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

[hotashes]

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.

A Dremel that’s hardcore reefing, just make sure you’re not let with a pile of dust ha ha. I used a steak knife to do my dentistry on the rocks, worked every time and pretty quick. Just make sure the rocks are rinsed/bested in old tank water to release any build up.

Good luck,

A.

 

[brandon429]

- a dremel, it's underdoing that peeves me. nice move to checkmate an offender

Before peroxide, in the Neolithic era of tank manhandling, I would focus the beam of a blue jet flame grill lighter on anchored invaders. light them up. No black marks that's a clean cauterization. It conducts no heat to nearby areas, tin foil deflectors, we used what we had.

Peroxide would've seemed insane back then.

Dremel with thin wheel maybe, but there's a double edge sword to large swath cuts- barren ground is the root cause of invasions, not params.

We need to foster coralline and coral flesh to literally exclude algae, whoever presents algae anchored in the mouth of an lps? It anchors to septa, exposed skeletal areas. This is why pre modeling is right for tank rework, model and watch if that area self guides acceptably. But taking ground is first start, even if you chemically burned it, large clear swath results. I generally steak knife it like Ash does above

Look what this gentleman did to become rude to his invader (ideal rip clean, surgical clearing, skip cycle reassembly):

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/beeping-green-hair-algae.527285/page-3#post-5497995

The main thing we want to provide here is no loss access. The hard part (seemingly hard) in dealing with sensitive reef animals is access, without killing them, and every tank rescue method other than the one we practice exposes your entire tank, nontargets too, to parameter or medication swings and we don't even get to know if it works, or how it sustains

So we're opposites
We know you can access the reef tank as deeply as you want as long as detritus is factored. Keep detritus, lose the tank. Isolate and remove detritus, you can work on the tank forever and it will never destabilize.

We use skip cycle biology to -access- targets directly and learn their characteristics, and we like to never contact nontargets with anything other than saltwater. That hair algae post above finely displays the whole process so well


We need a 35% peroxide clause here, your invader would respond well to it vs 3%> needs safety detailing before mass use of 35% but it's indicated for strongly rooted invaders like this one. coming up later. Can't wait to see your increment testing pics!

After the tank has been reworked, unhelpful organic stores cleaned, targets removed, algae no longer catching detritus in its fronds for self feeding independent of your tested params, -then- we experiment with clean up crews, dosing fluc or any other medicine of the day, peroxide, boiling water, magnesium paste, nitrate and phosphate etc.

All the stuff people typically advise for reworking a tank comes after the detritus ejection and not before. We're removers, grazers. Clean up crews and parameter chasing are preventatives, we don't use them to kill algae/invaders.

Preventatives are not used as removers in the perpetually uninvaded reef aquarium.
B

 

[xCry0x]

No clue how you could do it with a knife - the stuff doesn't want to come off.

With the dremel, I used a polishing brush like this:

Didn't destroy the rock but did a decent job in removing the algae. To use the dentist analogy; it works like their polishing tools.

The right side was polished; left side obviously not.

Poured a liberal dose of 3% hydrogen peroxide over the rock and let it sit.

Honestly, using the dremel on all of the rock would be an insane amount of work. At that point, I'd be better off polishing what has coral on it and then throwing the rest in a bucket and cooking it in the dark for a month.

The rock in the picture is fairly small, maybe ~2 pounds. Just getting ~half of it cleaned off took a while.

 

[MnFish1]

- a dremel, it's underdoing that peeves me. nice move to checkmate an offender

Before peroxide, in the Neolithic era of tank manhandling, I would focus the beam of a blue jet flame grill lighter on anchored invaders. light them up. No black marks that's a clean cauterization. It conducts no heat to nearby areas, tin foil deflectors, we used what we had.

Peroxide would've seemed insane back then.

Dremel with thin wheel maybe, but there's a double edge sword to large swath cuts- barren ground is the root cause of invasions, not params.

