Operation Save A Tank

[jjwelch83]

So here we go...
I bought a 40gal Aqua Top off Craiglist that was in bad shape that has only been running for 3 months.
The tank was full of algae so bad you couldn't even see the fish.
There was a mix of rock in there to include some weird freshwater fake rock and sculptures. Hidden behind one of the rocks was an in water canister filter and an aireator going on. The tank was just full of bubbles. It was bad.
Unfortunately there were also 5 fish in here somehow surviving all of this. Sail Tang, Domino Damsel, Blue Damsel, Pajama Cardinal, & a yellowtail damsel.
I bought everything from him and put all the fish in a bucket with a canister filter and heater for the time being. I then transported everything across town to my house to include the water.
I set everything back up cleaned all the glass and filters, even replaced the mechanical filtration. The filters were a mess on the back side he had the bio media at the top, the next filter was bio and carbon and the last two were just sponges. I removed the carbon put his bio at the bottom and the bio with the carbon I removed all the carbon and added bio rock to it. Now in the second filter I have cemi-pure elite and the top one is just mechanical filtration. I Left all the substrate and rearranged the actual rock and removed the ugly statues. Over a couple of hours I was able to get the tank clear. The water tests great as well 0 Ammonia. just as it did when I was at his house. I ended up doing about 30% water change in the process. The tank has been running at my house now for about 18 hours and every thing looks great minus other than a little cloudy from all the movement.

Other thing to note...there was no clean up crew in the tank at all.

Now the next process is to very slowly replace this substrate, that looks like it belongs in a tetra tank, over the course of a month. I also plan on getting some more rock in this tank slowly as well.

 

[TNreefer123!]

I am currently doing the same exact thing. 40 gallon breeder that a family friend neglected. I go pick it up in the morning. Covered in hair algae. My “plan” is to keep 10 gallons of original water, clean filters/glass, do a peroxide dip on 75% of the live rock and go from there. What do you think?

 

[TNreefer123!]

I have a spare hob filter. Do you suggest running chemipure in the spare filter ?

 

[Brett S]

My “plan” is to keep 10 gallons of original water

There’s no need to keep any of the original water. There’s nothing special about it. Take as much water as you need to put into buckets to hold the fish and rocks and livestock and no more. Taking more water is just more heavy stuff that you need to carry. You’ll already be moving enough heavy stuff.

Start the tank with all new water and discard the water that you used to transport the livestock in.

do a peroxide dip on 75% of the live rock and go from there. What do you think?

I think that doing a peroxide dip on 75% of the live rock will lead to a new cycle and ammonia issues. If you aren’t planning to put fish and corals back in the tank right away then I think that would be fine, but if the livestock is going back in the tank then I would be hesitant to peroxide any of the rock. There’s already enough of a chance of die off or detritus getting stirred up that could cause ammonia issues. You could scrub the rock with a brush and rinse it in saltwater, but I wouldn’t use peroxide or a chemical treatment on it.

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Lookin good! Ditch the sailfin (it needs a Much larger tank, possibly an ocean), and get rid of the neon gravel and your on your way!

 

[Tired]

Don't dip the rock. It's started to get established, that's good. Just manually remove long hair algae tufts and add a reasonable cleanup crew. The algae will largely sort itself out if you keep the nutrients reasonable. Not at zero or you'll starve the beneficial algae starting to get going.

Do more water changes until the original water is all gone. It's probably tap, based on everything else.

That substrate is painted. Get it out fairly soon.

The chempure should probably come out once the water is clean. It's easy for that to get your nutrients too low, which will starve your corals and beneficial algae, while not doing much to harm the pest algae.

Sailfin tang absolutely needs to go. So does the domino damsel, those are really aggressive as adults. The other two damsels and the cardinal will be fine.

 

[don_chuwish]

Good on ya! I'd be sanitizing everything with bleach, rinsing, rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing some more. Then restarting the beneficial bacteria with something from a bottle - many good products do the job. Or just get live sand to replace what they had. Same for @TNreefer123!
And @Brett S is correct, don't stress the original water.

 

[TNreefer123!]

