Rip Clean Plan

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Ro Bow

Ro Bow

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Also i found this on the glass i have hundreds of smaller ones in crevices but this guy is big. They only come out when there isn't much light. Chiton?
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Eric R.

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Algae came back on the rocks in smaller quantities and I still have some but it became manageable to pull out. I fed the same and did my weekly water changes.

Like I said earlier, the bigger issue at the time wasn't necessarily just algae. It was the fact that every single coral in my tank was closing up and looked awful. I think what caused my problems were:

* Implementing too many changes too fast
* Trying to nuke algae with chemicals

I created a mess I didn't know how to get out of cause I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I felt my tank was going to crash and was going to throw in the towel until someone convinced me to do a rip clean. I figured it was at my last resort.

Side question:

Would it really be that awful for him to pull the rocks out and scrape the algae off at least? That way he can implement other ideas being tossed around the thread? It seems like his parents are forcing his hand and at a minimum cleaning the algae off the rocks wouldn't be a bad thing. No?

I think manual removal is a good option. I did that when I had too much hair algae and not enough herbivores on my tank a few times over a few months. I removed the corals, put the rock in a bucket with old tank water from a water change, scrubbed with tank water and a toothbrush, then put them back in the tank. That way the algae I scrubbed off didn't stay in the tank. I didn't mess with the sand. The algae kept coming back, until I put the urchin in the tank. Now the only rocks with algae on them are the ones the urchin doesn't hang out on very often.

I've heard of people spot treating with H2O2 successfully as well. The question I had was what would be done differently to make sure the algae doesn't come back? I got an urchin, which for me helped keep the algae from getting out of control. I'm worried that the "rip clean" will reset the tank maturity to zero, and you'll just have overly clean rocks and an out of balance tank. And I wouldn't want to harm any of the beneficial organisms that are on the rock along with the algae in the process of the cleaning.
 

Coinzmans Reef

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Im so confused. people are saying not to do the rip clean, that itll kill my tank but at the same time im getting perfect stories of how the rip clean saved their tank. Guys I dont know what to do.

I have been at this for a long time and its still a challenge for me. My ICP tests are spot on in the nutrient portion I am right in the Red Line ratio. However I still struggle with GHA and Dino Algae. I blow off my rocks every two weeks with the feeding tube, change 10% of the water monthly. When I change the water I use a siphon to clean the sand bed into three five gallon buckets and replace that 15 gallons with new water. I use a carbon reactor or Chemi Pure in the Red Sea cup placed in the sock holder every other month for one week. I am dosing ALK CAL MAG with the Neptune Dos. I dose 12 other chemicals via the moonshiners reef method based off ICP tests taken every other month. The Apex is testing the water params daily backed up by monthly testing with Red Sea and Hanna test kits. I clean my sumps monthly using a Marineland Magnum Polishing Internal Canister Filter, my go to filters. I use two Magnum's when I blow off the rocks. I change my socks weekly. I run a Red Sea 300 skimmer and alternating Gyre 330's. I have 4 Red sea 90's 100% blue 65% white and I am sure if it were not for the Tang gang and clean up crew my tank would look like yours. I even dose Vibrant now and again.

A RIP clean will only work for a short while if you don't take the time to understand why you are in this position. Personally I would try the peroxide treatment first as it will be much less time consuming and cheaper. Place the rocks in a dry bucket and poor straight H202 on the rocks. Clean the rocks as best you can. clean the sand bed while doing a large water change 30-50% than treat the tank with peroxide @ 1 ml per 10 gallons. Vibrant is also an option.

No direct sunlight, limit feeding and clean the sand bed every time you do your monthly water change. Clean socks weekly. Research, research and more research. When you see a problem try to get ahead of it before it becomes overwhelming.

For clarification my tank's sand bed averages 1" deep, I see Ro Bow's is similar.

My prior tank was a DSB and was never disturbed. My bed was old school, 3" of aragonite with two layers of fine mesh screen to stop sand migration and 1-1/2" of #1 pink Samoa sand to resists detritus infiltration, no way to vacuum even if I wanted to. The tank before that had a plenum, I did say I have been at it for a while.
 
