Sand/tank RIP clean - During - After - Updates

[brandon429]

And you can find many very strong setups running having never disturbed the sand.

what we do here is a control method opposite of the current advice of the hobby majority but we get to track livetime work threads, false claims will be highlighted by bad outcomes, bad updates in two months.


this thread here will be important for tracking the need of sandbed bacteria. Some aspect of negativity will manifest, if missing them is bad

as in health of the system, no invasion etc


earlier he had some sandbed diversity but didn’t like the tanks look, the diversity included an invasion fairly persistent


now it’s just gone, but he gets to keep all the coral mass + have rocks with no algae, it would have taken to summertime and beyond with other methods.


***tradeoff invasions are 100% factored here. We could have killed the rock algae with fluconazole powder

but that would now add dead algae, fluconazole side targets, current sandbed invader, plus detritus

all we did essentially was turn his system into a bare bottom setup, but with sand. going bare bottom isn’t really hurting reef tanks, and installing neutralized sand also doesn’t hurt, per pics.

u buyin any of that

b



side benefit of a rip clean, uncommon standout:

his tank (or true bare bottom tanks) can beat comparative tanks in longevity with sandbeds during a power outage or stilled event, due to lower systemic biological oxygen demand. a rip cleaned system (or bare bottom system) runs the most efficient oxygen/co2 potentials due to not housing sludge bacteria. They compete for nitrifier resources, namely oxygen, and sap it from resident fish during extended power outages. <—— heavy sandbed accumulations use more oxygen than all your fish do.


Traditional sandbeds have *far* more competing bacteria *against* nitrifiers than they have actual nitrifying bacteria. What we do is called backflushing, it’s what zoos and large aquariums do to maintain large filter systems for sharks / whales etc, but we are doing it inside the reef tank...to the working substrates. his reef looks like a huge diamond ring of sparkly clean laser now.


rip clean benefit #3
poll around in the fish disease forum: do massive stores of organics in sandbeds house fish pathogens and extend disease cycles by providing direct refuge...diversity = two sided coin, sometimes aligning the tank to take on safe coral mass won’t include doing it over a classic sandbed. If a microbiologist were to take a sample of tapwater rip cleaned tank sand, and place it on agar that selects for marine bacteria, complete inoculation will result. Rinsing in tap water will not sterilize sand, it can still oxidize waste.

 

[Cwentz758]

So explain the parameters I’m supposed to be shooting for here.

 

[brandon429]

Acceptable salinity and temp. Not anything else for a while

no media that targets nitrate or phosphate, those can exacerbate dinos. If a patch of algae grows on a rock, keep all params focused on coral growth, don’t change them to starve algae. Lift up the rock and kill the algae creatively / many threads show options / set it back.


Those corals cannot strip new water out of balance from calcium and alk for a while. What your bag of salt mixes to are the params for a little bit

That's one reason we have deep cleaners begin 2-3 gallon water changes, five if you rock and roll, + target feeding corals at least one extra time a week (twice if you rock and roll) for a few weeks. That change of norm is driving your params to be safe, though you aren’t testing. For once, no altering water course around what a tester says, if this was table top acro at fifteen pounds apiece we really would check calcium and alk


its packing protein fresh into your corals. You’re target siphoning up any waste soon after feed, plus any dinos or cyano that might have hitched back.
you will see corals adding mass after a few weeks of change of pace reefing


by then you’ll hate doing micro water changes :) and can resume all manner of avoiding them via dosing. But for sure this is the exercise, feed, change water phase it’s like a cpr phase for reefs.

 

[charlesk]

I’m guessing that’s what this is. So some of you know I’ve posted some threads about diatoms in my established tank. I can’t rid them for the life of me with water changes and 2-5 ppm nitrate and .3 to .10 phosphate. My tank itself is stable and looks good except for this dang brown sand.

so the plan. I’ve got some big Rubbermaid containers I plan to drain the tank down into the containers, well about half the water. Add the rocks to the containers with the corals after scrubbing any brown algae and other junk off.

once the rocks are in going to take the sand and get it into a bucket and rinse it clean. After that re add the sand and rock along with the old water with the fish then have the rest pre mixed water go in after.

also during the breakdown I’ll be trying to remove as many Asternia star fish as possible. They’re slowly killing my GSP....

If there’s any thing I’m doing wrong or not a good idea I’m listening. Really didn’t want to do this but I thought about vibrant. But I feel like this is quicker and more instant on the cleaning.