We need to foster coralline and coral flesh to literally exclude algae, whoever presents algae anchored in the mouth of an lps? It anchors to septa, exposed skeletal areas. This is why pre modeling is right for tank rework, model and watch if that area self guides acceptably. But taking ground is first start, even if you chemically burned it, large clear swath results. I generally steak knife it like Ash does above

Look what this gentleman did to become rude to his invader (ideal rip clean, surgical clearing, skip cycle reassembly):

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/beeping-green-hair-algae.527285/page-3#post-5497995

The main thing we want to provide here is no loss access. The hard part (seemingly hard) in dealing with sensitive reef animals is access, without killing them, and every tank rescue method other than the one we practice exposes your entire tank, nontargets too, to parameter or medication swings and we don't even get to know if it works, or how it sustains

So we're opposites
We know you can access the reef tank as deeply as you want as long as detritus is factored. Keep detritus, lose the tank. Isolate and remove detritus, you can work on the tank forever and it will never destabilize.

We use skip cycle biology to -access- targets directly and learn their characteristics, and we like to never contact nontargets with anything other than saltwater. That hair algae post above finely displays the whole process so well


We need a 35% peroxide clause here, your invader would respond well to it vs 3%> needs safety detailing before mass use of 35% but it's indicated for strongly rooted invaders like this one. coming up later. Can't wait to see your increment testing pics!

After the tank has been reworked, unhelpful organic stores cleaned, targets removed, algae no longer catching detritus in its fronds for self feeding independent of your tested params, -then- we experiment with clean up crews, dosing fluc or any other medicine of the day, peroxide, boiling water, magnesium paste, nitrate and phosphate etc.

All the stuff people typically advise for reworking a tank comes after the detritus ejection and not before. We're removers, grazers. Clean up crews and parameter chasing are preventatives, we don't use them to kill algae/invaders.

Preventatives are not used as removers in the perpetually uninvaded reef aquarium.
B

@brandon429. question -so - we do al tbese things (and I did some today) - then what - the practices that caused the problem in the first place likely will cause he same problem again or ?

 

[xCry0x]

The issue with a full blown algae issue is that the algae traps detritus and in doing so fuels its own growth.

I'v never had horrible husbandry - my tank was super under stocked when algae took over and I never had this issue in my last tank.

However, I did add a huge pile of new dry rock when I upgraded which can cause nutrient issues. Also never upgraded my clean up crew until after I had a big problem.

 

[hotashes]

@brandon429. question -so - we do al tbese things (and I did some today) - then what - the practices that caused the problem in the first place likely will cause he same problem again or ?

Keep it simple, think of import/export. These actions are all export when auctioned correctly. That’s why once you’re on top of the husbandry these steps play a vital part of giving you claw back, fast. Once you’ve got control, ie detritus and cloud free as a standard then it’s just cruise control.

A.

 

[jabberwock]

I think Brandon hates algae...

 

[brandon429]

I promise I’m against human hesitation in all this, not the plant

Algae belongs on a reef, it’s selected for numero uno so when it shows up in everyone’s tank I’ve learned to quit thinking of it as a problem. Yes there are balances that keep it in check, that’s the endless debate that is prevention, I couldn’t lay a claim to fame there

But the reset, we can and it’s consistent. It’s the undoing of human hesitation



Algae generations hiking in and out, expressing and then waning as normal, it’s a cosmetic thing we don’t like and at times it’s a choking of our investment thing we don’t like, but in the end we are either going to farm this stuff and take chances or we’re not.

The reason I don’t like to factor causatives other than detritus and lack of surface area manual control is because it allows people to hesitate. Handle causatives and options in the clean condition is all I care about, and cause that clean condition using our order of ops so we don’t nuke stuff.


I won’t be asking for phosphate and nitrate here. To measure those is to hesitate, unless it’s in a clean condition tank and one is experimenting with suppressive balances which I’m for. Large tankers better have a hold on that or they’ll be rip cleaning every Tuesday...to manage nitrate and phosphate balances atop the typical cloudy sandbed with cloud rocks is an exercise in futility. The clean condition reef will sustain your imparted measures to the water column much better.

