The Bacterial “Rip Clean” Method

[sixty_reefer]

Not to be confused with other similar threads were you are required to work hard, I’m a laid back kinda reefer and hard work is just not for me, sorry I prefer to allow the bacteria to do that work for me.

The goal of this thread is to discuss and illustrate the use of carbohydrates into clean reef tanks from pollutant that aid the growth of algae and other nuisances bringing biofloc knowledge to the reef aquaria hobby.

Peer reviewed paper

Effect of different biofloc starters on ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite concentrations in the cultured tilapia Oreochromis niloticus system

Background: High stocking density and intensive feeding in aquaculture systems lead to the accumulation of organic waste, which results in an increase in ammonia, nitrite, and nitrite concentrations in culture media. Biofloc is a potential technology ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

( Not that anyone going to read anyways, folks just like to see links )

The above paper illustrates that the use of carbohydrates can be used to reduce ammonia and other pollutants in a system by just feeding the bacteria, yes that’s that simple bacterIa also requires feeding the more carbon they get the more nitrogen and phosphorus compounds they will assimilate into body mass.
To remove the bacteria and the nutrients assimilated from the system is fairly simple, just perform a water change if you don’t have a skimmer, introducing filter feeders to prey on the bacteria and transfer those nutrients into the filter feeder body mass, zooplankton will also prey on bacteria and get eaten by fish transferring nutrients that way by trophic levels and natural as you would see it happen in the sea.

I’m not suggesting to anyone to use tapioca, molasses or sucrose into they’re system, we’re not on a cooking forum just be smart and use the only source of carbohydrates that I know that are made for reef systems, just get some Reef actif and fallow instructions (I don’t own any shares in the company by the way) I just find the product fairly safe to use for any level of experience in aquaria.

Example of a new system, 9 months or so that never had an algae issue, gets a crazy amount of food and often feed reef actif daily after light out.
there is no GAC or GFO from the beginning, there is no mechanical filtration every nutrient that goes in will end up in the fish belly or in a coral filter feeder etc… glass maintenance is just every 3-4 weeks not really sure I think last time I clean it was around Xmas there was many feather dusters starting to grow on it

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Still better than having to clean the tank myself imo.

Happy to hear any thoughts from others

 

[sixty_reefer]

Did I mention that this fella is also assimilating nutrient by preying on the bacteria, and those nutrients will be locked into the starfish body mass for as long as she or he is alive?

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[sixty_reefer]

The reasoning for using carbohydrates that will stimulate heterotrophic decomposers (organic matter reducing bacteria) vs etanol or acetic acid that stimulates the pelagic bacteria (No3 and po4 reducing bacteria)

The main difference is that one is stimulating bacteria to “assimilate” left over “foods” and “fish waste” before they start rotting and releasing ammonia into the water column. As some may know the nitrogen cycle needs ammonia to oxidise and become nitrate. With less organic matter in the system to become nitrates one will have to add those in the form of potassium or calcium nitrate as your system will be producing much less of it naturally.

The trick here is to reduce ammonia that is much more desirable by nuisance algae in comparison to nitrates that they will have to use more energy to re convert them into ammonia again. The same is for coral. Once you are algae free then allowing for ammonia to rise would be beneficial for rapid coral growth.

In the above sketch one can see the nutrients pathway from the moment organic matter is introduced in the system (fish food) until the nutrients get assimilate by a organism, ammonia is a very desirable nutrient, proteins amino acids and organic matter are all sources of nutrients and the current thoughts that only NO3 and Po4 are nutrients is at the minimum misleading wend nitrogen has so many different forms during its cycle in our systems.

understanding how to raise and lower them in our systems is beneficial due to everything that is photosynthetic will compete for them.

 

[brandon429]

This is a great study. What we need are live time jobs, current invasion challenges along with the past ones fitting the model

I will send a few over here

Large tanks need help to manage invasions without having to disassembly clean the system, it's impractical.

Sixty, how does your method differ from SunnyX's recent study on bacterial remediation of invasions? Is it that you're dosing feed to build natural stains in bulk, he was dosing copious extra bottle bac?





Will your method involve buying and dosing extra bottle bac?