If misery likes company, I am going through the same madness, but mine is a step worse. I am dealing with just not diatoms but the straight from hell red turf algae. Satan’s personal gift to reefers.
I will be doing a total tank breakdown, the corals and fish will go to the QT tanks for a few days. The rocks will be bleached and the sand washed. Tip to you, when washing sand, use salted new ro/di with a power head and air stone. Will help to maintain the bacteria. I will only put back enough sand for a less than one inch sand bed. This will help to minimize harmful buildups.
I think that harmful elements are in the current water so I will be doing a full water replacement, fresh start. Going forward I will reduce feedings and keep the rocks and sand clean as possible.

If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to reply.

 

[brandon429]

Please consider not killing rock

we can beat red algae and keep the rock, do a single test rock here for proof


Once rock not the whole reef

Do something new with a single test rock vs what you've been doing.

If we make that rock laser clear without a hard start over, then that's on par

 

[brandon429]

Nine day predictable neon pink phase red algae kill (there's a work thread for everything in reefing)

We would do updated things to your test rock. This shows how they follow a predictable path though, even with the old way:

ID Request - Red Plants and Spikey Plant

How about a Tang or two, mine eat this algae like crazy.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Cwentz758]

If misery likes company, I am going through the same madness, but mine is a step worse. I am dealing with just not diatoms but the straight from hell red turf algae. Satan’s personal gift to reefers.
I will be doing a total tank breakdown, the corals and fish will go to the QT tanks for a few days. The rocks will be bleached and the sand washed. Tip to you, when washing sand, use salted new ro/di with a power head and air stone. Will help to maintain the bacteria. I will only put back enough sand for a less than one inch sand bed. This will help to minimize harmful buildups.
I think that harmful elements are in the current water so I will be doing a full water replacement, fresh start. Going forward I will reduce feedings and keep the rocks and sand clean as possible.

If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to reply.

It takes a lot of water to rinse so I wouldn’t plan on rinsing with salted RODI. Take a hose attached to a sink and just shove it down in the sand and move it around dumping the dirty water as you go. It’s going to take you a solid 45 min of rinsing. Your final rinse should be done with some salted or I used just regular RODI where I took another bucket dumped in with sand mixed then dumped it then repeated til my other bucket was empty.
As for your rock I wouldn’t bleach it. Take a toothbrush and scrub it along with a powerhead. Spot treat bad algae with hydrogen peroxide and blow into holes with a turkey baster. Bleaching the rock will kill all bacteria and I think you’ll end up recycling the tank.

 

[LardLad]

" we don’t need sandbed bac. We only need rock bacteria." Really?? I've always read that diversity of bacteria in the sand bed can be very beneficial.

I can tell you from experience that most of what you hear regarding sand bed bacteria is false. I have done what I call "death rip" cleaning of sand. Maybe refer to it as absolute deep cleaning. 25 rinses with scalding hot hose blasting in my driveway. It changed my life. My reef has never been healthier. Followed up with heavy stocking and feeding of coral.

There is nothing in that sand bed that you need.

Beware of "Bro-Science"

 

[Cwentz758]

Well it’s been 8 days since the clean. Tank looks about the same very clean, no algae on the glass. However, today I noticed very faint faint brown starting to appear on the sand. Almost like that brand new tank brown.

Also, I think I’ve won the battle with the little asternia starfish. Pulled over 150 the past week, and this morning only found one. Hopefully my GSP starts to re-encrust on my rock, as it makes me sad to see where it was few months ago.

 

[brandon429]

perfect! that signal means its time for your increased actions to be removing that selected growth, before it compounds

(all rip cleans have follow up action as required, not all are a fully one pass fix, perhaps rocks or some portion weren't cleaned etc/variables/we just guide it out, it ceases after tuneup is found)

the point of the rip clean is to instantly make a tank able to be accessed, without cloud...that allows you to make that early growth go right away as you tune for prevention and no mess with get kicked around the tank.


things that tune against your invasion but don't alter water params:
-heavy bluing, near elimination of white LED but not complete elimination. depending on the ability of your lighting/control, you might be dealing with this for a while. heavy blue different than first round, a change, often works well for prevention.

-changing light photoperiod and intensity, while keeping current spectrum balance can tune for or against invaders. Run all white/most tanks have cyano in three days. change of light stasis is handy tuner's trick, even if it doesn't work the corals wont be harmed by blues experimentation. whites burn them.

-suspending use of nitrate and or phosphate adsorbing media. *when that stuff is used without being mentioned tradeoff invasions are possible. same with dosing nopox, carbon, unspoken variables are routinely found in follow up work so the end variable is the simple choice to farm or remove non coralline growths, select remove.

 

[Cwentz758]

Did a water change today, hit the sand where looked like brown was appearing. Also took our two rocks and toothbrush scrubbed them since they had some brown growing. Also dipped a rock of GSP to get out a worm I’ve been seeing at night. It didn’t come out...