My own reef requires zero, zero hand guiding year after year on the rocks because all my rocks are either coralline or some form of flesh. I use no clean up crew whatsoever. I need no preventative since I occasionally flush out the waste from the sandbed

In my opinion this is the result of mean gardening but with a vision- once I trust that early action, not inaction and hesitation, will keep me algae free then I’m free to sock in so many lps frags that they shade the other areas awaiting coralline. I’ll abut the frags right next to each other, and literally begin excluding zones algae could come back and take over.

Then coralline plates in and around the frags, more preventative in place

The whole area eventually self accretes with -good stuff- which actively and enzymatically prevents common algae from anchoring —easy to pull off in a pico but it’s the modeling that upscales just the same to someone who can afford to pack in a big tank. Of course I’m changing all the water weekly or bi weekly, this is akin to you guys’ gfo and biopellet and ats use to attain param balance. I’m just resetting mine back manually...same ends, so agreed water care is a factor but it’s like eighth in line of importance in my opinion.

My personal favorite preventatives are manual gardening of all open ground at the start, hard work like when dandelions took hold the first part of the growing season. Stickers too, if you let them. Manual manual + chemical cheat kill (peroxide) as manual only scrubbing we can see will have direct growback. Use whatever someone’s acceptable plant killer is along with manual removal in a deliberate manner (peroxide, boil water, magnesium pasted with baking soda applied as a patch to sit on a bad spot, whatev) these extra cheats help to kill anchors, holdfast areas vs scraping alone. The cheat chem and manual control is how I expect to start any reef. Next up along with ground control is planting what I want for new frags, but a lot of them not few.

Hard to grow algae on spot X if a giant well fed favia is overlapping the spot, taking up light, laying it’s flesh in place as I help to keep spots open. I’m feeding heavy, growing corals to accomplish this I’m not sparsely feeding in order to grow less algae, cuz this is hands on opposites thread. Feeding heavy doesn’t cause algae, I export waste not store it. Algae can’t grow, not allowed. Feeding puts corals into growth mode, which is algae exclusion mode

I stack my rocks in an accessible manner. This comes from prior work threads: I don’t want to make my tank algae free, I’ll have to undo a complicated rock stack (you’d choose to lose your whole investment over a certain shape of rocks?! Tell me algae invasion isn’t psychological lol)

Pack in grazers if you can as things start to mature, to help in growback prevention, not as removers because our hands are the removers and we act when we see a target (not everyone takes it that serious, we’re operating from a tank saving way of thinking boot camp so we do care here that much)

Blue light vs white

My kessil a160 on 10k will put green micro dot algae on my glass and eventually some would find a cranny on a rock. But on full blue, nada. I don’t know why that is, blue is algae suppressive and white ain’t


As mentioned above, the algae itself is self feeding. **everyone** with an algae invasion test rock can shake it about in a tank and watch that casting come off, actually removing algae IS a form of prevention as live rock can express/eject it’s castings (by the animals within, live rock produces detritus daily Ash knows and has photographed for us) when it’s retentive plants are cleared


And then at the very end it’s the N and P ratios, that’s how I handle it in my opinion. Nice chat for sure and wow on the pics you guys are putting up

 

[xCry0x]

Blue light vs white

My kessil a160 on 10k will put green micro dot algae on my glass and eventually some would find a cranny on a rock. But on full blue, nada. I don’t know why that is, blue is algae suppressive and white ain’t

Interesting perspective on that.

This current algae mess tank isn't my first tank; I had a 20g nano for years that I did not maintain well at all. The only time I ever had algae issues in that tank was when I first started it as I had 20 lbs of dry rock that exploded in GHA then subsequently cleared up in a few months.

