Someone with an invaded, nutrient imbalanced reef post up for a full rework+ skip cycle reassembly

[brandon429]

Team

This isn’t a thread where we watch you do various partial actions to your tank and report partial successes for invasion control, posting here means willing to follow the steps to full cleaning we show below-your whole tank is taken apart and cleaned. This is a review of deep cleaning biology

If you are serious about fixing your tank and are ready to follow an order of ops to fix it, this is the thread.


We are reviewing a very specific way to control tank invasions here, post a picture and we will apply only that method.

It has been patterned to me that those with invaded reefs are the first to critique saves processes...even though they’re invaded. Perpetual cycle ensues.

This thread is about letting go of the invasion first...trusting that if you'll let me drive a sec I'll leave you a tuned bio machine.








Most invasion tank threads are months of hesitation, trade-off invasions and tedious testing for phosphate, and lost money and animals along the way. Or no animals...with a month's long invasion being a constant hold up to potential in recently-cycled tanks we've built. we want examples that won't blend algae approaches, so that this thread reviews manual cleaning options only.

Rare is the individual posting an invaded tank who wants it fixed in two days, mostly people will choose the months long, wait and hope option. Let's make a new tank rework thread, fresh examples. We'll clean your sandbed to cloudless perfection, removing invader food, and we'll kill algae off your rocks vs starving your corals for thirty weeks. Your tank will be wow by Sunday.

Post up, give me a challenge tank.

Someone who is done letting the tank choose how it runs, post your full tank shots and we'll make the tank run how you want it to, by Sunday. Nanos post, they're easy to part clean.

Big tanks too, all the same biology but needs a crew to accomplish by Sunday. This thread is for no wait aquarium invasion reversal options. No param measures needed, no ID of invader needed they're all the same treatment. Cleaning. All of it, at once.

Dentists spot kill plaque, they rasp it out and polish the surface back to no holdfast.

So why let hair algae proceed past that one initial spot to a whole takeover? Treat your accessible rocks like external dental surgery and reclaim your reef right now.




Post before pics if you are serious about getting uninvaded & willing apply a certain order of ops to get there in two days.

Reef tank surgery and dental cleaning 3301 commence ️
scrub in and post up

 

[Frtdrmrose7]

Man this could be a great opportunity for someone

 

[Eackone]

Super interested in this, it resonates with me as I almost threw the towel this week but decided to start my cleaning yesterday. I’d like to know i’m on the right track. I beleive high nutrient were the cause. I have green cyano and hair algea. Bubble algea is starting to show too.


Tank is 92 gallon (5’) with a 30ish gallon sump with refugium growing chaeto. Its been set up for 13 months. Its a mixed reef but I’ve lost most of my SPS and some LPS due to algea over taking everything. Softies are thriving.


Salinity : 1.025

Alk : 8.0-9.0 Dkh

Ca : 450

Phosphate : 0.03 – was higher but i started running Aquaforest phosphate minus a few days ago

Nitrates : 10-20 – Money is tight and im under skimming. I am getting a new one for boxing week (likely the reefer skimmer)


Stocking :

2 black photon clown

1 royal gramma

1 chalk bass

1 yellow watchman + pistol shrimp

1 radiant wrasse

1 mandarin dragonet

1 tuxedo urchin

1 fire shrimp

1 cleaner shrimp


To start my cleaning yesterday, I pilled up all the algea on the sand bed and siphonned. Did my best to clean to rockwork with a brush but struggling with the bubble algea and hair algea.

I went to the store yesterday to get 10 blue hermits, 5 scarlets and 1 emerald crab to buff up the clean up crew already consisting of various snails and a few blue hermits.


Sorry for the long post. Pictures post clean up to come soon, i will also post a picture pre-clean up

 

[Eackone]

Forgot to mention, I do water changes every 2 weeks and I use Tropic Marin BioCal every 2 days to maintain Alk and Ca stable.

I don't have many pictures pre-clean up, but I have a picture of one of the most problematic area of the tank to illustrate how bad it was:

 

[Eackone]

post clean up... still struggling with hair algea and I didnt want to touch the bubble algea too much

 

[brandon429]

Thanks tons for the first post! So glad to have that work example, you affected that after pic vs waiting for it

great documentation. You have a lysmata (sensitive) and quite the fish load as well surviving the cleaning, please update for sure I'd like to have a long term log in place for everyone. Pics are just perfect showing targeted removal and indeed skip cycle reassembly

 

[DesertReefBoy]

Lol where was this post a few days ago. Just tore my 90 down. Had a huge cyano/Dino outbreak that I have been battling for a few months.