 

[brandon429]

Perfect guiding. Perfect

It's managing the clean condition first above all, then considering ways that might help reduce grow back

One day it'll all be solid coralline and cruise control begins

I'm not sure exactly what will stop growback permanently, uv sterilizers help on many tanks but that's more $

Hand guiding is what we have until we find that winning combo, you are literally opting out of being invaded.

* did we ever do changes to your lighting regimen I can't recall? Namely an intensity drop with more blues and less whites? An easy minor change to consider, won't harm corals and within a week w be apparent if helping regrowth

 

[brandon429]

@Daniel266jz

your tank is on even par with C’s.

we are both at first follow up guiding session, from a perfectly clean condition you both caused by sheer will and imposition. Each one of these tank intervals is a crossroads: allow mass or not allow mass.


if all of reefing was simple would it be so fun :)


I thought about both your systems and these linked themes come to mind


-we haven’t found matched grazers. U might have random grazers, but that isn’t matched to target. Random grazers poop a lot, clouding...
We don’t want reef tanks that starve all invaders via chemical restrictions, thats hard on coral. Physicality not chemistry is the safest way to handle your minor invasions, either a matched worker does it, or you stand in till we find that Gastropod


we are never discussing lack of coral mass in these two threads, if specific feeding and CPR is kept up, to pump feed into corals. Our physical work effort is the guarantee for coral health, but it’s water wasting and human calorie inefficient (vs a tank that runs itself) so we work on those efficiencies


Mostly, the original conditions remain / tank is clean still due to sheer will. That’s got to count for 9.5 out of ten in tank control threads, but that final .5 is the hidden balance that lets you go hands off, ASAP. We know people don’t want to rip clean forever.

-it’s not like we are talking catchup work number ten, it’s one, just after critical mass prompting action. Most of population biology is a curve...this one has been hammered down but some tamping follow up seems normal for conditions and grazing still in modification.

 

[brandon429]

I dont know how to stop the rework heh

we just guarantee that skip cycle biology can control it until the magic is found

coralife turbo twist uv sterilizers work great in 32s that’s no joke. I once bought a bike air pump that didn’t work well at all when I bothered to test it, Amazon took it back.

if you were to implement cheap and easy uv it has about 80% chance of having measurable impact in your systems, you’re not dealing with anchored invaders.

all matted invasions travel through the water, green microdot algae transverses the water column routinely, uv burns those. Uv doesn’t peel an invader off rocks for us, we do that.

uv burns the swirling cells your cleaning leaves behind.


If you were to buy a uv that honestly didn’t work I don’t see why my bike pump could be honored while non working uv wouldn’t.
*its not meant to be ran always. Reef and seek the natural clean condition

but to run it against a temp population swell is right and likely powerful. Uv and any other water action adds to compounding detritus (dead target) so in the end export is still required in some creative manner.

 

[brandon429]

UV use likely goes back to the 1940s-50s for water sterilization I didn’t bother to google it. It’s decades across industries

i worked in the bacteria lab of a beef processing plant, the UV before our tap output, and after RO/DI output, looked like a ghostbusters pack and we weren’t allowed to touch it. Cert techs came in e3m like clockwork for service.
these search results show very cheap, mismatched happenstance uv to have about 90% happy reef users.
nobody ever killed a reef or harmed coral with uv unless they allow temp spikes, which seasons can also inflict and we still offset.

it persists as a viable filter mechanism that existed before our hobby existed. My offer of $90 turbo twist uv comes from recommending UV for a decade and getting all good feedback~
***your tanks are in the clean condition it’s why working on water is great now and might reduce future work

 

[Cwentz758]

We did not do a light change. I run blues at a max or 50% some days (looking to maybe up it for SPS par) and my whites reach 10% for only a few hours then ramp down to less. It’s based off when I’m home when there’s White.

 

[brandon429]

excellent. that just adds to artists palette options in consideration.

I gravitate towards options that can't harm corals in trials. deep cleans, light adjusts, feeding in/out frequency adjusts, all harmless even for a lucky running system.

 

[Cwentz758]

So we’re at 14 days post clean. Tank for the most part looks good still however, the brown sand is slowly coming back. I’ve sucked it twice during water changes already. I’ve also noticed 3 rocks of mine turn brown as well and the others don’t. I’ve removed two of those rocks and scrubbed them and put them back. I’ve also noticed on my glass after a few days not the dust brown algae but looks like a bunch of tiny hairs on the glass.

All my parameters remain good and steady, fish and corals look fine.

 

[brandon429]

that action is literally like the physical therapy for the reef, its guiding based on repetition. so far not out of balance, we shine bright lights and hitchhike in a lot of stuff on our corals/fish slime coats etc...we feed well. to have to hand guide this is better than chemical stripping for sure. as time goes by you'll detect clues in some way that w reduce guiding work.

 

[Cwentz758]

Would adding bacteria be beneficial? Something to put compete