Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

brandon429 · Sep 27, 2022

*coralline may lighten in treated areas but it will 100% come back in a month. this is why surgery is better on those rocks, those rare rare rocks with surface area and coralline dots vs being all white/must preserve. any dips would totally coat those rocks and zap all the coralline, spot target work lets you work around the peaks on the rocks covered in purple and aim for the crevices midway that anchored the algae. it's the work it takes to manage a scape like that. Your live rock is worth $$$$$$$

folks could take portions of that and build perfectly instant skip cycle reefs that carry two grand in sps, that rock is rare nowadays, undeveloped rocks are the majority nowadays those needed precision reef dentistry to maintain.

Dan7575 · Sep 27, 2022

brandon429 said:
Dan if it helps any, to head off any challenges even though that tank looks sharp as possible, if any matting or regrowths occur on the top layers/insert hose/2 gallon water change/matting is gone vs sits there waiting for someone to ID it and formulate a waterborne strategy to fix it.

you will find that the 5 min effort it takes to do a directed 2 gallon siphon cleanup will work better than any method to guide stabilization after a rip clean, and the chance that will happen is about 5%.

95% you get full return on effort and your glass doesn't need cleaning for months and the reef simply looks like a ruby, then you'll have to get physical with it again in increments depending on home and care variables. You literally have no sink waste, no chem soup water from dosing 3x dosers to try and clean the tank via sludge digestion or indirect kill of targets, this put laser clean water in your tank. once you begin replacing suspended clean protein feed in this very low organics tank, the whole thing will run like a new engine and your corals are going to pop happy more than ever. soon

your reef is as oxygenated and as low on internal waste acid production as it will ever be. it's like a new reef but with all aged materials. if we could find a way to preserve this condition without the rip clean, that would be ideal...

I never was much for putting bacteria into reefs for charge...you can see in this thread bacteria aren't limiting.

but in the threads where they experiment, Sunny is getting lots of clean systems by overdosing cycling bacteria/I have no idea how that works or how to make it consistent. one thing is for sure, this water is dang pristine above.

until someone develops a nuanced way of getting those after pics above, I say we stick with brute force compliance requirements for the reef tank lol.

You certainly know you stuff, thanks for the suggestion of rip clean and the help and guidance you provided, not many people go above and beyond now

Jeroen254 · Oct 3, 2022

Hello! I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask - so sorry if not!

I'm planning to upgrade my 10G tank to a 20G tank. Since I like the clean look of a rimless aquarium, I'm going to be running it with a canister filter. Some of you may know MikeyMikeMike on youtube, he inspired me to do so.

I do have a few questions about upgrading which I did not find on reef2reef yet. My plan is to go from old to new in 1 weekend - if possible.

I have bought the new aquarium and I want to rescape/make a new scape. I will most probably use new rocks. Would it be possible to place the old rock structure in the canister filter (it does fit) so that I can seed the new aquarium?

I will use new sand, because I need more and don't want to mix things up.

After I put the new rocks and sand in, and put the old reef rock in the canister together with all bio media, would it be possible to just put back in the 2 nemo's and mostly soft corals? Would that be safe?

Sorry if my sentence structure is a bit off, I'm not a native speaker

brandon429 · Oct 3, 2022

Thank you for posting! We can do that job well, and in one weekend the new tank will carry fish. For your plan:

Study page one and several completed jobs here. Do the sand rinse portion correctly, it's the #1 thing we do here above all/ produce rinsed sandbeds so they won't cloud up

Instead of putting old rocks in the canister, put them in the middle of the actual display, don't tuck them away in a chamber with less frequent water contact than the actual display... put them up front in with the uncycled rocks

Put the fish and corals in the new tank on rinsed perfect sand, with both old and new rocks and water that matches your old tanks salinity and temp, this will skip cycle

Use all your current rocks in the new tank display, you can remove them later if needed

*you may remove the old rocks in 60 days if you want, leaving only the new rocks now and they will be cycled due to contact time with the fish and the old rocks

You do not need bottle bac for this job, rock transfer handles all needed bacteria

Jeroen254 · Oct 4, 2022

Hey! Thanks for your answer! The reason I wanted it to be in the canister, is because I don't want to fill the tank with old and new stone as it doesn't look nice haha.. But that is just not an option? As for rinsing and the cloudless cleaning, that should be no problem. I like cleaning

brandon429 · Oct 4, 2022

It’s not safe to have the active surface area hidden away in the canister filter because wastewater builds up in the display before being sent through the small intakes into the canister, in the display is the only safe bet then you remove them later.

