Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[brandon429]

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here

we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc

Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at the cellular level.

who cares what the species is of your invader-- it's about to be blasted out.

taking time to order a microscope, then extract pictures, and make a species ID is a form of action hesitation, hesitation in action causes wrecked tanks. we undo that habit system



Making your tank 100% clean so that it runs better and your corals start growing again due to the great water quality and feed you can now give has nothing to do with species ID at all.

fixing your tank so you didn't have to use chemiclean, or mess around with altering your phosphate and nitrate levels (thereby trading off the current invasion into a massive green hair algae one) did not require any species ID.


This is simply an action thread.




If you are reading this thread to move or upgrade your reef tank via skip cycle transfer science, we will prep your tank before the move so that you move only totally clean materials. the steps are still the same as those who are reading here for invasion fixes

you will skip cycle into the new setup

we don't use bottle bac here, bacteria will ride over on your rocks and that's all the bacteria we need for every job.




The Official Sand Rinse Thread

The best way to prepare your sand for use in a transferred reef tank, an upgraded reef tank, a reef tank under invasion etc is to put the sand in sections in a bucket and TAP WATER rinse it outside over and over with the garden hose until all the silt / waste is ejected, expect hours of work per bag (bagged sand wet or dry is filthy, see pic below)


when you rinse out new sand or old sand in tap water, to eject all it's waste, you have the option of using RO/DI as the final rinse (to eject tap water) or you can use saltwater to eject it. *mind your salinity drop: if you use RO/DI water, then you have several pounds of wet sand that is a large amount of freshwater about to be added back into your system, consider saltwater final rinsing or just wait and verify the salinity from a freshwater rinse before proceeding.


Your sand can have poisons and irritants in it that kill fish when disturbed, this is how we attained perfect results here with no losses, by never exposing sandbed waste clouds to your animals. this below is an example of what happens commonly when people stir up sandbeds in the presence of delicate fish or inverts:

Sand Bed

I have a stable, successful (by my standards) tank for many years. I has a dsb which may or may not be relevant to that. Seems like all I read about DSB is anecdotal. So, I will add to it. I had to excavate a small section of my sand bed for a plumbing issue. With in 12 hours, both my tangs...

www.reef2reef.com

we use tap vs saltwater or RO so that you don't run out, brief contact with tap water + a follow up rinse in RO or saltwater is just fine for your sandbed prep.

Not ammonia, the clouding contains the poison we've yet to identify:

Cloudy water, Dead Fish

I Did a water change as well as cleaned the sand. i took the rock out and scrubbed the rock with a toothbrush to get all the hair algae off. Put everything back and did a water change. A few days later water is still cloudy and all fish are dead but one. Had 2 clown fish, 2 blue chromis and a bi...

www.reef2reef.com

failing to rinse the sandbed causes losses. rinsing the sandbed works safely every time when done right, our thread shows.

Rules of Reeftank microbiology that produced all our results:

The reason all these tanks don't die when rinsing out aged system sandbeds is because the rock bacteria are kept wet in saltwater, we're allowed to eject sandbed bacteria as needed.

the old rules that said sandbed bacteria were required for filtration control are wrong. rocks are enough.

once you think your rinsed sections are clean, place test handfuls in a clear cup of water and shine a light into it viewed from the side to ensure total cloudless rinse of each section, don't halfway do the job.

rinse to startling perfection. if you can't pass the cup test keep rinsing until no clouding forms in the test cup then do your final rinse in RO or saltwater, and that section of sand is now ripped clean and ready for reinstallation.



Yes, we rinse prep even brand new sand that comes in a bag no matter what it says on the label. if you don't rinse it, your new tank might be cloudy for weeks on end, they don't always self-clear as lucky peers relay to each other in sandbed posts.

if you are considering not rinsing your sand for use in a reef tank still do the cup test on the unrinsed handful, look what it does in the mini model









So your bag of sand says not to rinse

pic by pdxmonkeyboy


Our thread exists to prevent that clouding above.

A rip clean is not a restart anymore than an oil change is a new car. A restart means you’d have to do your cycle over


we maintain the original cycle: the entire point of this thread is to reveal that deep cleaning a tank doesn’t restart it and does not require the use of bottle bac or ammonia protection, like we’ve been taught in the past

we use microbiology here to guide the rules each tank applies. We dont use bottle bacteria

we don’t use testing for ammonia because we are in full control of what filter bacteria do in this thread, and a bunch of API ammonia misreads would only insert hesitation into a thread collection of pure action. there is no testing warranted here, this is an action thread solely.