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Eric R.

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I think it's easy to overcomplicate reefkeeping, and do way more work than is necessary.

Healthy natural reefs without much algae have an abundance of herbivores.

Also, why use vibrant when it's likely just the same thing as algaefix, but they lie about it being an algaecide and charge you more money? I personally wouldn't put that in my tank.
 
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brandon429

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I like all the plans and options stated so far

*once someone takes the effort to treat rocks / might as well clean the sand, via tap water rinses until totally cloudless as that’s where the majority of algae fuel is, and no doser removes that pent up waste, only the blast hose

it de-ages a tank to rip clean it

don’t forget to scrape out the completely empty tank, scrape all glass with razor to clean it and make it look new

then input the rinsed sand, even if you buy new sand you still tap rinse it cloudless perfection like Danno did

then assemble the cleaned off rocks on top/ fill with saltwater you prepped in a brute trash can or two, then your reef is rebuilt. You don’t need bottle bac for this

the rocks will retain their bacteria regardless of your treatment
 

Eric R.

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@Ro Bow my 2 cents is that there are lots of folks that comment on this forum that only have a moderate amount to no amount of experience, along with other reefers that do have a decent amount of experience. Though being new, it can be really hard to judge who actually to listen to, nothing on forums is vetted. I don't personally have decades of experience with reefkeeping either though, I've just been in the hobby a couple years.

I like to listen to reefers with decades of experience and awesome tanks, like Sanjay Joshi, Mike Paletta, Jake Adams, Craig Bingman, Julian Sprung, Rich Ross, Ben Johnson, John Coppolino, etc. Interestingly, none of these folks post on forums (some used to post back in the day on Reef Central). But they share their info, they all have MACNA talks on youtube, they have all been interviewed on podcasts. They don't all agree with each other, but at least they all have lots of experience. Check out ReefBum on youtube/podcasts if you haven't listened to that one either. I also love watching the MACNA recordings on youtube. Get a subscription to coral magazine. Getting quality info is important to being successful in this hobby.
 

Eric R.

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Also, if you don't have corals in your tank, just fish, no reason to run lights at all until your tank is stable and is ready for corals. Manually remove algae, keep the lights off with some herbivores, then get some hardy soft corals until you get the hang of things.
 

KrisReef

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Im so confused. people are saying not to do the rip clean, that itll kill my tank but at the same time im getting perfect stories of how the rip clean saved their tank. Guys I dont know what to do.
Hey there @Ro Bow
I read the first three pages of more great advice that was generated from fans looking to help you succeed. These people probably didn't look at your original thread and that discussion, but that one ended with you assembling the very nice plan that you wrote at the beginning of this thread.

Your plan looks good, don't get distracted by the many folks trying to help you out. Tomorrow it's all you. Cleaning a tank isn't rocket science, just follow your own outline, and push through to the end. You don't have that much rock to clean, it's all right in front of you. If you scrub and scrape each rock for 15 minutes you will have 2 or 3 hours of solid work, and then it's all just reassembly. You did your homework, so tomorrow just carefully read you plan and check off each step as you go.


Please relax, don't stress, a little work and tomorrow evening your tank will be reconstructed and looking good.

Other folks today were giving ideas on animal husbandry, (change and wash your socks) et. That is good advice but you don't need worry about until next week after the rip clean is executed.

Work the plan, stay calm and move forward.

Note on rinsing sand: If you have a garden hose and a 5 gallon bucket, it will clean faster if you put a couple of inches into the bucket and use the hose to move the sand about, stirring up the sand so it releases the dirt. Once ther first bucket is clean, you can put that sand back in the aquarium and repeat 2 inches in the bottom (whatever works best for you) washing the sand until it runs clean. A little will get dumped, try to rinse carefully so just the dirt and only the fine sand particles are removed.

Scrub a dub dub sir, and post a picture of the finished, sparkling tank when you can.

