Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[jgalvin]

Just found this thread, i have a sand question to the sand whisperer, @brandon429

I have a 75g mixed reef tank, been off an on in the hobby for 10 years and seen my share of dynos and cyno. Latest build was started last December and used carribean aragonite reef sand. I rinsed the dry sand but not the bag of live. Within a few months, I had a layer of black/brown sand pieces that I really dislike (despite vacuuming sand biweekely). I've attached pictures of sandbed and handful of sand taken out, i put some in a jar with water/bleach and turned back to white. Any idea what is causing this to the sand pieces? A rinse had no effect on the black/brown pieces (i needed to bleach). I can start vacuuming out the sand during water changes and replace with new, but fearful the same will occur. Any thoughts?

 

[brandon429]

J thank you for posting sand challenges we just love the work, and finding safe routes for access~ let me lead by saying I’m going to need to be whispered to about the darker portions = stumped and your pre testing is really smart
If it’s some kind of organic waste compounding around sand portions we haven’t seen that here before


As I sit here viewing pics and being stumped, your access idea gives me another idea about new sand behavior
Maybe during this observation phase before the removal job we can take a nicely pre rinsed portion of new sand X and simply put some in a spot in the tank and watch it for continued behavior that at least minimizes the chance of spending a weekend swapping things out only for the aesthetic challenge to continue

Your sandbed above seems clean in the cross section pic and if the samples you have been removing for pre testing don’t cloud terribly then removing the whole bed eventually via siphon won’t cause a cycle and we already know from prior works that removing the bed fully for a swap doesn’t present a lack of bacteria to the system, rocks have us covered

I’m interested to watch your initiative on the testing and assessment actions on this big tank am watching and tanking notes! I can’t wait to see if we can pre model what new sand will do, main goal being no time wasted for the big job. I enjoy trying to make these big tank jobs a one off work detail. We are good about not losing tank during surgery but we need improvement on arresting problems in big tanks first go- people hate growback for sure and only nanos get the easy access do over when needed

 

[Dan_P]

I wonder if the success of bleaching is pointing to the dark grains being covered with an organic layer (bacteria, cyanobacteria, algae). It would be interesting to bleach one grain and observe up close what is happening. A microscope might come in handy diagnosing the nature of the dark grain. I also wonder if the dark grains came from the live sand.

Is this where we try an experiment with 1 mL H2O2 per 10 gallons of tank water, but in a cup, to see if it has an an effect? Just a thought.

 

[brandon429]

Team, a rip clean for dinos. We are the last resort but early intervention via rip clean is a fair option too, it prevents the extended decline of corals due to dino irritants

Dino way worse after adding dinox

So I am on my second dose of dinox because my nano tank has had a pretty aggressive outbreak. During the treatment I've left only blue light on with skimming. Ever since I added dinox the dino has spread faster than I've ever seen, this morning there was a little bit now there is an insane...

www.reef2reef.com

We don’t have updates yet on outcome, fresh work tracking in progress

 

[jgalvin]

@brandon429 @Dan_P thanks for the reply!

I read about hydrogen peroxide in tank, but really dislike putting chemicals in my tank. Great idea Brandon, I will put a section of new sand in and see what happens. I am 99% its some sort of algae, the small areas covered by shade, the sand remains white. Its very odd how in the same light filled patch some grains are pure white and others look solid black. Just missing the white sand bed took.

I'll try what Brandon suggests, if algae, likely will take a couple weeks to grow on the new stuff. If no luck might try combo of replace sand and chemiclean (although really don't like chemical approach). 10months old tank and no algae ever on rock or sand, just these black grains. I do have a small fuge with Chaeto. Will try reducing the light a bit (Radion at 10 hours at 70%). Thanks again guys.
James

 

[xiholdtruex]

Was thinking about this recently in light of a recent issue I am havingThis may sound weird, but recently I have been having a issue with a population explosion of amphipods. so much so they were munching on my zoa colonies and had to pull and dip my zoa into another tank they decimated a colony of gorilla nipples and started on my fire and ice. Do you think @brandon429 that with rinsing sand during rip cleanings it also purges the sand bed of amphipods. as well as with the same philosophy how safe do you think it would be to rinse the live rock with fresh water while not killing the bacterial colony?

 

[brandon429]

Hey! Your tank is giving us really good insight into sand bed access since we're getting to see the system go through its maturation phases after/ during cleaning, very valuable feed back for what happens after the rinse

If you wanna try nuking excess pods a freshwater dip will not kill the rock nor sterilize it. The rocks would still pass individual oxidation testing even after a brief freshwater soaking, the nitrifiers are housed inside insulating biofilms that prevent osmotic shock during a brief event

Don't hit them with an hours long soak just do it kind of short, see if you can kill some bugs with fresh water and put rocks back after, it's not going to hurt anything. I wouldn't dip the corals just a test rock to see if brief freshwater contact kills pods

 

[Eclyps19]

Hiya Brandon! Here’s my challenge tank, hoping to become another successful datapoint.

Prognosis: moderate dinos that covers 70% of the sandbed (unknown strain).

Tank is 7mo old, 30g. I pulled about 95% of the sand and replaced it with newly rinsed sand. I did not pull the rocks, and the 5% of sand that was not replaced was just the stuff under my rocks. Pulling the sand required a roughly 30% water change

New sand was great - no cloudiness, looked wonderful on day 1. On day 2, it was almost entirely covered in dinos again.

I’ve stopped skimming and have intentionally let my tank “dirty” up to build some algae that has been outcompeted by the dinos. This has mostly resulted in some crazy tufts of long flowing hair (actually looks kind of cool).