We remove cloudy waste while controlling the cycle of the tank getting cleaned.



full rinsing is safest, that’s the rule. thats how we got our results here, for anyone's reef tank. they always turn out the same way: sparkling shocking clean and running great with bright happy corals.

We use tap water, not RO or saltwater to rinse sand beds: it’s tap water for a reason (because it's unlimited and you won't run out of water before verifying the sand is totally clean)








The steps here ran on every example link you can find are not different for any job, any size reef tank, or any reason for presenting here for live-time work detailing. it's amazing how many different reef jobs simply rinsing out the sand with tap water can accomplish.

you can run one of these cleanings on a perfectly normal reef tank, as a preventative. A rip clean is harmless waste ejection. Rip cleans are why my reef tank just hit 18 years running with no invasions at all-I'm sharing this longevity trick with reefs of all sizes to show how all our tanks are related, large to small reefs.









you can use this method to recover from tank crashes where other additives littered up the tank and yellowed the water and crashed the corals with degradation irritants, this cleaning approach flushes out a reef using common tap water and skip cycles an injured reef back to bright and shining and ready for stronger feed input (which is where the growth comes from)


if you have a GHA, green hair algae covered system you can rasp off rocks using a knife tip, not a brush, and rinse off in saltwater as your tank is disassembled. We clean sandbeds here: this is the most thorough sand cleaning thread on the Internet.


If you have filthy dinos, get the tank apart and make it not be 100% covered, then put all your focus into prevention. don't sit there with a wrecked tank for months on end when every example here is clearly showing you a better standard of reefing.


The whole purpose of this thread is to show you the biology of safe tank handling, transfer, cleaning and upgrades


how to physically handle reef substrates so your tank doesn't die.


rip cleaning is a reef tank medical procedure...what we do is reef tank dentistry and surgery

we flush out organics and we rasp off algae adhered to rocks during tank upgrades using metal tools, like a dentist scrapes tartar roughly and not gently but it's precision/we work around corals affixed on rocks like that


we rinse brand new reefs, day one assembly, to total cloudlessness to prevent that above. we don't skip rinsing the sand in tap water, as bad as that may sound initially

consider our results.

you're handling poky substrates in this thread



wear gloves and stuff so you don't harm yourself from electively keeping dangerous microbes as a hobby, you can get infections on your hands if you get cuts or scrapes handling reef materials as roughly as we handle them.

old sand has some risks associated with it due to bacteria built up and complexed with waste food stores, various states of oxygen etc (sandbeds have wildly varying chemistry depending on variables)



New sand from a bag, like pic #1 above, isn't a handling risk it's chalk dust clouding from sand grains that rubbed together and silted out during shipping and handling. some bags cloud worse than others, it's variable, not rinsing has variables.


this whole thread is tap rinsing reef sandbeds, its the #1 thing we do, and it's all wins.



your tank will at some point in this process be disassembled, it's what we do.


Make the glass this clean before you begin the re-setup process. ***if you have back wall or side coralline you want to preserve don't scrape it off during takedown leave it adhered and keep it wet for the rebuild. don't leave sand grains and mud stuck to the glass, be clean in this thread.
Shadow_k’s excellent build are the pics below.

wipe your glass down this clean before re assembly

watch out for scratches as you takedown and clean the system






we never put a handful of old sand on top of your new sand. That adds clouding to a perfectly clean rinse and can transport fish disease components tank to tank. 1000% pure tap water rinsing is what we do, all sand used, new or old regardless of it's source. this is a sand rinse thread.





hidden risks from bacterial compounds and various states of decay are best kept out of the topwater, we have to take your tank apart vs work with the sandbed near your animals because the clouding in the sandbed can kill, we use a careful order of disassembly steps to prevent clouding sandbed waste from contacting your sensitive animals.