 

[brandon429]

@ilikefish69

We should honestly investigate this method for your large tank, before we rip clean it, changing nothing about your lighting as we've discussed

Can you run this a few weeks please

 

[brandon429]

Sixty, I also want to send only the work jobs that match your method
If this isn't for dinos we don't want to send any/ cause misdirection in the thread

I assume the main targets here are green hair algae

Is there a chance cyano can be beaten this way

I sure did read the abstract, thank you for posting it

 

[joefishtank]

I stopped using my HOB filter and I have a lot of detritus in my tank. I have no idea if that has anything to do with this discussion but I didn't feel like making my own thread without knowing if it is bad. Detritus is supposed to be inert? I feel like taking apart my reef to deep clean it.

 

[sixty_reefer]

This is a great study. What we need are live time jobs, current invasion challenges along with the past ones fitting the model

I will send a few over here

Large tanks need help to manage invasions without having to disassembly clean the system, it's impractical.

Sixty, how does your method differ from SunnyX's recent study on bacterial remediation of invasions? Is it that you're dosing feed to build natural stains in bulk, he was dosing copious extra bottle bac?

Will your method involve buying and dosing extra bottle bac?

I’m not sure on which study, you may have to link it to have a look.
I’m not against bottled bacteria I just believe we all got all the beneficial bacteria in our system, they just need a little boost to work more efficiently, if you were to observe most bottled bacteria you could determine that it’s not just bacteria in the bottle, hence the reason most products aimed at cleaning have a limited dosage, this is to avoid bacterial blooms from overdosing organic carbon.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Sixty, I also want to send only the work jobs that match your method
If this isn't for dinos we don't want to send any/ cause misdirection in the thread

I assume the main targets here are green hair algae

Is there a chance cyano can be beaten this way

I sure did read the abstract, thank you for posting it

It will depend on the situation, all nuisance will feed and get energy from ammonia that’s why we can have outbreaks of dinoflagellates, Cyanobacteria and nuisance algae in systems depleted of NO3 and PO4 they will get their energy from ammonia and other organic nutrients, this is the reason I say we can never really be out of nutrients (they just in different forms), look into nitrogen group for example, nitrogen has many forms before it can be oxidised into nitrite and nitrates.
I’m a believer that this method can reduce the risk of getting nuisances to bloom by reducing organic compounds that could feed the nuisance.
Due to be a bacterial product it will take time and not happen immediately, the bacteria need to grow

 

[sixty_reefer]

I stopped using my HOB filter and I have a lot of detritus in my tank. I have no idea if that has anything to do with this discussion but I didn't feel like making my own thread without knowing if it is bad. Detritus is supposed to be inert? I feel like taking apart my reef to deep clean it.

Depending on the detritus if they organic they will release ammonia, what will be a issue for folks like us that look for more natural approaches and remove filtration is the accumulation of organic matter derived from feeding, as we know all systems are carbon limited and only carbon sources can aid the bacteria at assimilating more nutrients into they’re body mass, bacteria them becomes a source of nutrition for many organisms in the system like filter feeders and coral moving the nutrient from detritus into the body mass of those who prey on bacteria.
this is dependent on a system biodiversity a system without flora diversity won’t be able to transfer nutrients this way and they will have to be introduced in the system.

 

[joefishtank]

I don't have any of those issues in my tank for some reason. Also I don't test so maybe thats why lol. I put in some algae covered coral without dipping and my cuc and water parameters took care of it without me dipping h2o2.

 

[brandon429]

physical rip cleans are used across invasions, so if this bacterial method will be across invasions that's evolution in practice/hobby needs it. We need just a couple diverse invasion jobs to work to test the ground. Physical rip cleans do not have a 100% cure rate, they just have a very high cure rate with a very inefficient cleaning and scrubbing process. if bacterial methods can get close to the fix % without having to waste copious amounts of water that's a solid advancement.

I like that your method is not using erythromycin, or things retail for the investigation.

One counter point is that adding things to a system never undoes eutrophication/removing of whole waste particles potentially packed in sand and rocks. perhaps a blend/or using physical export as needed but not necessarily in every job can be a compromise.

Its not possible to remove pore-plugging waste in reefs without changes in current or physical sink undoing, adding mass / sugars/ and causing new bacterial mass will be a test of eutrophic/oligotrophic balances as they present across systems. That one example above for example didn't look eutrophic in the sand and rocks...a very very old system blackened in the sandbed/ gross coverings across all surfaces still needs export to stop tradeoff invasions but then again this method here may not have to account for that.


if you can simply get GHA off the rocks/dead/without using fluconazole with this method that's a solid win / same for cyano.