 

[brandon429]

I’m going to kick in my own tank too. Though it does not take up much space you can tell by the colonies it’s old, so there’s risk in doing this (but not with the right order of ops). The brain coral is about eight pounds solid/ established +10 yrs and hundreds of drains.

the point of the approach was to be incredibly harsh during a water change- and not refill it for half an hour.

Am not asking anyone here to make and consume an entire meal as your corals sit in the air. But if the mood strikes you / the point is skip cycling

We all have it

It’s doesnt kill live rock to expose it to air. None I’ve ever seen in all my reefing.

My tiny microbenthic animals survive. Pods plenty and worms and sponges bordering on invasive. Makes me wonder if the early authors touting air exposure as harmful ever tested it (with a bar higher than api .25)

The sandbed is rinsed like this, annually. Six worms are lost in the process. Zero invasions ever occur as the tradeoff. Larger tanks have one hundred times more dilution than this old pico reef, so they dont need interval rip cleaning if export is attained in other ways. After a rip cleaning, we should consider stirring and siphoning the bed regularly to stave off re cleaning as much as possible.

I’m not advocating that everyone with a sandbed clean it if they’re happy with it. Large tanks have an invasion bell curve relative to detritus loading that can span years before decline (eutrophic expression, old tank syndrome of alternating invasion generations etc)

So this much coral in one gallon is sensitive to ammonia, we’d all agree a pico reef will die faster than any other reef if actions employed aren’t reliable. By doing this to my time and money, hopefully someone with a 40+ won’t feel risky about a deep dive clean. We’ll be much nicer to your tank/ certainly.


Lastly,
This video was dual purpose work for the reefbowl. Harshest possible treatment/ top shelf Jason fox montis in the air crispy cold for 33 mins and no recycle+ purposeful invasion of Cyanobacteria. I’m infecting my own reef then curing it in an hour. I want y’all to do that too, the cleaning part if you have a current challenge, and log it on down

Don’t forget the most powerful green hair algae remover ever: a steak knife and peroxide. Nothing beats target rasping with the point of the knife to dislodge algae from its anchor base (and take some base too, dentist)

This targeting actually preserves the look you want for the aged live rock, dipping in peroxide is barbaric. Dosing it to the tank water, no

But it’s place in restoration is important: it’s after rasping. On the clean surface

Debride your algae pointedly and precisely then wipe the area with 3% new peroxide as cellular cleanup. This is the most powerful GHA remover there is. Tufty algae that people tell us to purposefully farm at the start of the cycle (no. Bad advice, clean it, dandelion it out of your garden) catches and holds its own feed.

Take your algae test rock and shake it about in the tank at night with only a flashlight shining off to the side. It will cloud big time

That’s nitrate and phosphate you can’t test for, degrading on site among the fronds, and independent of the techniques one uses to starve algae, like gfo. The tendency then becomes to push nutrient stripping into eventual coral bleaching. We’re so opposite: we don’t take all day unless the tank is massive like that 90+ above

There are some things best done FAST in reefing, and that’s declouding. Make your rocks immune to shake clouding, occasionally, somehow. Do it to the sandbed IF your sandbed is a catch all diaper for the display tank fish loading. If someone has a fancy remote bed prefiltered of detritus then don’t disturb those- we are simply aquarium bootcamping for the noncompliant tanks using reliable, skip cycle biology.




*of course actions like grazer balance, parameter balance, light balance, dissolved nutrient availability affects algae growth. Boosting some imbalances has been shown to restore some invasions, the way we use those actions here is by applying them to the clean condition vs the invaded one. Nothing is dosed to water here, we ripped waste out somehow in this thread / clearly you did that above and it’s nice to have on board. the time to apply the best and most careful preventative steps is now, after cleaning. Go full on rocket fancy mode, measure and adjust params to full content.


My grandma never sprayed any poison on her giant garden. She ripped out dandelions by the six inch root with a dulled butter knife, on the ground with a chuck cutting motion you didn’t approach while in progress. That action has application in reefing, we will show but in a precision manner working -only- on the holdfast areas of the anchored green hair algae tufts. We’re surgically preserving the nontarget areas by not dosing the water, not dipping the rocks.


Invaded on purpose pico reef

Took me half the time just to scrape the walls clean...they’d been covered by months of -detritus- nonremoval and my system was turned into a pre eutrophic condition, old tank syndrome setting in. And then overnite, restored.