Look how clean I rinsed my pico reef's sandbed below, this is my glass cup test but in a vase:





DO NOT TRANSFER A HANDFUL OF OLD SAND INTO YOUR NEW TANK AS SEED


that can kill your reef by transferring fish disease or harmful compounds from sand waste in the unrinsed sand



here is a nano reef from DannoOMG that we ripped clean to move up as a skip cycle transfer to a larger new nano tank. we moved his current rocks and coral into a larger tank and we didn’t test for anything and we skipped the cycle: the new tank was instantly ready to carry animals

Brand new pre rinsed ocean direct live sand from caribsea was used for the new tank, the old sand was tossed out.

the old tank we are upgrading from

holding vat of water for corals and fish

here is the new bag sand getting rinsed in portion to total clarity

rinse it over and over until clean. For hours, final rinse is in RO water until tap water is removed, the cloudless sand is now ready for use in the new tank and won’t cloud when you fill it up

The new tank has rinsed sand, fish and corals and rocks were ready to move over

some of the new made water from the yellow holding container was used to wash off rocks, before they moved into the new nano

algae was detail scraped off the rocks, they were swished clean in the clean water, then set back into the new tank to build this:

now that’s shocking laser clean rip clean tank transfer!!

Look how much waste was the in the old tank: out of sight and up under rocks doesn’t mean free from consequence, sandbed waste fuels algae invasions




his tank is balanced and clean now. He’s re ramping up the lights safely and no bleaching will occur.


DannoOMG added pods into the tank after the rip clean transfer now his tank is better off than he was before




Cook’s job completed in 24 hours no algae left, totally clean sand, huge reef tank. Best rip clean for 2021

Build Thread - Cook's 105 Planet Aquariums Crystaline Reef - 48x20

I've had my tank going for two years next month. I'm moving this build over from another forum, so the time stamps aren't going to reflect the original's. I will try to document the original dates as I go. It's also an opportunity to edit my build, there was so much at the beginning I didn't...

www.reef2reef.com

rip clean done on a nano that was power out for one week after storm Ida, and a rip clean is how you fix storm-damaged reef tanks. It’s also how you move them, or upgrade materials into a bigger reef, and it’s a way to fix cyano invasions and dino invasions we will show. Sandbed rinsing helps reefing in several different ways.

A week without power - Recoverable?

So, tank went without power for a week following hurricane Ida. There was no flow(obviously) and temps hit 85-86 during the day. I came back to the city to rescue my 2 clowns who are currently living in a 5 gallon bucket with a bubbler. Basically my question is: what are my options from here...

www.reef2reef.com

When tanks/seams break, we assemble back completely rinsed and clean systems for the skip cycle win, no bottle bac used thank you Hawk82

EMERGENCY - Help! 40 breeder leaked all over floor

I woke up at 2am to use the bathroom and heard the sound of water splashing. I went to look in my living room in horror and disbelief. Then I saw it, half the water gone! I think the stupid hob protein skimmer overflowed, because I dont see any cracks in the tank. But I had to drain the whole...

www.reef2reef.com

*******Notice every job we do here for fifty pages is the same disassemble, rinse, reassemble, don’t use bottle bac and for sure do not post any ammonia readings unless they’re from seneye******

we don’t like api or Red Sea ammonia tests here, anyone who owns a seneye is welcomed to post readings. Non digital test kits cause misread panic: look how well we do eliminating them from every job. The way you know we skipped the cycle in each job is because the reef stays alive and vibrant



Look how JD Inshore used rip cleaning to clear out mushroom coral overgrowth below

Build Thread - JD's 90 gallon mixed reef

*90 gallon mixed reef* Ruby Trigger 36 sump Reef Octopus 150 skimmer 2- EcoTech Radion XR15 pro Kessil H80 Refugium Light EcoTech Vectra return pump Icecap gyre Lifeguard media reactor This tank has been up and running for almost 4 years now. Its gone through some periods of neglect as other...

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***you can remove aiptasias during a rip clean using that method above he used to remove 200 invasive ricordeas

see how the tank wasn’t invaded or out of balance? He only has mushrooms

we went ahead and rip cleaned it to buy more smooth running time

reefs work better without all the waste we collect in the sandbed

Rip cleaning is not harmful it’s a surgical process by which we can access reef tanks for various reasons and not cause recycles. several mushroom anemones were removed there and this works for aiptasia as well.












