end.

-that is fine either way. even if you mixed new water for holding, the only parameters that need to match are temp and salinity. *it doesn't even matter if you change salt brands during this process, and introduce your system to new salt, I've done this 20 different times in my 16 yr old nano bc I use only LFS premade water, I do only 100% water changes since it's a pico, and the LFS changes brands to stay with what's cheapest. I dont even ask them when they change brands, there are no lethally-mixing brands of saltwater and the minor parameter shifts aren't a big deal, people have overhyped parameter shock/water changes just like they overhype bacterial weakness and we never use bottle bac in rip clean threads to make this point stay alive, that our bacteria are strong.

So as long as water made new matches temp and salinity of the old water, you can mix and match or go all new in the process it does not matter. Our official sand rinse thread is 59 or 60 pages now of testing this approach in some sps systems worth twenty grand or more, 350 gallons etc logged in the thread in various places. matching temp and salinity only, and not caring what brand water is used, is what we've patterned to be safe and ideal/easy.


2. In any of the transfer scenarios I can think of there has to be at least one time the stock is going from tank water to fresh, so any need to acclimate in those cases or just plunk rock/corals in?

handled above.


3. Catching my 3 fish would be my biggest issue, last time I transferred I almost lost my filefish to the carpet. I was wondering if it would be possible to leave them in the tank, but try to syphon out sand underneath them?


*I must firmly recommend against this. reason why: 95% of the time it goes fine, nothing bad happens. people do it anyway in my threads even though I request not to (because 5% loss isn't acceptable, no losses are acceptable, we're at 100% safety rate on about a thousand logged jobs by not doing in-tank sand removal with water and animals present)

within the 5% risk is this: certain states of bacterial decay (we think) upwelled among fish is what kills animals. that's the source of a true cycle event, upwelling of cloudy waste, we must have animals gone before sandbed access. We know nowadays the risk parameter is not ammonia; ammonia isn't stored up anywhere in a reef tank its quickly used up when generated. it could be gas pocketing and / or cells in states of decay from zones of lower oxygen. the surgical ordered takedown we use, and the cloudless pre rinse of ALL new sand, is what makes us skip cycle for 9 years in a row.


4. Hitchhickers: How feasible would it be to add something like DipX to the rock bucket before returning them to the tank to try to drive out some of the unwanted pests?

_unrelated to rip cleaning/matter of experimentation. Ive never seen any dips kill off cycle bac, but be careful about dips. we mainly just use rasping with a knife and peroxide to scrape off invasions. I haven't experimented with dips/preventatives before

 

[mje113]

@brandon429 Thanks! For rinsing new sand, instead of spending hours filling, dumping, repeating. I was thinking about putting the sand in a smaller bucket, put a hose in with moderate water flow and storing the sand. I presumed that the overflowing water would take out a lot of the silt. Think that would work to get the bulk of it out?

 

[brandon429]

Agreed, repeat till laser clear

Then run saltwater through it as final rinse, then it's ready

 

[mje113]

And starting with new sand I should be able to keep the transfer pretty brief. Knock out the sand the day before, then do the transfer to buckets, toss the old sand, clean things up a bit then put it all back.

Question: What's the best way to get all the sand out? Especially considering I'll be tossing it.

 

[Ef4life]

@brandon429 Thanks! For rinsing new sand, instead of spending hours filling, dumping, repeating. I was thinking about putting the sand in a smaller bucket, put a hose in with moderate water flow and storing the sand. I presumed that the overflowing water would take out a lot of the silt. Think that would work to get the bulk of it out?

Protective pillow cover with the zipper. Or a delicate laundry bag - put the sand in it and close with hose inside, flush sand.

 

[mje113]

Protective pillow cover with the zipper. Or a delicate laundry bag - put the sand in it and close with hose inside, flush sand.

Oh that's a really good idea.

I may tackle this this weekend!

 

[GobyGuy]

If you could put some time to it, it’ll be well worth it in the long run, following for after pics

 

[brandon429]

I'm down to try any of those pre rinse techniques it takes hours of labor rinsing using the current mode. Key detail is the pre test before your system is built back up on the sand: after rinsing in whatever way, take a clear glass of test water and add in a palm sized portion of test rinsed sand to that cup of drinking water, if the cup clouds then go rinse in the bucket bc the filtration from the pillow might be holding back some rinsable small grains of silt. That method may work though, just pre test final rinse before use

The grains should fall in the test cup like a clear snowglobe

 

[mje113]

I still think I'm going to attempt this at some point but have been delaying due to a busy schedule. I just got some dry shelf rock I'm planning on using pieces of to get my existing LR off of directly laying on the sand. We'll see how that goes but that brings up a big question:

What's the order of reassembly? Assumptions: some of my LR already have established coral directly attached (one is all softies, the other has some mushrooms and some LPS).

Since I want my rock to be on the glass now, should I add rock (including at least the softies), then add rinsed sand, then add water?

Or maybe enough water to submerge the corals then place rock, add sand (even rinsed clean I'm imagining this being a bit messy), then rest of water?

 

[mje113]

Ok, I think this weekend is the weekend. I'm most likely taking on way to much at once but I have multiple goals I want to accomplish.

1. Deal with various nuisance algae issues. Cyano + red hair + diatoms I think
2. Redo aquascape. Will be removing one substantial piece of LR and adding some dry shelf rock that I want to glue my LR to.
3. Replace sandbed with brand new, washed Fiji Pink
4. Setup a new Pico(!) with the removed piece of LR and some of the old sand.

I'd love to get rid or re-home a few hitchhikers in the process but I think that's just too much to take on.

