GHA - Losing the battle

[brandon429]

Key planning brainstorms for your setup:

Before initiation I think you should rasp clean 2-3 rocks for practice that way the greater system is running normal with no rush

It's tricky to get in the crevices since we don't use brushes: brushes crush up invader bits and smash them into the rock- a thin knife tip is precision and takes longer but all those jobs are knifed not brushed its worth the detail time

Rinse rocks in saltwater along the way

Sand gets the tap rinse we don't care about its bacteria

You could do that part last, the sand

Don't forget during the sand rinse in tap water that you're verifying sections in a clear glass of water to ensure absolute perfection rinse not one iota of clouding left

When it's all done prepped and proofed, then the final rinse should be saltwater here on the sand: have extra saltwater on hand


Then the final step is 100% new water back in, no old

No handful of old sand goes back in we do 100% rinses for safety of your fish reasons, that old sand has nothing you need in the new iteration

Match temp and salinity to the old water, no other params matter

Cover your fish so they don't jump when in holding

That's only one of my rip clean threads its my best of the best

Don't forget to take the empty tank and take it outside and wash it out, dry it back to sterile clean glass so there's no scum no spots - it's worth it I promise

The cleaning is the hard part

Once the rocks are done, and the sand, and the tank glass 100% clean the reassembly goes fast

Sand in first then rocks then pour in water slowly over top of rocks, refilled laser clean

Install heater and pumps, add fish back in

No testing for anything but temp and salinity (cheap ammonia tests misread, make people dump in lots of remediation chemicals we don't want)

Trust the process: clean no cloud will skip cycle

No bottle bac is used, we preserved the bacteria on the rocks even with the peroxide application that came after the surgical cleaning

 

[brandon429]

We posted at the same time

Everything is still on track, if you use new sand it's pre rinsed the exact same way.


There are few things to do differently once clean, to lessen regrowth. They don't matter right now and Austin traffic is getting bad I've got to stop knee driving a sec lol we'll review preventatives in a bit, lots of good suggestions here already they just need to come after the rip clean not before

We need all that mass gone: not recycled into somethings waste pellets

 

[brandon429]

I give your shrimp a 96% chance of being fine

The fish and cycle will be fine

There's a price to pay for this much eutrophication in place: irritants and compounds are what the animals are habituated to and sometimes moving things around stresses them via inevitable waste clouding

Your main goal is saving the system, not the shrimp. They're far less likely to live if you dose fluconazole and rot all that mass in the tank, ironically the surgery is the safest mode you can use. I don't remember losing a shrimp in the last 7 years of rip cleans so the safety is stellar

 

[A_Poythress]

Sounds good! I’m a little fuzzy on the rock cleaning step.
So I remove them, place in a container of salt water, pull out one at a time to clean with a knife. I’m just scraping off the bad spots?
then shake in a bucket of salt water to shake off debris and anything else unwanted. Not brushing at all?
And as for peroxide, just dripping on spots I’m cleaning with my knife?

 

[brandon429]

Yes for sure just that. I sat my bad rocks right on the counter once, corals attached in the air, and I used a steak knife to tip scrape in detail each area

Then I'd rinse off that section with saltwater and continue on exactly like a dentist

They're using that sharp pointy metal angle and they detail the teeth and avoid the gums

Brushes just smash bits of the invader deeper into the cracks it's not ideal, they don't scrape the actual rock/ that algae attaches to the rock and rasping scratches the adherents loose its why dentists don't begin with a brush they begin with a rasp and its rough not gentle

Once it's clean just put peroxide on the cleaned areas and let it sit a few mins, rinse off in brief saltwater and put back

It would be nice to have some/ most done before the sand part just so that last step goes faster with the sand cleaning

 

[A_Poythress]

Thanks! I hope to do a test piece this weekend. Depends on how things go.

 

[A_Poythress]

Was unable to get around to cleaning a test piece. I have time set aside tomorrow night to give it a shot. If all goes well I will do the whole tank this coming weekend.

 

[A_Poythress]

Finally had some spare time to give this a shot on a small piece of rock. I definitely learned a few things for when it is time to do the entire tank.