The opposite of Rip Cleaning: messing up the tank with cloudy rotten waste-

here's some in-tank sandbed work nearly killing the fish, soon after disturbance:

Re-aquascaping nightmare!!!!!! Nearly killed all my fish!!!!!

Did you smell rotten eggs? Sincerely Lasse

www.reef2reef.com

Dr. Tim here writes that over his years of experience he’s had several reports of sandbed disturbance killing the system.

Creating a safe anoxic environment.

Over the past few months I have come across information regarding the creation of anoxic environments in aquariums, one of them being a deep sand bed (around 10+ cm?). I have also heard that some people worry that it could create hydrogen sulfide, which could creep out if the sand bed is...

www.reef2reef.com

a nano wiped out by disturbing the bed, inside the tank

Nanoreef crash after DSB cleaning

Hello R2R. So... I nearly wiped out one of my 14G Biocubes after an aggressive cleaning. The system has been running and doing well-enough for about 6 years. It is home to a handful of "easy" corals, a couple of clownfish, and a few mobile inverts. I bought an external filter (generic HD10...

www.reef2reef.com

Harmed tank by disturbing and unrinsed bed

Disturbed sand bed.

I have a 75 gallon fowlr tank that has been up for about 2 years. I have had nothing but trouble with this tank. Long story short i decided to clean tank yesterday. Toothbrush to rock and vacuum out detritus. I stirred up sand a little with the vacuum but worse the circulation pump must have...

www.reef2reef.com

Labored breathing fish after in- tank sandbed disturbance:

Clown laying on sandbed, breathing rapidly, and not eating after switching tanks. Stress?

I had a pair of clowns in an old tank, which I broke down. I moved them both into my qt tank for 48 hours while I set up the new one. All throughout the time in qt, the mocha has been fine, but the black ice immediately sat on the bottom with very rapid breathing. I moved them both to the DT...

www.reef2reef.com

Why for fifty pages have we no losses like those?

We have designed an ordering of waste removal that prevents system crashes. This thread is exclusively that practice, opposite from the loss links above

notice in each work thread example, we do the same set of moves:

-carefully disassemble the reef without stirring up bed

-hold rocks and corals in one container, fish in another w inverts, and take the tank apart with the muddy sand and rinse it to 1000% perfection using cool tap water. final rinse on sand is RO, to evacuate the tap. now the sand is perfect

not 99% cloud free, 1000%



-swish rocks around in -saltwater- (we do care about live rock bacteria and that's all we need to run a reef) to jet out their waste. do not move muddy live rocks from a holding container into your cloudless reassembled reef. swish them free of attached detritus.

-Don’t use GFO and Chemi pure and waste absorbers in the new cleaned system, they’ll be over stripping. Wait weeks or months as needed before adding back absorbent cheats.

MUST KEEP YOUR LIGHT LEVELS REDUCED SEVERAL DAYS IN THE CLEAN SETUP to avoid coral bleaching


we have you match only temperature and salinity between the old and clean tanks, no other params need to align like pH or calcium/alkalinity

Dropping your light levels back to ramp up phase prevents coral bleaching in systems that had all their waste removed like we do, you must ramp back up your light power slowly over ten days to guide the corals back to full ability. Be using your newly cleaned tank to spot feed corals extra well


Rinsing New Caribsea wet pack live sand, ocean direct and Fiji pink:

we always rinse all sand the same way, whether it’s new or old, live or dry sand.

if you don’t pre-rinse your caribsea sand you risk this:

Caribsea Ocean Direct Cloudyness

Recently filled my tank with RODI + Tropic Marin Salt, Ocean Direct Sand and now just waiting before planning how to cycle it. My question is, how is the best way to clean out this dust cloud from the tank? I don't have any kind of mechanical filtration but I could easily Cable-tie some filter...

www.reef2reef.com

typical animal behaviors can cause ongoing headaches in unrinsed new beds.

pistol shrimp making tank sandy and cloudy!

My pistol shrimp never wont stop stiring sand. Eversince it got paird with yasha goby its constantly digging entrance all over the tank. Its doing that all day and now my tank is so sandy and cloudy. its also knocking all the corals near him and im afraid all that little particles will go passs...

www.reef2reef.com

We pre rinse all sand, all the time, that’s being transferred or going back into the final assembly setup



The true cause of the mini cycle is upwelling of waste and not lack of bacteria

we are able to control all these cycles not by additives or testing, we don’t use bottle bacteria here, we control cycles by controlling how waste is removed from the sandbed





Starting out a new tank with perfectly rinsed Caribsea sand

here's how long it takes to pre rinse effectively:

How many times to rinse sand?

