Deep Reset, Reviving my 80 gallon lowboy.

[LRT]

Wanted to start a new thread to hopefully keep track of things as the new tank build progresses. As well as for a little extra added motivation to follow through.
Real quick this is the same tank from that crazy instacycle- instastock- full tank transfer- call it whatever you want to call it thread.
In case you missed it here is a Super quick re-cap of my reefing journey here.
I had a bunch of concrete mixing tubs that I turned in to a reef shown here-

I decided to upgrade my concrete mixing table- reefing station to a lowboy aqua Japan 80 gallon frag tank as shown here in June of 21 from the old transfer/ instastock thread-

Same tank June of 22-

What went wrong?
I decided to sell the monster colony of GMK zoas shown in upper left hand corner here-

It was an absoloute mess TBH. GMK was growing all over my glass and back wall behind it and where I made the biggest mistake of my reefing career was by using a nice shiny razor blade and scraping tool. The kind you slide the shiny razor into the scraper. In my haste of trying to be clean and quickly remove the zoas without nuking the tank, I ended up nuking my tank with the razor blade that slid out of the scraper and lodged behind the rack magnet. I never even noticed the razor slid out and was too worried about not nuking myself and everything else when it all came down to it. I had GMK zoas everywhere and ended up throwing a ton of them them out tbh!

 

[LRT]

I found the rusted out razor blade around 9-10 months later and by pure accident when I decided to pull my frags racks to clean them a month ago tomorrow. Was no longer shiny and totally rusted out falling apart when I peeled it off the magnet.
This was the start of the actual reset and deep clean and what im going to try and track moving forward.
Here it is when I found the razor blade after the first deep clean-

Since finding the rusty razor ive changed out around 300 gallons hoping to bring down metal toxicity levels as well as I've been running cuprisorb, that I just removed earlier today.
Which bring me to my next doozy of a post on my recent struggles with water quality.

 

[LRT]

Quick PSA.
Remember to make it a habit to check your DI cannisters and clean them even if your not changing the resin out.
I probably wasted 300 gallons of freshly mixed saltwater this last month.
For the life of me I couldn't figure out why my water was turning cloudy(other than massive water changes) and why I was getting a clear slime on top of my water after all the water changes.
Turns out my Cation cannister was fully coated in a nasty clear slime of who knows what.
I decided to check my gravity feed reservoir and sure enough it was also coated in the same nasty slime and my DI canister with what looked like nasty brown bacteria or algae growing in the bottom of my res.
I tore it all down and thoroughly cleaned my RODI system as well as gravity feed reservoir and plan to do this habitually now.
I will also be changing filters BI- Monthly and all my DI is getting changed out every 3 months.
There's just something about this 450-500 ppm tap water that my filters and cans just cant keep up with.

 

[LRT]

Now that water quality clean-up is well under way lets get on to the fun stuff and get all caught up lol!

Rock and surface clean-up.
I did take most of my rock out and have scrubbed it once already. Rinsed in tank water from water changes over the last month.
I have a feeling it's all really been for nothing considering who knows what ive been pumping back into the water with my nasty DI cartridges and slime coated top off water reservoir.
I cleaned all my glass today while I made a fresh batch of saltwater with freshly made 0 water rodi.
Scraped most of my glass today and plan on getting the rest of the glass tomorrow while I have the rock pulled out for another deep scrub and rinse.
I'm prepared to do this weekly if I have to. Took 9 months to get this way but something is telling me good husbandry, supremely clean fresh top- off water and salt mix should get me there pretty quick.

Thought I'd mention while I was scraping the nasties off my glass today I hooked a 1 micron sock up to my overflows and dosed 1ml/10 gallons of 3% peroxide into the filter sock because I figured it couldn't hurt anything but not really sure of its going to help much either.
Here is the tank before glass cleaning today-

After cleaning glass today-

And a good look at the nasties growing all over my rockwork, racks and frag plugs-

I'll update tomorrow after I clean up.

 

[LRT]

Saved for rock cleaning progress and maybe an experiment or 2

 

[fishguy242]

Found ya' ...

 

[LRT]

Found ya' ...

Now it a party where's the DR. Pepper?

 

[fishguy242]

Safe N sound...

 

[LRT]

Safe N sound...

Love it I gotta see this man!

