Old tank syndrome is vanquished in reefing now

[Alexreefer]

Paul B doesn’t want to take over the thread.. then proceeds to write The Reef Aquarium, Vol 4 by Sprung, Delbeek and Paul B

Haha Paul is one of the most informed and experienced people I know of r2r, He has many many many years of experience and never fails to impress me with his intellect

 

[brandon429]

This thread beckons long posts we like that mode

 

[milonedp]

Would be curious about the best methods people use to keep the sandbed clean.

I vacuum the sandbed completely once a month, skip a few months over the course of a year so probably 8 or 9 times a year. I set up a large filter sock in the sump and vacuum right back through that. I have an auto water change set up so cleaning the sandbed is not water change time for me.

I've done this on my last two systems first one was 7 years before we moved and the current has been up for 8+ years.

I don't use filter socks (I'd never replace them regularly enough) but I am looking into a roller mat type setup of I can find something for a larger system. I just run a refugium and skimmer. I've tried just about everything over the years and keep coming back to the most simple stuff.

If you aren't already vacuuming completely I wouldn't start that way, I'd go at it slowly building up the space vacuumed over many months.

 

[Paul B]

Jase, I didn't just write that. It was an article I wrote a few years ago. If I wrote like that for these forums, I would have carpal tunnel syndrome in my arms and legs.

Besides Sprung and Delbeek are Noobs.

Those of you stirring your sand beds, would a group of nassarius and marginella snails be sufficient for the job? I ask because my sandbed seems like it is perpetually clean except for a ton of spaghetti worms. Should I be stirring more often?

I would say snails do nothing to stir a sand bed. They eat whats in front of them and poop it our behind them.

Here is an example, like Carl Sagan used to say, Billions and Billions and Billions. Thats how many snails are here where I go to drink......I mean collect. I take snails and a little mud from here.
1/4" under these cute snails (I named each one by the way) there is black mud filled with hydrogen sulfide. It stinks worse than some of you guys filter socks. It is jet black all the way down to where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Those snails just walk around saying "Doot da Do, Doot Da Do" while whistling and doing absolutely nothing for the sand under them besides making more muck.



These snail flats go on for farther than I can see and I have 20/20 vision.

One or two small Manatees may do it but then you have the problem of trying to recycle the plastic bags they come in.

 

[wonroc]

Vac the sand. I do once a week and every week i get 5 gallons of yellow brown water crud out of my 32

 

[brandon429]

The manatees have gone eutrophic, on top lol

agreed about snails, they relocate algae from the top of the system into the sandbed as waste pellets


paired with highly active fish in a reef, perhaps that pellet gets kicked back into suspension and removed. But per the sand rinse thread, thats 2% of systems and the other 98% are trending towards cyano challenge due to storage. I agree snails tend to be excellent raspers of growth. They produce copious waste as a trade off.


one of the ways I handled gha without changing my system towards a storage balance was to deep clean the whole reef at once and kill all the gha by scraping and with peroxide, a totally unnatural cheat. Was willing to cheat to avoid eutrophication

this doesn’t help large tankers much, but nano keepers are welcome to cheat as I did ad infinitum

 

[Jase4224]

I vacuum the sandbed completely once a month, skip a few months over the course of a year so probably 8 or 9 times a year. I set up a large filter sock in the sump and vacuum right back through that. I have an auto water change set up so cleaning the sandbed is not water change time for me.

I've done this on my last two systems first one was 7 years before we moved and the current has been up for 8+ years.

I don't use filter socks (I'd never replace them regularly enough) but I am looking into a roller mat type setup of I can find something for a larger system. I just run a refugium and skimmer. I've tried just about everything over the years and keep coming back to the most simple stuff.

If you aren't already vacuuming completely I wouldn't start that way, I'd go at it slowly building up the space vacuumed over many months.

I also vac my sand bed monthly but do it as my water change. I run filter socks, chaeto and skimmer. The amount of crap that comes out of 1” of sand is amazing, I can’t imagine just leaving it there to build up. I can feed as much as I like knowing that by the end of the month my system will be like new and it won’t come back to bite me eventually.

 

[Paul B]

Build an algae scrubber. Thats all you need. You can eat the snails. Escargo, delicious. ;Yuck

 

[Junkmanthom]

Build an algae scrubber. Thats all you need. You can eat the snails. Escargo, delicious. ;Yuck

Where’s the Paul B. Instructions for building an algae scrubber pamphlet?? The tour guide must have run out!! The algae is greener on the other side...