I have some Red Sea Pink aragonite sand that I've been washing for about an hour now. I must have rinsed it at least ten times now yet the water cloudiness will not go away after each rinsing. How many rinses does it take before this stuff stops clouding the water full of silt?

www.reef2reef.com

Pre rinse your new caribsea live sand before use

some bags of sand don’t clear like the label says they will

two days still cloudy

Cycle question

Ok so I finally started my tank. I have a 45 gallon tank put in two bags of live sand and rodi water with salt. Have a wave maker and hob filter. I have been monitoring amonia but I have yet to see an amonia spike. The tank is hazy and cloudy. I’ve read that’s the bacteria bloom. I have 20lbs of...

www.reef2reef.com

Pre rinse your new caribsea live sand because:
‘took months to clear’

Add new sand without rinse

Hi guy, I just add new special grade sand without rinse. I added slowly 1/3 bag per day, but didn’t rinse. My tank seem cloudy, but I have skimmer and 2 filter socks. My tank has sps, lps and 9 fishes. Should I expect a mini cycle. I concern my coral and fish die tomorrow

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more examples of tanks who didn’t pre rinse not clearing 48 hours
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/so-i-didnt-rinse.592624/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/sandbed-stirred-up.544852/#post-5723606

Tank cloudy after adding live sand

I added some more sand to my tank that has been running for 6 months. This has caused a lot of cloudiness.. will this be detrimental to the fish and what are the best ways to solve this?

www.reef2reef.com

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/very-cloudy-water-after-sand-and-rock.559386/#post-5735864
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/question-about-vacuuming-sand-bed.616059/ https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-tank-milky-cloudy.616519/

Ocean direct live sand from CaribSea

Has anyone used ocean direct sand and what are your thoughts? I used it in my nano and noticed that any sand movement clouds the area pretty quickly. Any fixes for this or is it just part of having this sand

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10 days, still won't settle and clouds fully
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cloudy-tank.576835/

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bummer-could-use-some-help.558301/




After a rip clean, your tank looks this good, and your pods arent dead they lived in the rocks as you rinsed the sand:

courtesy, Shadow_k from page 45

before rip clean:

After rip clean:
-I see pods all over now rocks sand i really thought they all died off haven’t seen them in months.

this above is just after rip clean, and surgical precision sand rinsing Shadow did


heres one month later

here are pods on the glass 2 days after a full tap water rinse of Shadow's sandbed:
--- it’s exciting to see things breathe in the tank my pods came back

 

[saltyhog]

I did not use "live" sand and won't choose to ever with future tanks (if you can even find regular dry aragonite any more). It's just not necessary. I would choose to seed the tank with some live rock (or start with all live rock if I can afford it) and use "dead" sand. I have brittle stars, pods (at least before my wrasse got to them), bristle worms and all sorts of beneficial critters that I got with macroalgae or live rock.

If I were using live sand I don't think I would rinse it at all, especially not with tap or even RO/DI water. Not sure how much life would survive that.

Do those that use live sand actually see any of the larger critters like worms and brittle stars in the sand? I never thought about those types of life forms being able to survive the process of packaging and shipping the sand.

 

[brandon429]

.

 

[Reefrookie220]

OK Brandon , I'm starting a new tank today and would like you to give me your rundown on the rinsing procedure. I'll crack open a brand new bag of sand and follow this to the letter because you piqued my interest. I've never rinsed before and have seen issues with the silt.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I used dead oolitic aragonite, but I certainly rinsed it very well before use. Otherwise, the tank looks like skim milk.

