Giving up on my main DT, advice on a teardown and rebuild?

[Eclyps19]

Before everyone starts asking questions, here's the thread outlining the issues that I've been experiencing: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/coral-dying-in-dt-but-thriving-in-nearly-identical-qt.805983/

After over 2 years of battling with my dream tank, my beloved Red Sea Reefer 525XL, I have given up. I have spent so much time, so much money, and so many gray hairs on trying to get it to thrive, and it’s just been disappointment after disappointment at every single turn. I was SO careful with it, too. Everything was quarantined, I took my time with everything, I have everything automated (water changes, dosing, trident testing, etc). I got proper PAR measurements and set my lights accordingly. I cannot express how disappointed I am at this point. And it's not like I'm new to reefing - I've had tanks for 5 years now. My 30g which was my original tank was for the most part always amazing. Heck, I have it as a QT tank now and even when I neglect it and forget to do a WC on it for 2 months it's still thriving. With my big expensive tank, though, no luck. At this point I've simply run out of options...

I’m not out entirely, though. Im going to give it one last shot with a full tear-down, a full cleaning, and then a rebuild. 100% new live sand, 100% new live rock, no original coral (because nothing could survive in there except for mushrooms and zoas), the only things that are getting put back in there eventually are the fish. I'm even going to change up my salt (I've always used HW Marinemix, but it doesn't seem very common and I can only find it at BRS).

So here is where I need some advice... just general tips on the tear-down, cleaning, and re-stocking of my tank.

• After I fully drain it, what should I be cleaning it with?
• How long should I let it sit dry?
• Any random words of wisdom on cleaning a large tank?
• Thoughts on spending the money on true live rock/sand from somewhere like Gulf Live Rock for the rebuild?

I have the following fish:

• 2x Clowns
• 1x Magnificent Foxface
• 1x Yellow Tang
• 1x Vrolik's Wrasse
• 1x Leopard Wrasse

I have a 30g and a 10g tank that I can use to temporarily home my livestock. I'm thinking about keeping the Clowns in a 10g and the other 4 in the 30g. It would hopefully only be for a couple of weeks since I'll be filling my DT with live rock and sand.

I don't even know what else I'm asking for. I just don't think I can deal with another dud if this rebuild doesn't work out, so I want to make sure that I increase my odds of success in every possible way.

Thanks for listening to my sob story

 

[Dbichler]

Absolutely on real live rock I got mine from Walt smith 16 years ago. Don’t know all the vendors nowadays but it would be the only way I would start a new tank. You will still have algaes and hitchhikers though so don’t expect perfection right off the bat. I would clean with vinegar and citric acid. That’s just me though others may use other stuff. Live sand would be a waste with new real live rock save the money. Remember keep it simple stupid. The further you go down the rabbit hole the worse things seem to get at least for me.

 

[Ramdude4G]

I haven’t read your other thread but sounds to me that your bio load is way to small for this size tank. And could be the root cause of all your problems. But that’s just an assumption with out reading the other thread first. With just a few fish and a few corals i can’t see where you’d really need to be dosing anything. Maybe before you tear it down might try digging a little deeper. Just my thoughts. Good luck.

 

[QuarantinedCorals]

I would recommend you fill it with hose water after it's been emptied, dump in some citric acid and let everything circulate for a day, you can then take a magic eraser and scrub everything down, citric acid will break down pretty much everything making cleaning easier on you.

 

[TnFishwater98]

Absolutely on real live rock I got mine from Walt smith 16 years ago. Don’t know all the vendors nowadays but it would be the only way I would start a new tank. You will still have algaes and hitchhikers though so don’t expect perfection right off the bat. I would clean with vinegar and citric acid. That’s just me though others may use other stuff. Live sand would be a waste with new real live rock save the money. Remember keep it simple stupid. The further you go down the rabbit hole the worse things seem to get at least for me.

Gulf Live Rock is excellent. Needs to be wash off in a few buckets to get all the ocean debris off rocks. Find some cool stuff at the bottom of those buckets also. My true belief is using real LR takes care of a lot of problems.

 

[Eclyps19]

I would recommend you fill it with hose water after it's been emptied, dump in some citric acid and let everything circulate for a day, you can then take a magic eraser and scrub everything down, citric acid will break down pretty much everything making cleaning easier on you.

How about purging the tank after cleaning? I want to make sure that I'm not leaving in anything harmful when I do the final fill.