• this takes a long time! 1 hour spent on just this small piece.
• My rocks are smothered in a brown slime and green algae. When I say smothered I seriously mean that. Not a spot without brown or green.
• I need to find a better tool to scrape off the rock. Tried using a small paring knife but it still seemed a little too big for some sections

any recommendations on how to really clean off this brown film? Scraping worked for most but a lot of pores on the rock are clogged with the stuff. I know I am supposed to drop some hydrogen peroxide on cleaned sections but the entire rock was covered so I ended putting it almost all over.

*picture is not the best. Will try to get a better one tomorrow*

 

[ph2505]

I was in a similar situation GHA everywhere... I found peroxide and water changes worked the best for me.

I put the peroxide in a little spray bottle and when I was doing water changes as the water level dropped and exposed the rock I sprayed it all over. Was doing this 2x week for maybe 2 months

also bought this from Amazon to get it off:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09TNR2WCL?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

actually found the built in scraper to be very useful. good luck

 

[brandon429]

That’s the way that works best however it’s sliced. It’s the price of delay, but then again not any poster writing on reef boards teaches immediate disallowance of the invasion when it’s small and that degree of work would be 1 hour / the totality of the invasion.


even today I’m reading forum teachers here directly telling dry rock starts to use brushes, leave the sand uncleaned, and use clean up crews or additives like GFO in the filters. We are all being taught the exact opposite of immediate disallowance, and we are all working back from a fully invaded condition as a result. It’ll be worth it when done

at any time a brush can be used to cover more ground, faster, there’s just a reason I would never ever do that. Most demand the time savings and opt to brush it off, that’s a fact.

once your tank is completely restored back to no plant mass and no waste in the sandbed, then the prevention steps go into place starting with light intensity reduction and potentially involving UV light if you want real work reduction at the expense of buying yet another gadget. Making sure topoff water is 0/0 perfect condition etc

I wouldn’t add clean up crews to your tank until absolute last place after the others. This is the truth in clean up crews: immediate fish disease import risk, and 1% chance that anyone’s recommend from their own experience doesn’t work for your invasion. Everyone in the nuisance algae forum is using clean up crews, yet still dealing with wrecked tanks. It’s simply a 99% chance any cuc you read as a recommend wont work, and a significant % chance that adding unfallowed clean up crews from a pet store can get your tank infected with disease, aka “fish died after adding clean up crew” threads from the disease forum. if you can find pre quarantined cuc to try, then it’s harmless to see if you get lucky about their target preference

 

[A_Poythress]

I’m sticking to the plan with no brushes. I do think the amount of time this will take is going to be worth it in the end so I am not in a rush.

New dentist tools have been ordered and will be delivered today (best $7 spent on Amazon this year so far)

now that I have a more clear expectation going in to this project I plan on setting aside my Sunday to getting this done. So ready to walk in to my house and be happy when I see the tank and not embarrassed when guests are over asking “Uhmmm what’s that green stuff?”

 

[A_Poythress]

I do think it’s crazy how much the industry teaches “it’s going to be ugly for the first two years just deal with it.” Or the other extreme “kill it with every chemical you can think of”.

I wish I would have know about this method of cleaning about 6 months ago. I probably could have prevented this outbreak by taking out rocks at intervals and scraping them down. Wouldn’t have taken care of the sand bed issues, but I wonder if the result of that would have been worth the effort.

 

[A_Poythress]

This was a rough process! 8 hours of work later and I hope I did it well enough to make a difference. My rocks were smothered in a thick slime that was dark brown. This was nearly impossible to get off so it took forever. Sand cleaning takes a long time as well, but I’m sure I got that cleaned well enough!

here are some before pictures:

After:

All in all I am happy with the way it turned out! I do think the effort it takes to strip this tank down is worth it. Even if the tank is only this clean for the next 6 months to a year. I am glad to finally have a tank that doesn’t look like garbage. Hopefully I can keep the algae at bay this time and keep things looking clean.

 

[A_Poythress]

@brandon429 thanks for recommending this method to me (and many others)! I will for sure be pointing people to your threads in the future.