 

[exnisstech]

@sixty_reefer How long has the tank in your video been running? It sure is cleaner than any of mine. I'm battling nuisance algae in my reefer 170 right now. Tank has been up for over 3 years but about 10 months ago I redid the rock scape and I think I reset things. The tank does suffer from low nutrients. I was dosing N and P to keep them detectable but since I pulled my chaeto I have only had to dose P. I run no skimmer. I'm finishing up treatment with Flux rx now but not sure if it's going to work or not. I think I'm on day 10. I normally am hesitant to add chems but am getting tired of having to scrub the algae off if all my sps frags. My 180 might benifit from this as it has hair algae and cyano and has not had any chems added. It also has a nasty vermitid snail outbreak to the point they are affecting corals but I don't know if they feed off of the same nutrients as algae? I'm not much of a science guy.

 

[brandon429]

would you consider stoppping the reef flux and beginning this method, fluconazole has lots of study on it already. we expect it to kill the algae, then cause cyano/fluconazole shows that in its 600 page work thread


there's no telling how fluconazole impacts bacteria, it would be nice to get that stopped ahead of time before starting this option.

 

[Dburr1014]

Are you suggesting only using reef actif to fight against gha? That all? Nothing else?

 

[brandon429]

I had to google that to find it/see what it was

Tropic Marin Reef Actif, 100 ml./60 gr.

Find premium aquarium supplies at Aquacave. we offer top brands like Tunze, Ecotech, and more. Free Shipping available!

www.aquacave.com

I was hoping we had stuff in the kitchen/already bought that could be used. Its ok to use retail products if they work across tanks I guess.

 

[sixty_reefer]

physical rip cleans are used across invasions, so if this bacterial method will be across invasions that's evolution in practice/hobby needs it. We need just a couple diverse invasion jobs to work to test the ground. Physical rip cleans do not have a 100% cure rate, they just have a very high cure rate with a very inefficient cleaning and scrubbing process. if bacterial methods can get close to the fix % without having to waste copious amounts of water that's a solid advancement.

I like that your method is not using erythromycin, or things retail for the investigation.

One counter point is that adding things to a system never undoes eutrophication/removing of whole waste particles potentially packed in sand and rocks. perhaps a blend/or using physical export as needed but not necessarily in every job can be a compromise.

Its not possible to remove pore-plugging waste in reefs without changes in current or physical sink undoing, adding mass / sugars/ and causing new bacterial mass will be a test of eutrophic/oligotrophic balances as they present across systems. That one example above for example didn't look eutrophic in the sand and rocks...a very very old system blackened in the sandbed/ gross coverings across all surfaces still needs export to stop tradeoff invasions but then again this method here may not have to account for that.


if you can simply get GHA off the rocks/dead/without using fluconazole with this method that's a solid win / same for cyano.

We need to understand that this method will only reduce ammonia by reducing organic compounds that will release ammonia if they stay in the system to rot for long periods of time and slow down the growth of nuisance algae or prevent the growth of algae by introducing a effective competition method. It’s not a miracle cure is just a way to use bacteria at working efficiently without having to do much work. It’s not a just do it once and it’s all gone it’s a way of reefing.

 

[ilikefish69]

Very interesting thread i have been following this morning. Not a ton of information on the reef actif and also havent really understood much of the conversation.

focusing solely on n&p as the nutrition for coral is not correct, ammonia can also be used by coral and is easier / less energy to consume, and the consumed ammonia doesnt need to go thru the entire nitrogen process. After that, it gets a little cloudy… i am definitely willing to see what happens with a little different approach. Did reef flux on the 12th, tanked my po4 skyrocket the no3, now i have dinos and cyano, both are completely new algaes in my system, never introduced or taken hold.

i did 20% change, chemipure blue, and stuff restabilized a bit, hoping i win the fight befre cyano does

 

[ilikefish69]

Also flirting with idea of using razor , brightwell aquatics product, in place of fluconazole and see what that does. Claims to “loosen” algaee making it easier to remove

 

[bishoptf]

I guess I'm on the slow side since I am game to try stuff since my tank has been a problem child but I'm not sure what the OP is recommending, is this just carbon dosing or what exactly is the recommendation and process?

Appears to be a version of carbon dosing, I have to dose N and P in order to keep them up, adding carbon will only aggravate that IMHO, but would like to understand more what is being recommended..