Here's the steps I'm planning on, hope I can get some feedback:

Friday
1. Wash new Fiji Pink sand. I have some delicate laundry bags I'll attempt to wash with but otherwise will use the bucket method
2. Mix saltwater, I'd like to start with at least 8g total spread over 2 5g buckets (A and B)

Saturday
1. Siphon ~3g water into a 5g bucket (C)
2. Remove lose rock and corals that are not embedded in sand and place in bucket
3. Siphon ~2g water into another 5g bucket (D)
4. Catch fish and shrimp and place in D
5. Remove remaining rocks and try to brush/wash sand and detritus off
6. Dump sand and rock (will reserve a bit for the Pico)
7. Clean tank
8. Spot clean rock with h2o2 and a toothbrush.
9. Glue new aquascape (minor changes, just gluing existing rock to some small shelf rock to get it off of the sand)
10. Place rock & coral
11. Place sand
12. Add water from A & B & D
13. Add fish and inverts

Sunday
1. Wash reused sand
2. Assemble Pico
3. Watch football

Does that make sense? I'm a little concerned killing off bacteria with the h2o2... though there's really not too much algae on the rocks, maybe I'll skip that and see how far I can get with a toothbrush.

 

[brandon429]

we never use toothbrushes, those smash bits of algae into the rock we use steak knives as rasping agents on the rock, to actually scrape and dislodge small particles of rock while saltwater is rinsing that off down the drain, a toothbrush is too weak and pestles the target into rock crevices and leaves all the holdfasts still anchored.

peroxide goes on the cleaned off rocks, after rinsing, after knife scraping where they already look perfect (the inclination of the masses is to take out a rock with a target embedded, and add peroxide all over the target, we're opposite)

I recommend no customization whatsoever, bacteria and cycle issues were never mentioned here bc they do not apply, peroxide can't kill your biofilter or it would be excluded from the steps we use vs included

if people change the method and lose a coral or a fish, they'll blame the method we didn't want changed

*also to add, after all rip cleans we re-ramp the lights, don't put back on full strength running lights/handle as if new LED's needing a 5 day ramp up.

 

[brandon429]

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

wanted to post 6 big rip cleans, to show no cycling issue. I realize it looks crazy if a web guy says peroxide isn't going to kill bacteria

 

[mje113]

Any chance you have photos--or even better video, of what the steak knife process looks like? I'm having trouble picturing it.

 

[brandon429]

gator did the process in that thread above but he mainly only posted the before and after shots/wrecked with GHA then unwrecked.

it works simple, like this: sets a big rock covered in gha on the counter.

if its a cyano rock, or a bryopsis rock, or a chrysophytes rock, all the same

use a steak knife tip to debride the entire rock, scored free of algae by detail so he could work around attached corals and not scrape their flesh. exactly as targeted as a dentist works in the mouth to avoid gums but scrape hard on teeth to dislodge plaque

cyano will rub off with a rag or with water flow, anchored items like green hair algae need a metal knife tip to score out the mini anchors gripping into the upper rock surface.

dig in pretty well, drag out and rinse off with saltwater you will see it's big work vs an easy job: price of delay

imagine the process when it was just one tuft of algae; could have lifted up, scraped off with a knife, set rock back and moved on/ but left to grow/becomes a GHA challenge tank

you are doing the target cleaning with a knife that you wish a team of turbo snails would do, but won't unless you're the 1% lucky.


once the rock is done 100% and look perfect, and rinsed off in saltwater back to 100% perfect looking, you can put peroxide on it at that point, in the places algae used to be. there's no benefit to dipping a rock, be precise, like a dentist is precise with the implements of the trade

this peroxide final step is to burn the most invisible holdfast cells if any; your thorough reef dentistry already made the rock look 100% perfect before you even added peroxide.

you can spray on peroxide, or dribble some on, it does not matter


then let sit a few mins in the air, rinse off one more time, put rocks back. do every rock, if it's a big job/that means you'll have to change reef design markedly to not wind up here again in a few mos.

this method will not kill your filter bacteria, though it sounds harsh. reason why: scraping with a knife is never antibacterial

placing weak 3% peroxide safe to gargle in a mouth, or put in a human ear, on reef rock for a few mins then rinsing off isn't antibacterial either. you'd have to extend either the contact time or the peroxide potency.

once the sand is 1000% rinsed out to perfection, and these clean rocks set on top, that completes the physical act of transforming a eutrophic reef tank into an oligotrophic reef tank-no dosers, no testing, no delay no hesitation just a slew of excellent after pics are coming in each example.

how we choose to reef thereafter determines regrowth rates. we merely provide the skip cycle deep clean right here using updated cycling science to make each job a true skip cycle work.

 

[brandon429]

*hey can u take the first few actual pics of rock dentistry when you can, so we can have those logged

agreed prior works didn't post the surgery very much it was mainly about the before and after overall shots

 

[mje113]

Ok, here goes!!! Rinsed and cleaned 20lb of new Fiji Pink. Using advice I got in this thread I used a delicate garment laundry bag. It really helped as I was able to remove all the sand from the bucket and dump dirty water quite easily. Also flipped the bucket over and hoses the bag down while stretched over it. Took me less than an hour before it was running 100% clean. It's now in a small bucket getting a couple hour flush of RODI:

The only other planned steps today is to mix a bunch of saltwater.

 

[brandon429]

Well done pics that’s for sure a great start


isn’t it nice only having to mess with temp and salinity, the other params don’t matter bc no salt brand mixes up to lethal levels of any param. By dropping the light intensity down in the new tank setup we mitigate higher alk level burns etc or lower nitrate water


the power of the lighting we run greatly influences loss from parameter shifts, you can get away with shifts as long as light level starts over

Many dosing caused rtn events are sunburns in my opinion, since we eliminated the issue for pages on end in the sand rinse thread.

 

[UltraKelius]

Very interesting thread! Following to see more before and after results