Edit: If you keep the fish at the proper temperature, or if it gets a little cooler, that is the only thing that needs to be done for your fish while you clean. Don't feed them, but check on the temperature now and again to insure it stays warm like the south pacific ocean! I rip clean often, I used to help out at a lfs and rip clean isn't dangerous if you focus on dirt removal. It's like having your mom clean your room, everything gets washed and put back clean, and she is happy, and your fish will be too! GL!
 
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Cell

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I will say though, it's a good idea to have a plan to not let your tank ever get to that point again. Whether that is less white light, less feeding, more export, more CUC etc...
 

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal

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@Ro Bow , can you find a local mentor? I understand you are in a hurry but your parents have given you 5-6 months. Find someone local that can see your tank in person and advise you.
FWIW, and I say this with kindness, if you don't even know what GFO is, what an algae scrubber is, or how to clean filter socks, you have a pretty big knowledge gap. Attempting a rip clean by yourself, especially without the knowledge or experience to know what to do should you encounter any setbacks during the process, is a setup for failure. You're essentially doing a tank transfer, but not moving the tank. From someone who has done this before (moved a tank to another house and ended up doing a lot of the "rip" steps in the process), it's going to take 2-3 times longer than you expect, and livestock will suffer in the meantime. (Exactly how many fish are you planning to keep in a 5 gallon bucket for 'a day or two' ?)

Please try some of the other suggestions... Even if you do the complete rip clean now, by June, your tank might look the same as it does now.
 
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KrisReef

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@Ro Bow my 2 cents is that there are lots of folks that comment on this forum that only have a moderate amount to no amount of experience, along with other reefers that do have a decent amount of experience. Though being new, it can be really hard to judge who actually to listen to, nothing on forums is vetted. I don't personally have decades of experience with reefkeeping either though, I've just been in the hobby a couple years.

I like to listen to reefers with decades of experience and awesome tanks, like Sanjay Joshi, Mike Paletta, Jake Adams, Craig Bingman, Julian Sprung, Rich Ross, Ben Johnson, John Coppolino, etc. Interestingly, none of these folks post on forums (some used to post back in the day on Reef Central). But they share their info, they all have MACNA talks on youtube, they have all been interviewed on podcasts. They don't all agree with each other, but at least they all have lots of experience. Check out ReefBum on youtube/podcasts if you haven't listened to that one either. I also love watching the MACNA recordings on youtube. Get a subscription to coral magazine. Getting quality info is important to being successful in this hobby.
Perfectly given advice, but do this next week or so, sometime long after you have finished the job of reorganizing your tank, removing the dirt built up and making it sparkly clean.
 

MACHO

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Thanks all of you for your help and advice by the way : )
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Dude tbh don’t worry too much about this it’s a stressful situation but I didn’t pretty much the exact same thing as you did when my tank got over run with aptasia
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then the only thing different I did was put my fish in large totes with old tank water and old rock. Then I bleached the whole system let it run for maybe 2 hours fill with ro drain fill again. then put new sand and new rock in the tank then I ran turbo start and let it cycle and slowly added fish. Took me about a week but no deaths all coral is good. Am currently having problems with high nitrate and phosphate but everyone has there battles.
 

CoastalTownLayabout

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You sure have the green thumb my man! Good luck with your clean up, plan looks good. At a bare minimum you will soon have the tools and experience to do a full tear down and restart. Invaluable training. Cracked tank, visiting kids pouring unknown substances in your tank, extended power outages, you need to be ready for these black swan events if you’re planning on going the distance in this hobby. Experienced reefers don’t get caught with their pants down.
 

Drewbacca

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My tank looked exactly like that and I solved this issue with a lot less stress! The manual removal is a must, before a 25% water change I manually removed it by using a tooth brush to twist the algae up in it (like twirling spaghetti) and pulled it out, I did as much as I could, did my water change and then about in a week or so I did the same again. Beefed up my CUC with turbo snails, turned my white lighting way down and my tank is now spotless!
I am amazed at what a bunch of turbo snails did to my rediculously tough turf algae.
 

Drewbacca

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My main piece of advice is, Dont kill all your bacteria. One rock at a time, dip toothbrush in h2o2 and only clean/scrub the bottom drip point and rotate the rock , so youre only killing the algae on the outside and not letting it drip through the inside of the rock.
 

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