Jeroen254 · Oct 4, 2022

Okay thanks!

Will do it that way then!

1mbrews8 · Oct 26, 2022

Sent a PM just to make sure I don’t mess up

looking forward to attempting this ASAP

brandon429 · Oct 26, 2022

Hey thank you for the heads up, I didn't remember to go back and follow up on the message from Sunday / got backed up and wow that's a cool connected tank system you have!

There are some details in your description message I'd like to discuss here in the open since others will be thinking the same eventually

-on vermetid snails, we all hate 'em, and I would not expect a rip clean nor any other action to fix them. I claim we have to accept them/nothing can beat them. *I'm aware of posts= I beat vermetids by doing X

but those are not pattern cure posts, they are reports about what worked for someone. The pattern is Verms are ubiquitous anywhere corals grow and my reef will be poked by them till the end of time.

I give a rip clean a .0002% chance of fixing vermetid snails in a 300g combined linked system. would you still want to proceed knowing that detail?

where rip cleans tangibly help is cleaning out rocks and sand to total perfection that's for sure. it's a big job at your gallonage, wanting to make sure in pre-planning we're ready for this much work. that's a 20 hour job with a pause overnite type level

1mbrews8 · Oct 26, 2022

brandon429 said:
Hey thank you for the heads up, I didn't remember to go back and follow up on the message from Sunday / got backed up and wow that's a cool connected tank system you have!

There are some details in your description message I'd like to discuss here in the open since others will be thinking the same eventually

-on vermetid snails, we all hate 'em, and I would not expect a rip clean nor any other action to fix them. I claim we have to accept them/nothing can beat them. *I'm aware of posts= I beat vermetids by doing X

but those are not pattern cure posts, they are reports about what worked for someone. The pattern is Verms are ubiquitous anywhere corals grow and my reef will be poked by them till the end of time.

I give a rip clean a .0002% chance of fixing vermetid snails in a 300g combined linked system. would you still want to proceed knowing that detail?

where rip cleans tangibly help is cleaning out rocks and sand to total perfection that's for sure. it's a big job at your gallonage, wanting to make sure in pre-planning we're ready for this much work. that's a 20 hour job with a pause overnite type level

Thanks for the reply!

I think you're correct about the snails overall and makes me rethink it for a sec.. the DT is definitely where 95% of them are currently, so I figured if I removed all that rock, it'd make the good snails job easier to eat the bad/make what ever else I do to stop them from coming back as bad easier?

I have the time for sure. Just bought 2 more 44g brutes to start up more saltwater in prep

I figure if I'll ever do it, now is the time since only 3 fish and like 3 coral in the DT to worry about.

Also, if I was able to just not reuse the rock in DT (IF the rock everywhere else in the system would be enough?) then that would save a bunch of time too?

Thanks!

1mbrews8 · Oct 30, 2022

@brandon429 So any idea on if I could only reuse a small amount of the rock that’s currently in the display tank , and use mostly new rock aquascape in the display tank, after the rip cleaning?

I can still put at least 50% of the rock that’s in the display tank currently into the sump after cleaning if that makes sense.

basically, does the biodiversity “majority” have to be back in the display tank, or could it be somewhere else in the system, without causing anything bad to happen?

brandon429 · Oct 30, 2022

Hey great idea.

You're dealing in two challenges, one is minimum surface area needed to handle the tank not crashing and the other is the maturation of the leftover rock that helps suppress uglies.

The facts are this: even though there are zero published studies on minimum surface area needs for a reef tank, there's nearly a decade of digital measurements posted by seneye owners online as they do tank upgrades, sandbed swaps, reduction in aquascape and scape changes. We get to see their baseline ammonia control from the logs before they make changes, and we get to see immediate effects

The effect is nobody has crashed a reef tank by running too little surface area. All seneye reef tanks run normally even with widely ranging rock amounts tank to tank. All arrangements work fine

Some folks use negative aquascape rocks which means very very few live rocks... they can carry fish and corals just fine.