That tank was always under LED lights; first a chinese black box LED then a nanobox. Even the chinese fixture was a dual channel so I could do blues for a few hours early in the day then hit full white + blue middle of the day then do blues at night. The nanobox had full dusk/dawn/etc.

When I upgraded tanks, I moved a t5 fixture that is stock with the RSM 250 tank. 6 t5s sitting about 3" over the water - they put out a ton of par. No dimmer, all one channel. So its either a lot of light or no light.

My lighting schedule is usually ~10 hours a day of 100% light.

I had ignored that forever and always focused on nutrients. But I am thinking the lighting is the original source of problems since everything else has been more stable since I upgraded tanks yet my nano was vastly more successful of a tank despite being a completely negligent owner (I'm talking I measured alk for the first time in 2 years and it was at something like 3.0 dkh yet I had a bunch of healthy looking corals).

 

[jabberwock]

I am feeling inspired by you Brandon. I still don't want to pull my rock, but I did a pretty big scrub with a toothbrush attached to a siphon hose today. Still need to clean out my filter. The improvement is much more noticeable in person.

 

[brandon429]

It is an improvement and for sure thank you for posting. Well done demonstrating direct cleaning access without losses, yes

It will have growback a little, but access is infinite. we get more adventurous with each access/practice

the lighting isn't as blue there it will be a selector, but the portions removed are now storing less detritus it will begin to open up.

I want to remark a specific analysis of your aquarium status from those two pics, we speak before and after pic language here and those look great.

The coverage on rocks prevents the little animals inside from properly expressing waste, like a mini apartment complex. When topical algae is removed, and to the degree it is removed, the entire balance and ability of the rock changes as pores open up (expands surface area)

Cleaned live rock has a period where it pumps out detritus stores, feeling fresh and breathing again... Follow up water changes are required to export all the goodies that come with a good tank overhaul. It's not a single event, but a change in the way we see work given to the tank until it behaves the way we want without work.

Wanted to get into my nano reef. Com thread and show you a nice before and after, where we fixed it in one day vs any kind of wait:

 

[brandon429]

Seabass' work:

He could have easily chose to starve it out, GFo it out, buy an ATS and compete it out, sea hare it out, however that one is the two hour job with peroxide removal skip cycle reassembly. The sandbed doesn't have to be there, it's of no requirement to the tank and he opted to not have one. All this means is, when you decide to clean your sandbed where it's cloudless when disturbed you'll be dealing with rocks less, it's neat to see options where tanks were simply kicked right back into shape and turn out great.

Your tank is small enough it doesn't matter when you act on it, only large tankers are at total risk in delaying. Nano keepers are much freer to experiment, the reset button is a mere two hours work.

 

[jabberwock]

Thanks Brandon. I appreciate the insight and encouragement. I started with reef saver dry rock 6 months ago. I am starting to see more coraline algae growth on the back of the tank and the rock. So I am hopeful it will flourish soon. My sand seems to be in good shape. Not cloudy at all when disturbed. I lightly vacuum it once a month, and I have a tiger sand conch who does a great job of turning it over. The 3 nessarius snails but they are pretty small. I have some bristle worms and micro brittle stars that help with clean up.

I have reduced lighting a lot, 1 hour ramp up of blues, 1 hour of ramp up on whites, 4 hours of both blues and whites, 1 hour of ramp down on whites, and then 1 hour of ramp down on blues. I cannot control intensity as it is a bio cube. I have been running purfiltrum, and just started phosguard with the algae eradication in mind. I feed 1/3 of a mysis cube a day, and supplement with veggie pellets twice a week, reef roids once a week. I am purchasing water from LFS and parameters are always rock solid.

Any suggested changes you have would be welcome. I also plan to attack the algae manually again in about a week (give the tank time to settle).

 

[jabberwock]

I want to add that I need a better (stiffer brush) for algae removal. The toothbrush is too soft...