 

[brandon429]

Watch out for sales gimmicks involving bacteria support or testing in reefing, they're gimmicks

Look at the next to the last sales reinforcement for their bottle bac, to replace bacteria lost by extensive sandbed cleaning


what did we spend eight years doing here without any use of any bottle bac

can any reader ever find a single thread on the internet with harsher handling of reef tank substrates that we do here?




gimmick exposing is what we've been doing. ripping tanks clean and not using bottle bac is the method of exposure

 

[brandon429]

Reefrookie howdy

the tap water is what I used and it makes for good positioning here but really its much less controversy to just rinse in your clean salt water. I literally did this: put the new sand (which for me was ocean direct semi wet, plenty silty, comes with flocculant for silt) into containers and blast clean them with blasting water, then rinse in saltwater, then put in tank. I insulted nobody other than the silt and nine people online
if you used saltwater that's even less insult to the bacteria on the grains, but my point was I didn't need them anyway. I bought the sand cuz I like the look and grain size, whether it was wet or dry didn't matter. no clouding mattered!

can you show us a pic of what your sand looks like when you first fill it up, the cloudy version>

then a post pic of a really rinsed portion, cloudless. enjoy your tank being like that forever. now when you assess it, silt wont be there, only the waste.

my sandbed which had been switched out in my very old tank is now about 6 mos old. I can reach into it with a stick, stir it around, and grains fall up and back down, zero clouding.

Contrast that to 98% of sandbeds active right now, you stir that milk with a stick, you wipe the tank. a monster under the rug.

lets pre-rinse at least ~

 

[erk]

I don't use live sand. I just get dry sand and rinse it out. Then I get a bottle of bacteria and dose that into the tank. Either the generic tank cycle stuff or Micro Bacter 7. Thanks for starting this thread. Now I know why everyone's tanks start out looking all milky. I thought they were rinsing, but I guess they are using live sand, so they don't rinse.

How do people rinse their sand? I usually dump the sand in a 5 gal bucket and use a water hose to just spray and move the sand around. I question my method because I'm afraid I'm grinding the particles and making more silt.

 

[brandon429]

and they were told rinsing would have a neg consequence.

Many bare bottom keepers aren't there for the look, they're there for the clean access to detritus and not storing waste in the tank and its clear why large tanks consider that move.
but I needed the look of sand without having the tank loss/headache it can cause, so we broke some rules again to attain an ends, we just rinse instead of hands off. some worms might have died in this process, and that was ok since detritus took precedence. the worms reseed back into the sand, from the rocks, am awr of the articles claiming otherwise...they do.

**not advising tearing halfway into an old sandbed packed with waste, a big cleaning has a certain order and none of it is partial. the initial part of the thread is about how to start the bed, rinsed.



as of today everyone is advised not to rinse... and I think its factoring into the fact that sandbed look and outcomes haven't changed since we watched them come about in 90s and remain unchanged in practice through today, is fun to question that stagnation of practice. maybe we should shake it up and be deliberate and allow no rot.



the grains are tougher than that, they wont grind down on initial rinse

I do what you said above to my -living- tank not just a new one.

not saying everyone should do what I do to my bed, but am inviting everyone to consider applying the method to problem tanks, or as a preventative.
using mb7 is neutral, harmless to try for the various reasons its bought. if someone wants to boost some bac, boost it, or not they are going to find a balance as a community regardless.

 

[brandon429]

Paul B's 45 yr old reef takes direct decisive action against detritus, deep thorough cleanings in fact when he does clean I read on his descriptions... I found that interesting such an old reef really was exporting although the work is lessened by his interim algae scrubber filter as well... the point is, the oldest tanks in the genre of nano reefs up to large full sized home reefs are acting decisively against sandbed detritus.

Paul's sandbed is reverse undergravel flow, how much more detritus rejecting can one get? That pumps waste out...into the water, not down sinked in the bed.

its not about the rinse, its about the detritus. if you don't want to rinse, deal another way, but not dealing means you will eventually rinse or start over.

its not about the bacteria, its about the silt=heart of the matter.

on old tank syndrome:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/5/aafeature2

 

[Reefrookie220]

Just filled it with fresh redsea coral pro water after rinsing with the above mentioned method.

Alot of crap was in a fresh bag of nature's ocean Aussie gold Reef sand!


The dark bits are pieces of shell that I find really cool, you can't tell from My phone pic but its got a nice orangy tint.

This has been filled for 7 minutes, and dosed with bottle bacteria.

 

[brandon429]

Started without silt, nice





if you are able to keep detritus input from outpacing output or if you are able to uptake detritus breakdown in tank, before it causes problems, then you can rinse less on your sandbed.