 

[brandon429]

@A_Poythress

that's such a clean rinse, move, set of pics + after pics I will move that over to my best-of-the-best thread later on today, well done

future prediction:

anywhere corals grow, algae grows. Algae here and in 90% of tanks is NOT a sign of water/parameter troubles. We have been trained to think that way for 30 years. scientists have done and published studies we can easily search where they used wire mesh boxes to section off portions of healthy natural reefs, blocking out clean up crews: urchins, snails, fish, crabs etc from their duties. algae took over those blocked off sections


algae grows in your tank because basic nutrient needs are met, that you can't avoid because you're going to grow coral, and primarily because open real estate exists without rejecting surfaces to ward off algae (live thick coralline wards off algae chemically, allelopathically)

algae grew copiously in the wire mesh box studies, in what we'd all agree were perfect waters. this does NOT mean aquarists can randomly buy 50 mixed crabs and snails and get algae control: if it was that easy nobody would rip clean we'd just buy reefcleaners packs and everyone would win. If we reactively add cuc packs, that gets us disease and fish wipeouts we can clearly see in trending...and even if we carefully prep them with fallow holding, upon addition we can clearly see in algae challenge threads they just don't work for the masses. they work as one-off reports for the lucky


a rip clean made your tank cloud free. you can now lift up rocks for external cleaning and it will take all of 10 mins not 8 hours. done prior, when you lift up rocks a huge upwell of waste follows around the tank from underneath, spurning more growths. that's gone now, and it will take time for cells lodged into the rocks to exhaust from prior-available nutrient stores. you just fight it with occasional lift out guiding dentistry, hold course on your parameters.

lowering light intensity is likely your greatest help/until the system is packed in top level sps we don't need super bright levels

your tank can be fed well now, prior condition any extra feeding would add into current waste stores and add to the invasion. any corals you buy can now be fed well and not have to be withheld in the name of invasion starving

you just prevented the tradeoff between GHA, cyano and dinos we see in countless other invasion threads where rip cleans are not done. they cycle between the big 3 invasions for years and most don't get to enjoy reefing. you sidecut all that, and your tank is going to stay clean and you can easily garden it like we do to keep dandelions out of a pristine yard we just spent the whole weekend bringing back from the edge. though the rip clean does not permanently kill algae, it breathes life into your tank and now the animals aren't stressed by plant exudates and dying cellular chemicals from using medications. the rip clean is literally cpr for a stressed out nano reef

I'll get to moving over the pics and summary soon, many people will be able to copy your method to fix the tanks quickly/without delay

 

[brandon429]

the whole point of the rip clean was reducing the offending mass -99% and for positioning your reef to allow you the ongoing access needed to force compliance out of your rocks, until someone invents a hands off method one day that works well for the masses vs just their own tank.

 

[A_Poythress]

Update:
Tank is looking great! My goby never explored the tank but now he is all over the place! Corals are bright and starting to open up and noticeable tissue repair is starting to happen on my chalice.

My wife keeps walking by the tank and says “just wow” every time she sees it now.
I plan on doing a parameter test tonight just to see how phosphate and nitrates are doing now.

Can’t thank you enough for recommending this method! Went from wanting to tear it all down to having a full cart of corals on my WWC account.

 

[brandon429]

A_ hey I wanted to ask you something

I am writing up the inclusion here for our best of the best thread

readers already know that a determined reef surgeon can change a wrecked tank to a clean tank overnite, that magic trick for reader retention is wearing off after 8 years of it he he

the real trick is the sustain

heck even a decent fluconazole thread can attain what we did with the small tradeoff of dead material littered all around your tank heh

it can indeed clean some mess off rocks

but what's the sustain factor in any fluconazole work thread (see the 600 page one in the nuisance forum stickies)

=dinos. cyano, sustain rate grading is F or at best D-

we want to track your sustain rate, you don't strike me as a reefer who would turn to passivity after this degree of effort. we want to work together live time for the next year on your tank, intercepting challenges as needed so that you do not have to start over, or use meds

can you stay in touch, driving us back to work as needed we need that long term feedback to hit what readers really want

different methods of physicality are what we'll use. not much chemistry, no Identification needed, very little biology, a form of directed brutism is the mode

disallowance of invasion

 

[A_Poythress]

For sure! I’ll definitely stick around and keep updates coming. As specific info needs arise feel free to ask as well.

 

[Reef-_-Noob]

I got thru page 2 and saw many mention turbo snails. Did op ever get turbo snails?