Substrate change

[TimD]

Corals refuse to open after treating tank for dinos

My SPS (mainly) have looked like this for over a month (no polyp extension at all) right as I starting fighting dinos, it’s been about 2 weeks after treatment for dinos and my corals look horrible. What can I do to bring them back?

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Tim

imagine if he rip cleaned that tank

we are trained to ride that invasion into the dirt, bringing all corals down and blanketed in waste, in the name of stability. Sometimes the reef is too big to clean as well, to be determined


two opposite paths for the next few months based on rip cleaning: your reef is bright and clean and full of open spaces wanting to take on coral waste and fish waste from primed feeding, the best the tank can endure. Your tank can take on more feed for the corals than normal, it’s a positive mass interval for your reef if you step up and sustain target feeding.


an invaded tank is all full of waste in every crevice, invasion matting, less actual nitrification rates- more buildup of scum mats, feed withholding due to starving out a target vs feed input in the clean condition...these two reefs are on totally diverging paths all due to storage mode vs export mode. I thought it would be handy to have updates between two varying systems for the next few months tracking.

I’m a believer, my corals have never looked happier and crystal clear water. Thanks once again for your advice. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes

 

[brandon429]

Tim hey one more bump

 

[TimD]

Tim hey one more bump

its to link case studies in nanos so we can track out destiny of controlled reefs vs reefs where the owner sits back and awaits events

How are we killing our critters?

Hi. Another pair of newbies here, probably doing it all wrong and hoping someone can tell us what our mistakes are. Started a Fluval Sea 13 Gallon tank in January using the supplied pump plus a small wavemaker head to pulse it. Four pieces of live rock, one in the corner and three together to mak...

www.nano-reef.com

as I skim the web for nano longevity trends, that stands out. Not for the obvious algae issues we can all get


but for the peer training. What’s the very very last option they’d ever consider, the worst thing possible, only to be ran as a last resort? A free of charge rip clean. They consider it equal to loss of the entire reef, really they do it’s why the option never comes up.


you will have a gha issue on day, we all do until coralline starts to help out by rejecting. I’m not saying you have to chemically attack every algae either…it’s ok to try snails and cuc fish options



but you don’t ride the system into the ground like that, they have the option to be shiny, right now, but peers will not allow it so they won’t. Notice how many fish are being cycled through that setup as a hopeful control…massive disease input. Massive waste adding, vs subtracting, that fish waste and extra feed command actually causes more gha as they can’t believe the system needs export, they are trained to buy things, test and import.


you can see they have fine fine coralline on the walls and in areas on the rock, we’d keep that. While disassembled and sand getting rinsed, spray the walls of coralline with wet saltwater and keep moist. Rebuild the tank clean, but with aging markers left in place.

while rock is out, you use a pocket knife to tip-scrape and dislodge all anchored algae, rinsing free of saltwater. Now the rocks are clean and we didn’t dose the tank and sit idly for two months as things decline.

if you want thorough, put a little peroxide where the algae used to be, on the scraped rocks externally, and put back in tank perfectly clean and avoiding the coralline areas (they don’t have algae to scrape anyway, coralline rejects algae adherence)

visualize how that tank above would look after this type of handling. It’s entire life course would be different vs where it’s heading.


all the snails added, all the indirect actions loading the system, they’re headed towards a crash and or willing reset.

if someone wants to try snails, try them in the clean condition as growback prevention. Doing opposite of what the masses advise is the secret to incredibly long term nano reefing.


Based on advised options, when does their toil end? Open- ended, no completion date in old tank control science. Wait and hope all day


but when is the completion / fix date for the tank if they used a rip clean? Their whole system is fixed by 2 pm. Today could be the day but they won’t choose it, peers will never allow it. That much control is bad, ride the tank totally into the dirt and lose it all is preferable to the masses

we would never test for ammonia after a cycle, it remains in control. If a dead snail is causing raised ammonia, you remove the dead snail no kit is required to tell you if a rotting animal is

Tim hey one more bump

its to link case studies in nanos so we can track out destiny of controlled reefs vs reefs where the owner sits back and awaits events

How are we killing our critters?

Hi. Another pair of newbies here, probably doing it all wrong and hoping someone can tell us what our mistakes are. Started a Fluval Sea 13 Gallon tank in January using the supplied pump plus a small wavemaker head to pulse it. Four pieces of live rock, one in the corner and three together to mak...

www.nano-reef.com

as I skim the web for nano longevity trends, that stands out. Not for the obvious algae issues we can all get


but for the peer training. What’s the very very last option they’d ever consider, the worst thing possible, only to be ran as a last resort? A free of charge rip clean. They consider it equal to loss of the entire reef, really they do it’s why the option never comes up.


you will have a gha issue on day, we all do until coralline starts to help out by rejecting. I’m not saying you have to chemically attack every algae either…it’s ok to try snails and cuc fish options



but you don’t ride the system into the ground like that, they have the option to be shiny, right now, but peers will not allow it so they won’t. Notice how many fish are being cycled through that setup as a hopeful control…massive disease input. Massive waste adding, vs subtracting, that fish waste and extra feed command actually causes more gha as they can’t believe the system needs export, they are trained to buy things, test and import.