The method is trustworthy and some tanks require careful planning to begin, but this thread now describes my basic approach to aquarium restoration within



A few hours later


The full sandbed rinse------->

This is a three year running pent up sandbed I'd just blasted clean with full hot tap water thirty minutes + 35% peroxide. I burned it clean then rinsed it in distilled many times, then simply put my thirteen year old corals and live rock back on top of it. This is the skip cycle rebuild, literally taking place over and over.

There's nothing wrong with my reef, it runs perfect. It's a forced entrant into the cleaning game because it's fun to show others all the hesitation offered to us in conventional reefing approaches really just gets us invaded.

For larger invasion challenges, above forty gallons, consider actually fully removing the sandbed and only putting it back when the tank is cured. How different is that angle vs the conventional angle of remove partially, give bacteria time to grow elsewhere (wrong, doesn't occur that way)

The old way of removing sand in steps is also exposing the tank to nutrient boons in steps. A full cleaning, where possible and volume allows, is an instant nitrate and phosphate balancer because you're hitting organic stores before (and while) they're breaking down to liberate algae feed into the water.

My sandbed blast rinse:




Linking a large work reference thread: this is the sand rinse thread. Look how many people flip clean their beds (meaning so clean you can reach in bottom layer sand and drop down in the tank/flipped section/with no cloud detritus and by extension no invasion or invader fuel)
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


The bacteria in your sand don’t need to be ramped up, down, sideways or any ways.

They’re incidental extras...biological oxygen demanders in a matrix of muck, which we clean, in one fell swoop on the small accessible tanks. Telling people they had to go slow on sand removal, with no alternatives, was really just imparting more hesitation and invader mass building time. The sand rinse thread proves that removing sand doesn’t make bacteria build up taller on your live rocks, bacteria don’t work that way. Your rocks are excess surface area for the bioload you keep and they’re enough on their own, which is why all those tanks didn’t die when we did crazy stuff to their old sandbed.

We will be using the order of operations from that thread. This one here just combines the rock cleaning steps as well, with new updated challenges. That thread proves we can prevent recycling in any case, no matter what the work requires, across all sized reefs.

Detritus carries the recycle risk. If you don't expose sensitives to detritus water, they don't die. That's the whole trick, nothing beyond that-

Any custom jobs planned with before pics are being detailed before surgery on how to separate sensitives from detritus / then the established work time frames out of water are employed to kill the algae directly.

Ironically, this is less stress on your corals than jacking with water params for months on end while an invader persists.

Large tankers with access to brute cans, don't think you are left out of the creative access loop. It is not costly nor inconvenient for you to pre drain off your water column, for re use, after the filthy sand is cleaned and the rocks are detailed.

It's only a headache if you have to make all new water. We remove every reason, every excuse biological and physical to not access an aquarium in this thread, that's for sure.

 

[hotashes]

@Teemingtank this is ideal for your tank to be worked on.

What is this?
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sh...hp?threads/What-is-this?.530770/&share_type=t

A.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Bubble algae- Foxface Rabbitfish. Emeralds also good -IF They eat the bubble algae rather than annoying the zoas and blastos.

 

[xCry0x]

@brandon429 I'm going to be starting your approach, would love guidance.

( you already posted on my original post from months ago)
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-red-turf-algae-battle.365765/
Nothing has changed, tank still has red turf everywhere.

Aside from a large chalice and some zoa's, it's basically a red turf reef that I'm maintaining at this point.

Was going to take out an easy access rock to test with.

I also decided to remove most of my sand bed. Id remove it entirely if it weren't for my leopard wrasse.

Sand bed is a headache; a bunch isn't easily accessible to clean regularly and keeps calcifying due to not being stirred. I've pulled about 1/3 out over the past few months and even the stuff I regularly cleaned during water changes filled the bucket with a putrid brown cloud.

 

[xCry0x]

The rockwork is all more or less completely covered in red turf algae

The wine red coloration on the rocks is not coralline algae; it is dense red turf. My big question is; is the intent of this to pull all the rock out of the tank?

Highlighted below; my rock work is predominately two structures. The left hand rock I have recently pulled out in the past ~6 months. The right hand side, the base rocks are significantly larger and I have never moved them since I setup the tank ~3 years ago. The sand behind the rocks, and probably under them, is calcified and rock hard itself.

I'v had never ending issues with coral since upgrading from my original 20g nano to this 65g rsm 250. Water always tests fine on salifert tests as well as ICP lab tests. Can see recent tissue loss/death highlighted below. These are corals I have had for years and no meaningful change has happened that would lead me to expect deaths. Coralline algae has been growing like crazy on glass/back of tank (as you can see in pictures), so it always makes no sense to me why the coral itself struggles.