There’s no need to keep any of the original water. There’s nothing special about it. Take as much water as you need to put into buckets to hold the fish and rocks and livestock and no more. Taking more water is just more heavy stuff that you need to carry. You’ll already be moving enough heavy stuff.

Start the tank with all new water and discard the water that you used to transport the livestock in.



I think that doing a peroxide dip on 75% of the live rock will lead to a new cycle and ammonia issues. If you aren’t planning to put fish and corals back in the tank right away then I think that would be fine, but if the livestock is going back in the tank then I would be hesitant to peroxide any of the rock. There’s already enough of a chance of die off or detritus getting stirred up that could cause ammonia issues. You could scrub the rock with a brush and rinse it in saltwater, but I wouldn’t use peroxide or a chemical treatment on it.

Okay thanks! I will take your advice ! And sorry JJ, not trying to hijack your post. Just caught my eye and I am in the middle of the same process.

 

[TNreefer123!]

Good on ya! I'd be sanitizing everything with bleach, rinsing, rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing some more. Then restarting the beneficial bacteria with something from a bottle - many good products do the job. Or just get live sand to replace what they had. Same for @TNreefer123!
And @Brett S is correct, don't stress the original water.

Yeah I’ve got a lot to scrub haha

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Don't dip the rock. It's started to get established, that's good. Just manually remove long hair algae tufts and add a reasonable cleanup crew. The algae will largely sort itself out if you keep the nutrients reasonable. Not at zero or you'll starve the beneficial algae starting to get going.

Do more water changes until the original water is all gone. It's probably tap, based on everything else.

That substrate is painted. Get it out fairly soon.

The chempure should probably come out once the water is clean. It's easy for that to get your nutrients too low, which will starve your corals and beneficial algae, while not doing much to harm the pest algae.

Sailfin tang absolutely needs to go. So does the domino damsel, those are really aggressive as adults. The other two damsels and the cardinal will be fine.

Totally agree. Don't kill the rock, it's got alot of beneficial bacterial built up, no need to start over from scratch

 

[brandon429]

Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

What you are really in for: Hand cleaning, hard work siphon and rasp-removing of accumulations and invasions outside the tank and doing massive water changes is 90% of this thread, peroxide is 10%. We almost never dose peroxide into the tank water, this is a you-work-physically-hard as catch-up...

www.reef2reef.com

thirty pages of fixing reefs exactly like that one. If we ran that method on this tank above, what are the chances his after pics will look like the 30 pgs

did anyone recycle or lose tanks there, or were they darn happy

TN reefer your tank would work well there, that rock scape you have wouldn’t be hard to test rock, and then upscale the work to all of it + tap water rinse the sandbed (yes tap, see thread it’s thirty pages of happy tap)

we use tap not just for the fun of anarchy but to legit remove detritus, we never tap rinse the rocks those are saltwater rinsed after getting detail rasped.

also handy in the thread: no reef has ever had it’s cycle changed by adding peroxide. Even among gross overdoses, 3% won’t do it, it takes 35%

 

[Tired]

There's a difference between adding a tiny amount of peroxide to the tank, and dipping the live rocks in peroxide.

 

[brandon429]

people who dosed 4mls per gallon/ Cory did ten mils per gallon, are essentially dipping the whole tank for a week. (perx degrades in 4 hours, they’re re dosing over and over)

I would not recommend dipping or tank dosing only bc the target tends to grow back fast if holdfasts are left in place. Why stress all the non target life like worms pods etc, if can be avoided


agreed it’s an irritant and it’s lethal to some hitchhikers, namely hermodice fireworms

 

[jjwelch83]

Lookin good! Ditch the sailfin (it needs a Much larger tank, possibly an ocean), and get rid of the neon gravel and your on your way!

Yup sailfin needs a way bigger home.

 

[jjwelch83]

Yeah I’ve got a lot to scrub haha

That's no soo bad. You can actually see through the glass lol. I also wouldn't dip the rock.