Here's a nano friend doing instant full bed swap, skip cycle reset
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/substrate-change.329063/#post-4113962


Many sandbed keepers are using partial stirring/siphon during each cleaning to stay ahead of input, excellent. our details here are more aimed at the times we need to full access for one reason or another, and how to avoid a tank cycle or unintended loss when accessing a brand new or aged sandbed.
The recycle is avoided by not having detritus stored in the tank, however that's attained. Where the detritus/organics go, goes the cycle and the ammonia or sulfide event. Don't house it. My sandbed never ages.

 

[brandon429]

RR how did it come along this last week? Clean perhaps

Anyone have a persistent sand bed problem? RTR has been busy lately in sand access threads. Moving, upgrades, fixing eutrophication, avoiding sandbed and rock cleaning altogether and posting problem tank pics, all very fun biology. Danger biology, with people's tanks on the line in fact.


http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/376428-cyano-is-kicking-my-butt-no-longer/page-3

look at page 3, how sandbed control stopped his persistent cyano issue (exports the mass and addresses the pent up waste)

 

[john.m.cole3]

so rinsing will not remove the bac on the sand's surface area just like aiming a powerhead or dusting detritus off a cycled rock doesn't remove the bac from said rock? If one were to use simple logic (i know) then rinsing is a safe strategy to remove excessive dust particles that have potential to cloud your tank and cause other issues in the future. I'm doing it!

 

[brandon429]

Ha! I've never thought about the tie in to flow within the tank, nice one ~ it's true, somehow they manage to hang onto the rocks and not get cast off fully into the water

I should have taken before shots of my sandbed this weekend... had been lazy and let it build up some cyano and detritus due to excellent tank feedings

×××what if I'd chose to start dosing my water with something due to the cyano, or upped the flow after it was already good enough, a cyano goose chase might have started. I opted to blast it out, along with all feed for it, dose nothing, gain instant compliance to me that is reef control. Just because a given tank is running well with fully loaded sandbed doesn't mean it always will, consider cleaning cruddy sandbeds as needed. I'm using my own tiny reef as an example, there is no dilution in this thing- it will die if any of this science is wrong. It would have died in 2006 if this science is wrong that's a lot of blast cleanings.


the cleaning run was Lubbock tap water as mentioned in first post. I parted out my whole mini reef on dinner plates to wait for cleaning, leaving only sand and water, then tap rinsed it free of detritus.

After zero detritus existed (since initial rinse yr ago removed silt, all clouding onward is waste) I rinsed the bed with saltwater really well, evacuating the tap water, and put it all back together mega clean


No cycle, no tank stress, no waste, indefinite biological lifespan.



Waste detritus is always the recycle risk, not loss of bacteria from rinsing.



Not everyone agrees that rinsing a matured sand bed is the right way to go. I wanted to show a repeatable access method that prevents a recycle in case someone has to, for example an upcoming move or perhaps someone wants to reverse-age their tank... this is how we do it. You can rinse in clean saltwater too, I used tap and then a sw rinse since I didn't have much saltwater handy.

 

[brandon429]

I could have got longer than three months between these blast rinses but am specially feeding my tank 3x normal to regenerate some stressed sps I bought from store. This got the top 1/3 of the bed dirtier much faster than normal. It will still reseed with worms and pods from the live rock in a few mos just like last time


***when rinsing sands with tap water, have a follow-up saltwater rinse to remove the chlorine***

 

[john.m.cole3]

@brandon429 what are you feeding your pico? and does detritus accumulate if no fish are present? Wait... do you keep fish? Is detritus a term that ONLY means fish waste, or does it also represent unused foods?

Also, how would one rinse in SW? Old tank water? Tap exclusive to rinse solely not ok? You mean our bac on substrate/rock/surfaces can't hang if done using only tap?

I'm not challenging your info here, just need to know the severity and consequences of aforementioned actions. Plus have you had a burger from Gators Bayou yet? The jalapeno bun is insane! Maybe it's the silicone fumes or slight amounts of epoxy residue that are driving my inquisitive nature tonight. Tomorrow is sand rinsing day... with garden hose water... and I need to know if I need to do something else after sand is cloud free. Thanks friend!

 

[brandon429]

Your whole investment and biosystem is on the line, good to clarify before beginning agreed.