 

[brandon429]

Hey if you did all that prep agreed can cruise control awhile there's no true rush. None of those changes or actions are harmful for coral, but they're anti-invader and invader feed (gotcha on sand update) all good. In time with repeated access the invader can't take over, and slight changes in chemistry and or CuC sure could balance it.

What I like is, w dealt in terms not of nitrate and phosphate measures, nor having to identify the invader, we just dealt in different degrees of action all invaders respond to in the right combo

Most algae threads are endless testing and chasing and waiting, it's nice to see your manual work on that nice nano.

My sandbed had cloud in it as it's time to clean soon, I go long term then catch up style. Intermittent stirring is more common less invasive and works great. At least it's been actioned, and the sandbed wasn't the locus of growth anyway it did look clean in the cross section portion

 

[xCry0x]

48 hour update: The red turf that I covered in peroxide has more of a pinkish hue to it.

One of my hermits has also been actively nibbling on the treated rock. Heard people report in the past that after peroxide treatment their clean up crew was more apt to focus on the treated areas. May be the case here.

-edit-

I also just put a rock in a bucket of salt water w/ ~0.3 ml hydrogen peroxide for about 1.5 g of water. Estimate on water volume since its in a 5g bucket.

 

[jabberwock]

Tank is looking better. Cleaned up the filter and replaced phosguard yesterday. Tested nitrate and phosphate today. Both historically always test 0.0. Tested at 10 ppm nitrates and ~0.25 phosphates maybe less, maybe a trace... (API test kit). I believe this is an expected result as I removed a large portion of the "consumers". Will be testing these 2 parameters daily for a while. Will continue with daily 64 oz water changes for now.

My corals should like the nutrients.

 

[MnFish1]

Tank is looking better. Cleaned up the filter and replaced phosguard yesterday. Tested nitrate and phosphate today. Both historically always test 0.0. Tested at 10 ppm nitrates and ~0.25 phosphates maybe less, maybe a trace... (API test kit). I believe this is an expected result as I removed a large portion of the "consumers". Will be testing these 2 parameters daily for a while. Will continue with daily 64 oz water changes for now.

My corals should like the nutrients.

The problem with the tests - is that 0 nitrate and phosphate don't mean they aren't constantly being produced - only that they are immediately being used. If you add 10 ppm nitrate to a 100 gallon aquarium with one small frag - algae will grow - if you add 10 ppm nitrate to a 100 gallon tank with 95 percent coral coverage - coral will grow. its all about whats outcompeting the rest. This is my problem with Brandon's theory (Seabass example) - its easy to clean a tank - but what caused it to get that way in the first place?

 

[jabberwock]

The problem with the tests - is that 0 nitrate and phosphate don't mean they aren't constantly being produced - only that they are immediately being used. If you add 10 ppm nitrate to a 100 gallon aquarium with one small frag - algae will grow - if you add 10 ppm nitrate to a 100 gallon tank with 95 percent coral coverage - coral will grow. its all about whats outcompeting the rest. This is my problem with Brandon's theory (Seabass example) - its easy to clean a tank - but what caused it to get that way in the first place?

I agree. That is part of the reason I did not pull all of my rocks and nuke the GHA. I always knew I had nitrates and phosphates wrapped up in my GHA. My new tank with dry rock quickly became an algae farm. That is to be expected. I now have coraline algae growing pretty good, and so I want to "nudge" the nutrients towards the coraline and my corals (mostly softies). I feel like it really is gardening in a new tank. Manual removal is pulling weeds and helps to tip the balance. My point with my recent test results is that there was a change. Feels and looks like progress.

 

[xCry0x]

I wanted to update on this. For the rock that I pulled out, all the algae that I doused in hydrogen peroxide made a full recovery and back to its natural healthy burgundy color. It had originally started to whiten and looked like it was going to die - nope.

Naturally, the rock that was simply put in tank water for 72 hours with a small dose of hydrogen peroxide showed no signs of any harm to the algae.

=(

Means the only way this is coming out is either another round with more concentrated peroxide, or more scraping it off the rocks.

@brandon429