Regarding the uglies from importing dry rock with no benthic life to help reject algae and other invasions, nobody can tell you how it will express / too varied but your tank won't crash. Always make sure not to remove sand when water is in the tank. We do disassembly cleaning, all the water comes out before the sand comes out. This avoids crashes

1mbrews8 · Nov 13, 2022

Sooooooooo close to 100%... BUT.... rocks lol... RIP CLEAN DONE!!!

brandon429 · Nov 13, 2022

Thank you and your son so so much for this valued documentation, video reviews are the best for reader engagement/ showing details

**that one point at the end when the rock stack fell: if that was unrinsed sand the whole tank would still be clouded, which isn't harmful its just depressing and ugly after half a days work and any future movements would re cloud it. I cannot wait for the one month update
B

1mbrews8 · Nov 13, 2022

brandon429 said:
Thank you and your son so so much for this valued documentation, video reviews are the best for reader engagement/ showing details

**that one point at the end when the rock stack fell: if that was unrinsed sand the whole tank would still be clouded, which isn't harmful its just depressing and ugly after half a days work and any future movements would re cloud it. I cannot wait for the one month update
B

Just tested and nitrates are at ~50 vs the over 200 so that is a plus already (I have a deep sand bed that is 15yrs in Fuge too, so that is prob "reason" still a bit high, but better is GOOD!)!

Deciding if I'm going to drain ~70% of water to glue those stupid rocks again lol! Prob easier than taking out and trying to fit back in!

I'll keep ya'll posted! Thank you!

brandon429 · Nov 19, 2022

210 gallon rip clean

210 gallon rip clean, done 1000% perfect see that final result: a tank so clear it looks empty even when full

1mbrews8 · Dec 3, 2022

1mbrews8 said:
Just tested and nitrates are at ~50 vs the over 200 so that is a plus already (I have a deep sand bed that is 15yrs in Fuge too, so that is prob "reason" still a bit high, but better is GOOD!)!

Deciding if I'm going to drain ~70% of water to glue those stupid rocks again lol! Prob easier than taking out and trying to fit back in!

I'll keep ya'll posted! Thank you!

Tank is looking pretty good!

but…

Holy CRAP!!!??? Got my ATI Lab results back and .... welp... still have nitrates!!!!!!!!!!

nitrate

533.9mg/l

Like a TON! I've been getting ~50 on the salifert test recently, and before the reset, it was 200 on it and confirmed at 2 fish stores...

Auswertungsergebnis

ATI Aquaristik - Lab

lab.atiaquaristik.com

Sent off on the 23rd of Nov, got results today and this is AFTER the rip clean??

Is this possible? With fish that are healthy and 90% coral is happy?

brandon429 · Dec 3, 2022

Yes

see this article, nitrate isn’t impacted by water changes very much as sustain

Aquarium Chemistry: Nitrate in the Reef Aquarium

This article provides background on nitrate in the ocean and in aquaria, and describes a number of techniques that aquarists have successfully used to keep nitrate levels down to more natural levels in reef aquaria.

reefs.com

now we did hit the organic stores too, not just water change but nonetheless Randy says it rebounds fast

I was going to pick on the fact test kits for nitrate are some of the most ranging and guesstimated in reefing, then I saw you used ati / a lab

hey can you post for us an actual reading from a hobby nitrate kit / the ones I don’t trust / 530 is rockin‘ lol.

********not harmful

Nitrate doesn’t matter that much, if it was your ammonia that high I’d worry. Paul B has one of the nicest, and certainly oldest tanks on earth, his nitrate is sky high usually not rarely. 160 ppm reported. Low nitrate chasing is a reef fad, I’ll never own the kit nor care what any of my future saltwater tanks read regarding nitrate, it’s unimpactful in my opinion. I don’t even care if it’s zero, or nine million. What I care about is low particulate waste storage and you’ve attained that. Excellent updates

brandon429 · Dec 3, 2022

Ps

I now doubt ati lol but still don’t mind whatever nitrate says/ unimpactful param.

1mbrews8 · Dec 3, 2022

brandon429 said:
Ps

I now doubt ati lol but still don’t mind whatever nitrate says/ unimpactful param.

Here are some pictures from salifert for tonight.
It looks higher than it did yesterday or day before, but still not really above 100?
ATI lab is supposed to retest again on Monday.