By rinsing in saltwater I had just the regular blue water jugs ready to go

Detritus is that feed, resulting animal waste, chitin shell forms from invert molts, plant cellulose, all forms of sold waste. A wonderful example of the perpetual nature of detritus for us is that live rock from the store is a true living system, it literally exudes waste from its pores and wherever else a respiring animal resides on it. That's in addition to what we store, add as feed, add as extra animals, then fish waste, all compounding. If you set rinsed clean purple live rock in a bare glass tank with heater, power head you get detritus within a few days from inside the rock, exuded out.

I feed my pico heavily, roti feast and cyclopeeze for me. No fish agreed, too small of a system. Corals must be fed, the nutrients they make from light via symbionts is not enough to live they must feed and they have a trophic classification to reflect that

My intention on mentioning my tap rinse isn't that tap is preferable to clean saltwater, sometimes it's more practical. rinsing in tap then rinsing in saltwater still leaves bacteria on the grains, doesn't sterilize.

Rinsing in all saltwater uses lots of extra saltwater so I conserve it just as a final rinse. When you rinse to remove debris and detritus some good goes out as well, but they come back over time and it's a risk to transport waste in a sandbed. Many forego the rinse and buy new bags of sand, start clean upon transfer is same end less work than rinsing.

In the last several tank move threads here are the problems summarized, for your avoidance:

One poster had mini cycle in new setup because live rocks were plugged with detritus and after cleaning a lot came out in the transfer containers the rock was sitting in and began to rot. Not a common scenario but his live rock was recovering from a long time of cleaning needs. Make your system free of this waste before moving if applicable. Moving waste causes the recycle in the new tank

Another poster failed to completely rinse and transported either dead worms or partial detritus or both, rinse x 200. Upon re setup, the partially rinsed sandbed can leak ammonia or nitrites

Another poster rinsed in tap and failed to rinse it back out, and set up their new reef over a bed of wet clean sand and tap water, coral stress followed

don't move dirty anything. Transport rock in multiple holding buckets not with fish in them, fish get their own buckets.

Make the new tank pristinely clean first install, move no waste. Starting with fresh sand should be highly considered. As hard as it is to believe this is fact: tank transfers go bad due to overlooked waste or animal death as a cycle cause, never ever loss of bacteria.

That means if you move no waste, even if you start with freshly rinsed new live sand, you still have enough bacteria even though the system was made pristinely clean during the transfer and not gradually after. Be positive that new tank has no copper or cross contamination potential you mentioned that as a concern recently.

I haven't been there to Gators I'm such a pattern person I keep eating at ohana for twelve years pretty much go scallops and hibachi. My kiddo was raised there really heh

 

[john.m.cole3]

Ok, so I met w/ Jason, owner from Salt N More, and we talked about previously mentioned circumstances of copper worries and such. He recommended no old rock transfer, rinse live sand, and use bacteria supplement 24 hours prior to transferring all fish and corals. He claimed to have done that procedure exactly on a new tank and has had no fish loss (he transferred 12 fish). He's the first to confirm a live sand rinse but disagrees w/ rock transfer secondary to potential risks. Thoughts...?

 

[brandon429]

Need clarity on the live rock xfer part

if you don't transfer old live rock does that mean you would start off with new live rocks at your house? Those w have to be transferred from the store

Perhaps the goal is ultimate safety, by moving zero old rocks stored with waste and using new cured live rock from the store? As long as the old rock isn't wasted but recured I guess you can but that also speaks to a redesign for the new tank because lr has an indefinite lifespan when cared for correctly. Shouldn't be finite like that

I like his store I have some good quality frags from him we are lucky to have two really good stores close to us for resources.

Regarding the nuances of the move to me those aren't impactful as a loss risk but moving detritus is impactful. In the cycle thread we covered adding bottle bac for various reasons, whether it's required isn't the same as it not being harmful to add whenever you want. We are adding bacteria to our systems as contamination with everything we add, every action we take. Putting some in aqueous form from a bottle is more of the same. If someone wants to use it as bac buildup insurance that's just fine and fair pre planning. The reason I hadn't mentioned it is because I do to my mini model every several mos what you are contemplating doing this is a normal Tuesday for some 16 yr old corals I have heh.

Can you post pic of what you will be moving