 

[brandon429]

Right now I guarantee in fifteen places a reader is feeling short changed by the description of OTS offered here. They have a decades old system, zero bed maintenance and tank of the month quality corals and highly diverse reef loading, they’re thinking my system isn’t eutrophic you jerk. I acknowledge those systems


small caveat

i literally dont know anyone that keeps reef tanks who hasn’t moved homes in the last five years. I know they’re out there, but not in my circle and to me this is reflective of about 80-90% of all reefs, disassembly soon required.

even the owners of full internal waste processing tanks agree you can easily kill the system by destratifying the bed incorrectly


so the change we are bringing about is either keeping that waste well aerated, and less toxic, or system designs that do not store it- that way moves and certain upgrades aren’t breath holding moments for three thousand or more in investment.


I agree if you have innate top level reefing skill AND you are ok with zonation so dangerous it takes a fifty page work thread to handle interventions, and you don’t plan on moving for 10+ years, no upgrades either, then you have a 10%-20% chance of success by designing old school bed on the bottom total storage reefs and the benefit will be no-work design, light if any water changes for twenty years, you've read about those kinds

Reefing clean has a 100% safety track record, it wastes lots of water as the export vector as a negative, but it allows unlimited home moves and upgrades and it allows total access to the whole system for hand guiding with no risk; this means less willing takedowns due to months of uglies. On the old rules, we had to let uglies take over all reefs by rule and hundreds of owners just gave up on the wait, they were invaded the whole time.


nobody is downing old school design but it doesn’t match today’s accessibility requirements.

 

[howaboutme]

I haven't read through this entire thread but this reminds me of an old thread on RC that I had to dig up on this exact same debate. For those of us who were around at that time, you will know that thread was one of the hottest topics at the time. DSB vs BB, etc. One of the major posters discussing was a guy from TRT (Geoff, I believe) that started discussing eutrophication long before and then joined the argument on RC since RC had not caught onto this phenomenon yet (still in the the days of Borenman, Calfo, etc) . Paul B was a frequent poster on that thread as well.

I'm not sure if I can post links to other forums but here it is just in case. It doesn't show up anymore unless you search for the right clues.

Are Deep Sand Beds, DSBs, dangerous to use in a marine aquarium? - Reef Central Online Community

Are Deep Sand Beds, DSBs, dangerous to use in a marine aquarium? Advanced Topics

www.reefcentral.com

 

[Paul B]

My reef was in my last house without being moved for 40 years. No problems but I did stir up the gravel yearly with a diatom filter.
Here my Son N Law is lifting up the UG filter plate for the move here. That is after 40 years. A lot of mud under there but I use a reverse undergravel filter so it was constantly airated. If it were not for that set up, that mud would have crashed my system long ago.

If you don't run a reverse UG filter, and I know no one does so my tank is bulletproof, (because people just don't know any better) then you better clean out that mud.

 

[Aclman88]

I’m one of those @brandon429 ! My system is only about a year old since I upgraded to the 20 gallon from pico, so my guess is the sand bed isn’t that old. Would you size advise vacuuming it during water changes to start? I do have tiger pistol which literally rescapes the sandbed once a week. There is some clouding when I move the sand (or the shrimp does) but I also didn’t rinse it before adding so a lot is still there fine silt from the new sand.

 

[Aclman88]

My reef was in my last house without being moved for 40 years. No problems but I did stir up the gravel yearly with a diatom filter.

Paul B, I’m in little neck so I see you on the MR forum a bunch as well. Thanks for always taking time to share your thoughts!

 

[brandon429]

Geoff and I aren't unfamiliar for sure we can link to any reef board on RTR

RTR is the leader in free information exchange, hence: www.reefcentral.com

and
www.thereeftank.com


the irony is I can't post on those forums for typing exactly what's typed here in this thread, though readers from those forums will use RTR info as a build consult. that is an awesome gradient pun intended

Working with peroxide and anti-stuck cycle science ten years ago carries a high price for login ID's heh

but not at reef2reef/open info exchange/forwards reef tank design/market decides practice/no heavy ban sticks for informational noncompliance with the norm.


we can literally link to any reef tank in the world, scope out this Finnish one when free:

aqua-web – …oikea tieto oikeaan lätäkköön!

aqua-web.fi

use google translator

met them when hawking pico reef biology fifteen years ago online. darn good reefers there

I am 100% certain that free and open management habits on forum websites alters Old Tank Syndrome trajectory. I have never seen any info written in books about it, only live posts on forums.

 

[Paul B]

Aclman, you are only about 45 minutes from me.