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Following!!

 

[Goaway]

Welcome back@!! Flipping missed seeing all the glorious shrooms.

 

[LRT]

Welcome back@!! Flipping missed seeing all the glorious shrooms.

Thank you let's try again!

Following!!

Great to have you Daniel

 

[LRT]

I got around to scrubbing the rock today. Took about 3 hrs in all but I had a ton of other thing going at the same time like moving corals to one side so I could clean the nasties off the sand and tiles to the opposite side. Between moving things around i did let the tank settle so i could get the nasties off the floor. Removed and tossed what little sand came out.
I should add i cleaned, power washed and boiled my 5 micron sock this morning and hooked it back up to my overflows and dosed 15ml 3% peroxide into the sock while I was kicking up debri and nasties.
I had a super noticeable difference in water quality already this morning.
I left the 5 micron sock on over night from yesterday's glass cleaning.
Got whatever was left of cleaning the glass cleaned up during today rock cleaning process as well.
Hopefully you can see it in the pix
Before rock scrub and sand/ tile clean-up-

Also took a look at my gravity feed float. Sure enough it was covered with a glop of nasties clear goop that had all kinds of greens, yellows and different colored nasties in it. It kind of freaked me out honestly here's what it looked like-

After rock and sand clean-up-

Took a bunch of miscellaneous pix throughout the process today.
Still a ton of work to do but got side tracked fragging some zoas!

 

[LRT]

I also thought I'd try a quick experiment. I took and cleaned up some of those nasty gloopy slime infested zoas rocks and plugs today and cut a bunch off and super glued the to a tile that has no nasties and decent coraline growth on it.
Had to get surgical around the feet with the dremel. I didn't want to transfer any of the nasties that were on the rocks and plugs. I'm hoping these GMK zoas start to grow again.

Before-

After-

 

[LRT]

Also before I forget. I ran out of water change rinse water and had to get crazy with a few rocks and rinse them under tap water set to tank temperature.
Everything on the left side of the tank was rinsed in tank water after scrub and clean-

Everything on the right side of the tank was rinsed in tank temp tap water-

Including this rock that's hanging out in the middle of the tank at back wall with the rest of the saltwater rinsed rock-

It will be interesting to watch the rock as things progress and I get water quality correct. I am expecting more nasties to grow and run the coarse but what im really interested in seeing is where do the nasties come back stronger.
Or will it even matter?

 

[LRT]

As mentioned earlier still a bunch of clean-up around corals and frag plugs and such. Going to remove alot of the floor racks as well.

Water quality is popping and the tanks only been settling down for a cpl hrs now. Everyone looks happy so I'd call today a major win around here

How things sit right now-

 

[Goaway]

Looking hot. It's demoralizing when things go wrong. But once you get back on track, you remember why it's worth it.

 

[LRT]

Tank looks incredible today! Water quality is on point. I left the 5 micron sock in overnight. Going to remove it in a bit, clean it up, boil it and clean and siphon everything I can possibly get to tomorrow. Floor, rocks, everything will be hit tomorrow with the 5 micron filtering back to the sump.
Digging the new spot for the torches.
Removed all the frag racks from the floor as well as the rest of the bowls and glued everything to discs
Starting to come together for sure.

 

[LRT]

Also though I'd mention I totally changed the flow up in this tank and pulled one of my pumps from the back to right front corner. The other is still in upper left corner. Anyhow I got way more flow for the flowy things
Thinking about a torch garden in the middle and a lot more of an assortment of different stuff up on the rock work.

 

[LRT]

Seeing major improvements this morning. I may hold off on cleaning and siphoning the floor and rocks today, maybe tomorrow.
Fish are super happy and out and about. The 3% peroxide dosing may have alot to do with this but my powder brown tang has been plucking at some of the nasty rubble and frags that I still haven't gotten to.
Thinking about fragging the multiple head torch to give the heads m0ar flowy noodle room. The big ones are splitting and hoping they will grow up like the little guys I broke off a cpl weeks ago.
Definetly seeing detritus on the floor and rocks from all the scrubbing and cleaning and disruption. I'll probably get in there with 5 micron sock and get things nice and clean again tomorrow.
All my gulf rock hitchhiker corals are starting to come back to life including the rock I scrubbed and rinsed in tap water