Help with biocube 32

Trillaman954 · Dec 4, 2023

SteveMM62Reef said:
Soak the Pumps in Citric Acid. Put just enough water in the bucket to cover the pump, then add the Citric Acid, which is in the Canning Section at most ACE Hardware Stores. Also you can get Roots Circle in nice Bulk Jars from Amazon.

What is citric acid for. And should I also add to dt

Trillaman954 · Dec 4, 2023

SteveMM62Reef said:
Soak the Pumps in Citric Acid. Put just enough water in the bucket to cover the pump, then add the Citric Acid, which is in the Canning Section at most ACE Hardware Stores. Also you can get Roots Circle in nice Bulk Jars from Amazon.

What is citric acid for. And can I also add it to dt tank?

Trillaman954 · Dec 4, 2023

Took the vinegar out and let everything soak in fresh water and finally scrubbed everything off the tank and accessories. I saw some scratches and some broken things on the sump. Overall I say it’s in 7/10 condition. The uv sterilizer bulb is broken so I have to get a new one of those. Now it’s time to aquascape and do the sand!

Nano_Man · Dec 5, 2023

Trillaman954 said:
Took the vinegar out and let everything soak in fresh water and finally scrubbed everything off the tank and accessories. I saw some scratches and some broken things on the sump. Overall I say it’s in 7/10 condition. The uv sterilizer bulb is broken so I have to get a new one of those. Now it’s time to aquascape and do the sand!

You’ve done a great job at cleaning everything. I am the same I buy second hand tanks and you get scratches on the glass as long as they aren’t bad you can live with it

kevgib67 · Dec 5, 2023

Trillaman954 said:
Took the vinegar out and let everything soak in fresh water and finally scrubbed everything off the tank and accessories. I saw some scratches and some broken things on the sump. Overall I say it’s in 7/10 condition. The uv sterilizer bulb is broken so I have to get a new one of those. Now it’s time to aquascape and do the sand!

Wow, great job! I know this is crazy but it is cheaper to buy a new Coralife uv unit that contains the bulb than buying a bulb itself. That’s what I do.

Trillaman954 · Dec 6, 2023

Ok so I’m done! It was pretty Interesting. I removed the live rock from my original tank and scaped a similar structure(i like it lol). I rinsed the new sand until the water wasn’t cloudy anymore in ro water. I did it for a long time to try and also rinse the nutrients out because i felt like excess elements in the presence of the shift in algae and bacteria will cause more of a bloom? I know bacterial bloom is good but I wanted to keep everything to a gradual increase rather than a full on bloom. Is there such thing as rodi sand lol? That’s what I was trying to achieve. I finished scaping then took the top layer of my original tank and seeded the new tanks top layer with it. I’m hoping for the pods with eggs here. Then got the empty carib sand bag and placed it on the sand and used the return pump to fill the tank. I first filled the new tank with 10 gallons of fresh Red Sea artificial from the lfs and then took half the water out of my original tank and got to pumping. I removed the hob filters (2 aquaclear 70s and a top fin silent stream), and placed them on the new tank. I put 4 carbon/fleece cartridges 4 months supply) from the topfin silentsteams and let it run. They suck for mechanical filtering but are great for water clarity. It wasn’t really cloudy but I wanted the bacteria from the media to start pushing in the new tank through the old filters. I took the clowns and lawnmower blenny first . Let them chill for like 30 minutes. Then I added the pistol shrimp and all my cuc. I waited an hour then added my mandarin. I forgot about the wheelers goby because the shrimp looked like it was missing something and found him hiding in the old tank buried in the sand . Once all the livestock was in the tank I added the rest of the water from the tank and the corals last. There was like 2 gallons left of water so I swished it real hard and as it was spinning i put my net in there to catch more pods ‍

. I let that chill and added atm triage to the new tank to bring down ammonia levels. There was like roughly 10 gallons I didn’t add yet. In the am I went to lfs, did spin test,

And bought the last 10 gallons of water. And vioala! Here we are

Everything seems fine. I kinda messed up with the purple polyp placement thinking it would look nice next to the xenias since they are similar in shape. Nope…Xenia said POP. And now I can’t see the purple polyps lol. The mandarin started looking for food immediately, his lil fat ahh. I treated this transfer like a water change basically. Assuming the new sand had no nutrients due to the vigorous wash and the little bit of sand I added from the original, the original volume of water from my tank, and I was aiming for ammonia and nitrite levels to be near the same as my original tank after the transfer. They ended up being exactly the same level after the transfer(I know they were high, hence me having atm triage handy lol,I was working on bringing them down!) now hope everything stays stable!