I want to rip clean my 300 gallon tank

[brandon429]

don't brush rocks here either no scraping they're great. keep the periphyton layers. use jetting or hard swishing or a powerhead submerged, aimed right at rocks, hand moved around have all safety lines up like gfci connections etc disclaimer. detritus is dislodged in the directed aimed current and the other reef attachments think that's a walk in the park. anything that turns loose was destined for the detritus pile anyway. only by water currenting is ideal cleaning. can be that actual holding water and tank for a bit

then a sub rinse in water before setting back in. 100% fact: if you had to blast a sec on freshwater as the last step before setting on clean sand, in hundreds of gallons of water/the horror


zero bad things will happen.



you've three hundred gallons of salt dilution, you have wiggle room a mile wide. brief freshwater blasting harms your live rock no moreso than it harms a common clownfish in hypo treatment. not ideal but not lethal for the intervals we use.

so what you're saying is I should invent a rip cleaning app that facetimes then retire and live in the caymans. ok gotcha. because when they say do something you love

 

[bickouder]

I try to change out 20-40 gallons a day. I have a hose ran to my tank that fills it from the top and a drain line ran out of my sump so all I have to do is turn on the water and go work on something else around the house









Nox vidmate vlc

 

[Miami Reef]

The water was SO murky. It was so disgusting.

I never rinsed live sand before and this was put in the tank less than 2 years ago.

 

[Miami Reef]

The tank is completely empty.

 

[ApoIsland]

Nice work. It's a brutal day of hard labor but I actually somewhat enjoy moving day from time to time as I get to basically do a rip clean each time. The tank and corals never look better than they do after a good rip clean.

Kind of like when you move into a new house/condo or have a big garage sale and you have taken the time to throw away all the useless crap you have accumulated over the years.

Here is a video of Tidal Gardens using Glue Masters thin superglue and sand as building material. There is no need to cure this stuff and it holds extremely well.
Aquascaping the Tidal Gardens SPS Show Tank! Episode 2 - YouTube

Wish this video was made 10 years ago for my tank...

 

[brandon429]

it’s literally in the surgical / life support stage at this point pretty amazing. It feels so strange to be tap rinsing, it does for me


bye bye bacteria, all my hard work is how it feels. This man must be off rocker why am I doing this is how it feels

but when it’s back to clean reassembled and light is lowered no intensity burn for about four days and corals fed lightly repeated by precision in the new system to coax them back out will work and set the tank to be least selective for cyano and gha issues. I’ve never seen dinos caused by a rip clean in any tank at any time.

 

[Devaji]

nice to see the progress. great job!

what I did for my NSA aqua scape is BRS supper glue with my DIY accelerator then purble marco mortar. I'll post some pics if you like ot you can check out my build thread.

is it still going to be a FOWLR?

 

[Miami Reef]

It’s going to be reef tank with soft corals

 

[Miami Reef]

Hi @brandon429
I ordered Oolite sand live. I’m not going to reuse my old sand because I want the small grain look.

Is rinsing oolite the same process?

 

[brandon429]

those types are typically unrinsable since theyre already silty sized grains.

the initial clouding from that type of sand won't be the destructive kind associated with aged beds if any.

if you want to add the typical flocculant pack added to help bring down clouding and give a few days for settling I bet it will be ok, lots of reefers use oolite sand but not in sps tanks they really hate it for high flow setups. piles all in one corner, rains down across corals with any slight insult.

*the tradeoff from this small size is ultimate detritus rejection, it piles on top vs sinks down gives more time for hand removal and for distribution by currents compared to any larger grain beds.

 

[Miami Reef]

those types are typically unrinsable since theyre already silty sized grains.

the initial clouding from that type of sand won't be the destructive kind associated with aged beds if any.

if you want to add the typical flocculant pack added to help bring down clouding and give a few days for settling I bet it will be ok, lots of reefers use oolite sand but not in sps tanks they really hate it for high flow setups. piles all in one corner, rains down across corals with any slight insult.

awesome. I have a lagoon style tank. It’s perfect.

 

[brandon429]

then that grain has some nice application in that type flow.

easier waste removal from the top

smaller particle size dissolves easier for uptake into water aka calcium reactor style sandbed support. They cover in the chem forum that tank water itself isn't low enough pH to be dissolving a bed, but metabolism within that bed as time compiles certainly is a factor and causes replacement needed over time for many reefers who never removed any of their initial sandbed. it went into solution just like calcium reactor media over time and silt powder-sized grains are ready for quick dissolution.

it looks nicer than regular sand imo you just can't sps flow it.

 

[Miami Reef]

RIP clean completed. All rocks were bleached and sand completely changed. I put a very thin layer to prevent detritus build up.

I’m so happy I did this. I didn’t add any live rocks from my previous system because I don’t want to introduce any pests and aptasia.

I really hope these pictures help. If you need any more pictures let me know! It’s the least I can do after you helping me! @brandon429





Here is the before:

And this is an after picture with the same lighting I used in the before pictures.

 

[Miami Reef]

And a video of the before.



Plus more before pics

 

[MartinM]

I can’t recommend using actual live rock enough. I’m constantly seeing threads on R2R with people struggling with all kinds of nuisance algae and diatoms, these are issues I’ve never had in my 25+ years in the hobby, primarily because I only use 100% live rock, then feed well to keep the natural ecosystem alive, which prevents any one organism from running rampant. Secondarily, I have a lot and a variety of snails, and ones that aren’t commonly stocked in high quantities, like cowries.

 

[brandon429]

Miami reef this is a huge gallon job I linked it in the sr thread

 

[Thaxxx]

Miami reef this is the biggest most thorough job I can recall for rip cleans, I have linked this on page one of the sand rinse thread that way nobody with a nano reef ever has an excuse not to

I'm not getting something here.
All of these rip clean threads/posts and all I see here is just starting over again.
Rocks were bleached (completely dead) new sand was used. This is just a NEW start up.

 

[brandon429]

Maybe I’m off summary then, Miami can you remind me are the fish in holding tanks about to go back in, and is some old rock going in sump I can’t recall, is this a whole new setup just carrying over the fish to the new tank?

 

[brandon429]

I just re read thats right Thaxx it’s moving a bioload into a new tank (same glass all new substrate and rocks). Hard to get all these details right / many rips going on

in four months time under lights and bioload it will be neat to see if the original condition can be headed off, white new rocks absolutely love algae

i truly thought we were re using the old rocks so that their biology carried over into the clean system.

 

[Miami Reef]

I thought Rip clean meant that you take the tank apart and put it back together haha. Whoops! I guess I didn’t do a rip clean at the end. I did a new start, but I completely skipped the new tank syndrome! I have 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites and I have nitrates!

I wanted to change my aquascape so I bleached my rocks to prevent die off and a cycle.

This is not an example of a rip clean. I didn’t use any live rock from previous setup but I skipped the cycle! I used live sand and Dr. Tim’s One And Only.