 

[JumboShrimp]

Bar Keeper’s Friend (from Walmart, etc), and a little elbow grease will really help with your empty-tank clean-up. Make a paste, and use a rag. (Just don’t get any trapped sand under your rag when you are scrubbing, because naturally you don’t want to scrape your glass.) Rinse the tank thoroughly with water, and when it is dry, it is dry— so there is no need to wait days and days beyond that. And check out the newer R2R FOWLR Forum. Best wishes!

 

[Eclyps19]

Thanks for the advice, folks. Gut wrenching to start going down this path, but I’m trying to be optimistic.

 

[TnFishwater98]

Thanks for the advice, folks. Gut wrenching to start going down this path, but I’m trying to be optimistic.

It will feel good once the process starts

 

[davidcalgary29]

Out of curiosity, have you tested out the lighting in your tanks with a PAR meter? That might be able to provide you with a direct comparison with your frag tank.

 

[Eclyps19]

Out of curiosity, have you tested out the lighting in your tanks with a PAR meter? That might be able to provide you with a direct comparison with your frag tank.

I did! That was one of the final "it has to be this..." things that I checked. Both tanks use the exact same light, but the QT has 1 while the DT has 2. While there are definite "hot spots" on the DT where the lights overlap, the average par at the bottom, mid, top are all fairly close between the two tanks.

 

[QuarantinedCorals]

How about purging the tank after cleaning? I want to make sure that I'm not leaving in anything harmful when I do the final fill.

Hey so if you're talking about not leaving behind any residue from the acid, that's a good question which I don't have the answer to, however, I've done this on a couple tanks and it's worked really well. After the tank has been completely emptied, fill it back up with your hose water, dump in the citric acid, once the tank is cleaned you should empty it and what I do is take it outside with a furniture moving dally and give the tank a good rinse off, water water builds up inside the tank from the wash I shop vac out and repeat it a couple of times. I dry the tank off and move it to wherever I'm gonna store it, I have reused the tank after using citric acid on it and haven't seen residual affects. I originally saw the idea on "Reefdudes" YouTube chanel, I didn't watch the whole video through so I'm not sure if he spoke about cleaning the tank after the citric acid but it might be worth checking out.

 

[jtichenor]

I would restart with dry rock to eliminate potential nasties that come with live rock. If you have any local reefer friends that have mature and thriving tanks, see if they could put some MarinePure balls in their sumps for a couple months for you. When you pick them up, also get several gallons of water from their tanks. This will give you the surface and suspended biological bacterial diversification without the risk of live rock. Try to get more than one tank to donate - even better!

 

[Eclyps19]

Hey so if you're talking about not leaving behind any residue from the acid, that's a good question which I don't have the answer to, however, I've done this on a couple tanks and it's worked really well. After the tank has been completely emptied, fill it back up with your hose water, dump in the citric acid, once the tank is cleaned you should empty it and what I do is take it outside with a furniture moving dally and give the tank a good rinse off, water water builds up inside the tank from the wash I shop vac out and repeat it a couple of times. I dry the tank off and move it to wherever I'm gonna store it, I have reused the tank after using citric acid on it and haven't seen residual affects. I originally saw the idea on "Reefdudes" YouTube chanel, I didn't watch the whole video through so I'm not sure if he spoke about cleaning the tank after the citric acid but it might be worth checking out.

Thanks Sako! Anyone else have experience with ensuring that the tank is safe to fill after a thorough cleaning?

 

[TnFishwater98]

Thanks Sako! Anyone else have experience with ensuring that the tank is safe to fill after a thorough cleaning?

Just fill it a few times with water and give it a scrub down each time. Then dry

 

[bruno3047]

Before everyone starts asking questions, here's the thread outlining the issues that I've been experiencing: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/coral-dying-in-dt-but-thriving-in-nearly-identical-qt.805983/

After over 2 years of battling with my dream tank, my beloved Red Sea Reefer 525XL, I have given up. I have spent so much time, so much money, and so many gray hairs on trying to get it to thrive, and it’s just been disappointment after disappointment at every single turn. I was SO careful with it, too. Everything was quarantined, I took my time with everything, I have everything automated (water changes, dosing, trident testing, etc). I got proper PAR measurements and set my lights accordingly. I cannot express how disappointed I am at this point. And it's not like I'm new to reefing - I've had tanks for 5 years now. My 30g which was my original tank was for the most part always amazing. Heck, I have it as a QT tank now and even when I neglect it and forget to do a WC on it for 2 months it's still thriving. With my big expensive tank, though, no luck. At this point I've simply run out of options...

I’m not out entirely, though. Im going to give it one last shot with a full tear-down, a full cleaning, and then a rebuild. 100% new live sand, 100% new live rock, no original coral (because nothing could survive in there except for mushrooms and zoas), the only things that are getting put back in there eventually are the fish. I'm even going to change up my salt (I've always used HW Marinemix, but it doesn't seem very common and I can only find it at BRS).