 

[brandon429]

Am aware there are Jaubert plenum reefers reading right now, you can't deep dive into those types of beds.

that's a careful design and running those as intended is legit science work. its important to know this thread doesn't limit someone's ability to redesign a large scale approach to in-tank waste handling and succeed.

we merely study the default mode in reefing which is 96%: take sand add it unrinsed to a glass tank. set some source of rocks. don't touch it for the love of pete or it will recycle, set a one-off arrangement you nearly refuse to access for the next several years. run that and see how long it goes, that's my summary of 96% of reef practice and training.

when I lost a reef to that practice, I refused then to follow the storage mode and rip cleaning began. direct intervention reef tank CPR before eutrophication presents. however long I can stave off eutrophication with cool arrangements/awesome

but when the signal presents, when the time comes, decisive cleaning of the system resets it in a cheating manner everyone hates but it also directly imparts indefinite biological lifespan capability. Ill take the cheat thank you. disease free corals that grow to the point we literally just throw culls whole in the trash has made oligotrophic high suspended feeding high export rate a nicer default.

the whole point of keeping a bed clean is so we can fill it up with whole waste that we once suspended in the water as whole proteins/ fat coral food. the goal is high suspended feed, low dissolved feed, low sinked waste. the outcome is coral mass to the point its tossed away in some circles.

I don't spend all my time pumping the reef into life, it mostly runs neglected but the catch up runs are like quad bypass nano surgery. they catch up well for months of more feeding. the signals are yellowing glass no matter the water change frequency

smells a little different

high algae count on the glass, quick growback after cleaning.

hue of the tank slowly changes from pops to more subdued colors like grays and yellows in a strange way, prob the glass filtering

then wham, made oligotrophic in a two hour rip cleaning. inside of glass wiped down empty with 35% peroxide

burned clear.

scratchless.

all corals back, pop next day is back. hungry, all spaces open for waste and feed input and now aren't a tipping point to being invaded.

well fed all over again, slowly sinked up, back down the bell curve.

Old rules simply rode the bell curve all the way down, as slow as possible.


**people dislike big cleaning jobs so anyone who finds balances/ways to make a hands off sandbed work correctly should post work here in counterbalance. This is what the masses want. they want sandbeds that really do self manage, we accept the counterpoints here team.

 

[TanksJB]

Right now I guarantee in fifteen places a reader is feeling short changed by the description of OTS offered here. They have a decades old system, zero bed maintenance and tank of the month quality corals and highly diverse reef loading, they’re thinking my system isn’t eutrophic you jerk. I acknowledge those systems


small caveat

i literally dont know anyone that keeps reef tanks who hasn’t moved homes in the last five years. I know they’re out there, but not in my circle and to me this is reflective of about 80-90% of all reefs, disassembly soon required.

even the owners of full internal waste processing tanks agree you can easily kill the system by destratifying the bed incorrectly


so the change we are bringing about is either keeping that waste well aerated, and less toxic, or system designs that do not store it- that way moves and certain upgrades aren’t breath holding moments for three thousand or more in investment.


I agree if you have innate top level reefing skill AND you are ok with zonation so dangerous it takes a fifty page work thread to handle interventions, and you don’t plan on moving for 10+ years, no upgrades either, then you have a 10%-20% chance of success by designing old school bed on the bottom total storage reefs and the benefit will be no-work design, light if any water changes for twenty years, you've read about those kinds

Reefing clean has a 100% safety track record, it wastes lots of water as the export vector as a negative, but it allows unlimited home moves and upgrades and it allows total access to the whole system for hand guiding with no risk; this means less willing takedowns due to months of uglies. On the old rules, we had to let uglies take over all reefs by rule and hundreds of owners just gave up on the wait, they were invaded the whole time.


nobody is downing old school design but it doesn’t match today’s accessibility requirements.

Once I add all the live rock I want plus live sand and CUC for the sand and rock, how long should I let the tank run fallow before adding fish?

 

[brandon429]

The going rate is 76 days, so 80 is better.

 

[Reefr]

My reef was in my last house without being moved for 40 years. No problems but I did stir up the gravel yearly with a diatom filter.
Here my Son N Law is lifting up the UG filter plate for the move here. That is after 40 years. A lot of mud under there but I use a reverse undergravel filter so it was constantly airated. If it were not for that set up, that mud would have crashed my system long ago.

If you don't run a reverse UG filter, and I know no one does so my tank is bulletproof, (because people just don't know any better) then you better clean out that mud.

I think @Lasse is also running a reverse UG filter - he too has an amazing tank