 

[jjwelch83]

Don't dip the rock. It's started to get established, that's good. Just manually remove long hair algae tufts and add a reasonable cleanup crew. The algae will largely sort itself out if you keep the nutrients reasonable. Not at zero or you'll starve the beneficial algae starting to get going.

Do more water changes until the original water is all gone. It's probably tap, based on everything else.

That substrate is painted. Get it out fairly soon.

The chempure should probably come out once the water is clean. It's easy for that to get your nutrients too low, which will starve your corals and beneficial algae, while not doing much to harm the pest algae.

Sailfin tang absolutely needs to go. So does the domino damsel, those are really aggressive as adults. The other two damsels and the cardinal will be fine.

Yes I agree. Sailfin needs a better home where he can move. And the domino is a pain in the butt.

Yeah it was tap. I have done a couple water changes now with RODI and everything looks crystal clear. The Chem-pure is going to come out tomorrow morning. The substrate is on the way also. Thanks for the reply.

 

[TNreefer123!]

Well I spot treated the live rock and scrubbed the excess hair algae, cleaned the tank up and down. I did notice once I got the tank home that my buddy hardly had any live sand. I bought a bag of Carib-sea live sand and mixed with it. Do you think I will have any issues doing that? Also, I did not add the clownfish yet. I have him and a snail in a 10 gallon tank with original water. My plan this was to remove 10 gallons and add the fish and 10 gallons of the original tank water.

 

[brandon429]

That already looks 95% better nice job. On our work thread we clean the sand by tap water vs mix in with old sand and it’s clouding, we will have to see how it does but things look clean enough I bet it will be ok, nice work!

we look for clouding to discern risk of recycle, thats very clean and clear looks sharp

 

[brandon429]

One strong benefit you’ll get from deep cleaning vs using dosers is you get to skip compound clouding


when people dose fluc or vibrant to kill mass gha, it dies and rots in system and adds to old waste stores, which were feed for the original growth. This way above you did takes that rot out of the equation, your system looks clean because it is


they say some things can’t be done fast in reefing, well cycles and algae fixes don’t have to adhere to that rule.


the first sentence in our challenge thread says that algae problems will persist until human will overcomes the algae, nice will TN that looks to be owned by a resolved individual above

decrease light intensity ten pct off where it is now that will help a lot with growback. Follow up attention will be needed, this isn’t a one off fix any more than my lawn is a one off weed fix each year. New dandelions are coming next year, my butter knife is ready to blast them out. I’m resolved to not be the crappy yard neighbor just the same. This method above is a cycle free way of gardening, it allows you access without harm but the physical work is what did it


did you spray peroxide on the cleaned surfaces? If not it’s ok, that just reduces growback work it’s not a requirement.

 

[TNreefer123!]

One strong benefit you’ll get from deep cleaning vs using dosers is you get to skip compound clouding


when people dose fluc or vibrant to kill mass gha, it dies and rots in system and adds to old waste stores, which were feed for the original growth. This way above you did takes that rot out of the equation, your system looks clean because it is


they say some things can’t be done fast in reefing, well cycles and algae fixes don’t have to adhere to that rule.


the first sentence in our challenge thread says that algae problems will persist until human will overcomes the algae, nice will TN that looks to be owned by a resolved individual above

decrease light intensity ten pct off where it is now that will help a lot with growback. Follow up attention will be needed, this isn’t a one off fix any more than my lawn is a one off weed fix each year. New dandelions are coming next year, my butter knife is ready to blast them out. I’m resolved to not be the crappy yard neighbor just the same. This method above is a cycle free way of gardening, it allows you access without harm but the physical work is what did it


did you spray peroxide on the cleaned surfaces? If not it’s ok, that just reduces growback work it’s not a requirement.

Thank you sir! Yes a lot of elbow grease does the trick sometimes. Are you referring to the rock ? Yes, I sprayed peroxide on the rock in the infected areas and then scrubbed with a brush lightly. I will admit. I made a 50/50 mix of peroxide /water and dipped rock for about 30-45 seconds and the immediately rinsed and rinsed and rinsed some more in RO water. I hope this doesn’t have any major side effects. Thank you again for your help. Your 30 page article has been very helpful.