you can see they have fine fine coralline on the walls and in areas on the rock, we’d keep that. While disassembled and sand getting rinsed, spray the walls of coralline with wet saltwater and keep moist. Rebuild the tank clean, but with aging markers left in place.

while rock is out, you use a pocket knife to tip-scrape and dislodge all anchored algae, rinsing free of saltwater. Now the rocks are clean and we didn’t dose the tank and sit idly for two months as things decline.

if you want thorough, put a little peroxide where the algae used to be, on the scraped rocks externally, and put back in tank perfectly clean and avoiding the coralline areas (they don’t have algae to scrape anyway, coralline rejects algae adherence)

visualize how that tank above would look after this type of handling. It’s entire life course would be different vs where it’s heading.


all the snails added, all the indirect actions loading the system, they’re headed towards a crash and or willing reset.

if someone wants to try snails, try them in the clean condition as growback prevention. Doing opposite of what the masses advise is the secret to incredibly long term nano reefing.


Based on advised options, when does their toil end? Open- ended, no completion date in old tank control science. Wait and hope all day


but when is the completion / fix date for the tank if they used a rip clean? Their whole system is fixed by 2 pm. Today could be the day but they won’t choose it, peers will never allow it. That much control is bad, ride the tank totally into the dirt and lose it all is preferable to the masses

we would never test for ammonia after a cycle, it remains in control. If a dead snail is causing raised ammonia, you remove the dead snail no kit is required to tell you if a rotting animal is causing imbalance. Fish hiding dead in a rock stack? Don’t build fish retaining rock stacks then

your nano reef is now immune to any form of algae takeover whatsoever, to be invaded in nano reefing is a conscious choice we make to allow or disallow it.


*no harm in trying all non rip clean options for gha, including simple lighting changes or snails etc. A rip clean doesn’t have to always be the way, but you use it before riding the tank into the ground, that tank above can’t take much more clouding and additives before it crashes.

I was like that to start, only I would possibly trust is Vibrant but not now rather than a CUC they are now the caretakers of my reef which is pretty cool.

 

[brandon429]

Tim

I used your work flow to show someone a tank intervention step today, nicely done making a helpful post.

 

[TimD]

Tim

I used your work flow to show someone a tank intervention step today, nicely done making a helpful post.

Thanks I try and get people to check out the thread whenever I see posts on Facebook where everyone is saying throw chemicals at the problem

 

[brandon429]

This thread is constantly helping people Tim, it’s your documentation and flow in the matter of changing substrate that gives them a direct roadmap to not messing up.

 

[CrazyDuck959]

the honest breakdown of how we do it:

Removing sandbed bacteria we can see doesn’t impact a reef tank negatively


the key is the detritus waste in the grains, thats the kill risk that BRS doesn’t know about nor most LFS’ they are too focused on bacteria to see the mud as the risk


so by working in recommended partials, to preserve bacteria they told us we need some folks up well dangerous detritus and kill things, they are on our page one as a warning link


so we did opposite, knowing that live rocks instantly handle the same bioload as rocks + sand, rock is this stuffed with bac in all reefs

we are removing the dangerous part while no fish or corals are in the tank- that’s why those are all disassembly jobs vs using shop vacs in the running tank. We remove corals and fish away from the upwell event

we tap water rinse to total perfection, entire point of the thread, for two reasons:
When re using old sand, tap is free and we can rinse hours to eject all waste, final rinse in RO to eject the tap. Sand is now new again, and cloudless


we pre rinse all bagged sand, including wet pack, because twenty links on page one shows folks who skipped rinsing new sand and hated reefing. We rinse new sand for cloudlessness. And because sandbed bacteria even from the bag do not matter, total clarity of the new build is what matters. We don’t collect any examples where caribsea wet pack live sand in a bag wasn’t pre rinsed in tap water to total clarity, final rinse in RO. We handle new sand exactly like old sand for 100% safety.

If I wanted to change the grain size of my sand can I just use new sand or does it need to be washed old sand only? And do I need to use all new water when re filling the tank or should I use some of the same water? (Like a 50/50 mix)

 

[brandon429]

thank you for posting!

those are really valid questions for this thread. this thread has been referenced 1000+ times for substrate changes. I thought Tim did a great job as the standout example.

you can use either new or old sand; the cloudless prep is the key action that skips the cycle in the new setup.

since this is not a response to an invasion, it's true you can use mostly old water with no harm. drain it off and catch it for reuse and holding until final reassembly

have some new water mixed too matching temp and salinity you'll need it as a padding / don't use any former water that was ever clouded

For readers, here is CrazyD’s finished job!

Can I switch my sand bed out and replace it with Aragonite?

I was just wondering if it would be possible to switch out my sand bed and replace it with new Aragonite? Every time I do a water change and siphon it clouds up the water in my tank and the sand has been looking extra dirty recently. Would this be a bad idea? Could it kill everything? Is there a...

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