So here is where I need some advice... just general tips on the tear-down, cleaning, and re-stocking of my tank.

• After I fully drain it, what should I be cleaning it with?
• How long should I let it sit dry?
• Any random words of wisdom on cleaning a large tank?
• Thoughts on spending the money on true live rock/sand from somewhere like Gulf Live Rock for the rebuild?

I have the following fish:

• 2x Clowns
• 1x Magnificent Foxface
• 1x Yellow Tang
• 1x Vrolik's Wrasse
• 1x Leopard Wrasse

I have a 30g and a 10g tank that I can use to temporarily home my livestock. I'm thinking about keeping the Clowns in a 10g and the other 4 in the 30g. It would hopefully only be for a couple of weeks since I'll be filling my DT with live rock and sand.

I don't even know what else I'm asking for. I just don't think I can deal with another dud if this rebuild doesn't work out, so I want to make sure that I increase my odds of success in every possible way.

Thanks for listening to my sob story

If you haven’t torn down your tank yet, have you tried giving the gravel a good washing using a gravel washing tube? Detritus can rot in your sand/gravel and never show up in your numbers. I have my own story if you’d like to hear it.

 

[Eclyps19]

If you haven’t torn down your tank yet, have you tried giving the gravel a good washing using a gravel washing tube? Detritus can rot in your sand/gravel and never show up in your numbers. I have my own story if you’d like to hear it.

I've actually removed 90% of the sand about a year ago, leaving just enough to keep my wrasses happy in a couple spots. Prior to that I did attempt to pull all my sand and wash it completely before letting it dry and returning it to the tank. So unfortunately I don't think that's it. Thanks for the suggestion, though! And I would indeed like to hear about your gravel issue in case I run into it in the future.

 

[bruno3047]

I've actually removed 90% of the sand about a year ago, leaving just enough to keep my wrasses happy in a couple spots. Prior to that I did attempt to pull all my sand and wash it completely before letting it dry and returning it to the tank. So unfortunately I don't think that's it. Thanks for the suggestion, though! And I would indeed like to hear about your gravel issue in case I run into it in the future.

My tank is up now for about four years. It’s a 125. I was adding corals one or two at a time. I had hammers, torches, acans, gonis, and zoos, And a few fish including a pair of ocellaris, a chalk basslet, a copperband butterfly and a purple firefish. At about the two-year mark, my prize three-headed toxic green torch started to look limp. Then started to lose heads. Over about three months, I lost all three heads, one at a time. Then my two- headed gold torch started to show stress. It also started to look limp. Then one head just dissolved. I had no idea what was going on. All my other corals looked OK. Not great, but not stressed. All my numbers looked perfect. Same as they had always been. I use a doser for my two-part and magnesium and I check my levels every Sunday religiously. Then, almost by accident, I happen to see a video by BRS that was instructing how to keep your gravel clean of algae. One of the methods they indicated was to use a gravel washing tube. So I figured, what the heck, I might as well. I spent 23 bucks on a 36 inch long gravel washing tube from Petco and went to work on my gravel after I put all my corals safely on the side of the tank I wasn’t working on. Best 23 bucks I ever spent. Well my corals, within the following week or so all started to look amazing. That one gold head remaining on my gold torch is still alive and splitting. So that’s my story. The detritus decaying in your gravel will never show up in your nitrate readings or any other test readings. But it’s there. And if you don’t do something about it, it’ll destroy your tank. Google “old tank syndrome“. That’s the cause. Good luck with your new tank. PS. it’s important not to wash the gravel with anything other than tank water, because if you do that, you kill all of the beneficial bacteria. That’s why the gravel washing tube is the ideal accessory to keep your tank alive. Make sure the gravel churns inside the tube as you’re siphoning water and before you release the gravel/sand back into the tank. Guaranteed the water you remove from the tank will stink to high heaven. Again. Good luck.

 

[Reefing102]

Not sure where you're at in the process, but I did take a quick look at your other thread as well as the two ICP tests that were posted. There was one thing that was concerning to me, though I don't know the best way to go about fixing it, and that was both ICP tests showed 0 Iodine. I know Iodine is one of the essential elements of a reef. How to dose it though, I am not sure.

With that said, if you've already started the tear down and restart. I definitely encourage live rock. Yes you will get bad hitchhikers (speaking from experience) but the amount of good bacteria on it, among the other cool hitchhikers, makes it hard to beat in my opinion.