Looking to take a step back and go back to basics. Start with removing sand, clearing up algae and getting a fresh start.

 

[MnFish1]

The rockwork is all more or less completely covered in red turf algae

The wine red coloration on the rocks is not coralline algae; it is dense red turf. My big question is; is the intent of this to pull all the rock out of the tank?

Highlighted below; my rock work is predominately two structures. The left hand rock I have recently pulled out in the past ~6 months. The right hand side, the base rocks are significantly larger and I have never moved them since I setup the tank ~3 years ago. The sand behind the rocks, and probably under them, is calcified and rock hard itself.

I'v had never ending issues with coral since upgrading from my original 20g nano to this 65g rsm 250. Water always tests fine on salifert tests as well as ICP lab tests. Can see recent tissue loss/death highlighted below. These are corals I have had for years and no meaningful change has happened that would lead me to expect deaths. Coralline algae has been growing like crazy on glass/back of tank (as you can see in pictures), so it always makes no sense to me why the coral itself struggles.

Looking to take a step back and go back to basics. Start with removing sand, clearing up algae and getting a fresh start.

Suggestion. When handling cleaning live rock wear gloves. I got a puncture wound in my arm reaching under a ledge that took a month of antibiotics etc to get rid of

 

[xCry0x]

I usually do - had a similar, but less severe situation. When I decided on a whim to rip out the rock on the left side to break off all the hardened sand, I did it all bare handed and ended up with more than a few of what I would assume would bristle worm stings. Didn't require a doctors visit but they hurt/stung for a while.

I'v also developed more sensitivity over time to that torch coral on the bottom right of the second picture. That was one of the first corals I bought when I got into the hobby ~8 years ago. It never used to bother me but in the past 1-2 years every time it touches me I get little sting marks on my hand that itch like crazy for days.

 

[brandon429]

Hyper slammed at work custom plans tonite for a fact

That red issue above is not hard to pre model even before the big job, to ensure compliance. Be back tonite team

Once we use skip cycle cleaning to manually rip out and kill invaders, you guys can install and adjust cuc and params to your heart's content

 

[MnFish1]

Hyper slammed at work custom plans tonite for a fact

That red issue above is not hard to pre model even before the big job, to ensure compliance. Be back tonite team

Once we use skip cycle cleaning to manually rip out and kill invaders, you guys can install and adjust cuc and params to your heart's content

Brandon. This is one of those times where someone not familiar with the way you write would be confused. I think I understood though

 

[brandon429]

No mas

Stop




We will simply rip clean tanks and move forward/ideal

 

[xCry0x]

Brandon. This is one of those times where someone not familiar with the way you write would be confused. I think I understood though

Ha. I didn't understand when he had responded to my original thread but after reading the peroxide thread it makes sense. No rush on my end.

Not giving up, just ready to go nuclear to fix the issues.

 

[brandon429]

Hey! Just for quick starter, we should test one rock externally just to get a working baseline
Whether that has to be upscaled to all the rocks depends, but test modeling is how we get the educated guess on what’s likely to hold if we did choose to upscale whatever it takes to get a test rock to comply. The reefcentral peroxide thread I did has the most red brush, and yes it was hard to kill we never successfully killed it in tank with sustained no growback. So to hedge bets for ya here in a safe manner:

One test rock or test area is just new bottle 3% peroxide poured across one algae zone, left wet for 3 mins, rinse and put back

The other test area or full rock is rasping, what I predict might be required. That’s the knifing aspect. The dentist scraping your plaque to dislodge it, not gently, we bleed, your rocks gets target micro gouged in the test zone to clear and dislodge that brush from its anchor points. Make this test area or whole rock knife tip scrape and debride clean. Apply same Peroxide as above, but now only to the cleaned rough but precisely scraped areas

Third option is dilution test, never seen it work on a brush algae invasion but if you wanted to demo the least work option for your 3x pre testing, move a test rock to a bucket of sw and dose two mils peroxide per ten gallons. Let it sit for a day then put back in tank and chart out to observe

***consider using boiling water too in places to compare to peroxide

Don’t forget- red brush takes the longest to register a death phase with peroxide. About nine days, so first few is nothing seemingly, then day four things turn hot pink. Day nine dead

Getting initial kills isn’t hard, it’s the sustain, so on a big tank we want to guess about sustain as least as possible. Gotta test rock here
B

 

[xCry0x]

Will give these a shot this afternoon. I'm going to use a Dremel for the rasping though.

And yes, while id love to have the full tank dose work, I have doubts.

Thanks.