In a previous thread, you recommended a rip clean rinse of the sand and the rocks. Is this still what you would recommend? If so, I would likely just go purchase new sand and rinse that.

For my rocks, I have a pretty happy rock flower anemone, some zoas, and a couple other corals that are pretty fixed to the rocks. Should I remove as much of the coral as possible before rinsing the rocks? Should I remove all of the algae that I’ve let accumulate?

I have enough fresh saltwater to do a 100% replacement post-rinse.

Let me know what your plan of attack would be here. Thanks!

Pics from today in various lighting conditions.

Thank you tons for posting am so happy to see that nice tank! @Alexreefer he was able to win over a nearly exact challenge with a powerful initial rip clean and follow up guiding, and then he did run the hands interval where competition balanced things out, just like you said

I think plan looks good, and to save work I would not put sand back until system complies. You can sterilize the sand then, so it doesn't reinfect and then put back later. Where possible this is neat bc it allows total access during your battle action time after initial mass cut

The rocks are fine without the sand to carry on filtration. That's one initial brainstorm going off pics

Another: lift out rocks and scrape off algae. Put peroxide only on that former anchor spot and leave two mins then rinse off. This isn't harming the overall diversity battling Dino's it's just algae specific guiding

Then afte rocks are clean, even with sand still a little challenged, install a $150 pond UV sterilizer off Amazon and cheat burn it a couple months, with hand guiding. Never letting them amass and then you can take it offline to check for sustain. I recommend tinkering with through export work before the sustained dirty phase. We can fallback on that for sure but there's also fun in seeing if the tank responders quicker, ideally, to rip cleaning and planned kill


That's a $ method though so it's not always practical but wow on the percent chance you don't have to rip clean, UV is powerful when oversized. It would mount in an annoying way bc it's the gear deciding fate of tank for this round...when it's removed and your system sustains using the discovered combo then the tank will look awesome. Doesn't have to mount pretty to be used...water in water out can help stop that invasion

The lysmata in there is sensitive to any form of peroxide contact, work carefully there in planning.

Update time from my original post on 8/31 regarding my nasty dino outbreak.

I siphoned every last bit of sand out, cleaned , pulled all of my rockwork out, and gave everything a good scrubbing. The sand that was removed was rinsed thoroughly, dried, and stored for future use. After selective H2O2 treatment on some of the rockwork to get rid of some of the most stubborn algae, I re-introduced the rocks and coral to the tank without any sand. I also ran a 9w UV light 24 hours per day. The Dinos did *not* return to their former state - the rockwork remained mostly clear of any red/brown bubbly muck. Over the next month and a half, I saw what little remained of my dinos die off.

About two weeks ago, I placed a small container of sand in the tank and waited. I watched to see if any remaining dinos would find the sand and repopulate. After two weeks, I was happy to see that it remained remarkably clean.

I have now placed new live sand in the tank (after a thorough rinsing) to see what happens next. I know that this is a bit beyond the scope of "rip cleaning", but it was part of my process and was likely a big factor in the (hopeful) success of ridding myself of a nasty case of dinos.

Other than some very unhappy zoas on my center rock, everything is really flourishing. Colors are brighter, polyps are larger, and the whole tank just seems happier. We'll see how things go over the coming weeks!

 

[brandon429]

That was a huge surgical procedure wow nice going

I've been chatting with alexreefer for four mos regarding his dinos and he's really having to stay on the follow up work. He has a resurgent strain that is very strong. I hope yours stays gone!

 

[xiholdtruex]

Hey! Your tank is giving us really good insight into sand bed access since we're getting to see the system go through its maturation phases after/ during cleaning, very valuable feed back for what happens after the rinse

If you wanna try nuking excess pods a freshwater dip will not kill the rock nor sterilize it. The rocks would still pass individual oxidation testing even after a brief freshwater soaking, the nitrifiers are housed inside insulating biofilms that prevent osmotic shock during a brief event

Don't hit them with an hours long soak just do it kind of short, see if you can kill some bugs with fresh water and put rocks back after, it's not going to hurt anything. I wouldn't dip the corals just a test rock to see if brief freshwater contact kills pods

How long would you think would be ok? All my rocks have rock flower anemones and one has a encrusted monti. Do you think it would be safe for the corals?

 

[brandon429]

on the anemones that really could shock em, this is interesting task for sure. if it was my rocks/determined to try and zap the pods lots of people use predating fish for that, not sure if there are meds that w target them (we should check the zos forum, its common pest for them)

you could sit rocks in sink and target with freshwater but im not sure it will get all the pods, they'll just scurry back deeper in the holes ha

we should see what the zo pros are already doing about bugs first

 

[merereef]

So ive decided to remove all the sand. I too have a really bad dino infection that grows mainly in the sand do i thought il remove it all.. ive removed 90% will remove the rest later. I must say I absolutely love the cloudless look of the sand.. this time i will not add the sand till the dinos are completely gone

 

[brandon429]

Thank you tons for posting ~ these dinos I think are the top challenger for today's reefs. We get about 30% or so who can beat them and stay beaten with the various home-brew methods like vibrant or peroxide or dirty tanking/UV and then 70% are in for an extended battle no matter what we do. I feel removing sand prevents them from hiding from the treatments and it should amplify the effect on the target, now we get to see good luck in your battles for sure

 

[merereef]

Thank you tons for posting ~ these dinos I think are the top challenger for today's reefs. We get about 30% or so who can beat them and stay beaten with the various home-brew methods like vibrant or peroxide or dirty tanking/UV and then 70% are in for an extended battle no matter what we do. I feel removing sand prevents them from hiding from the treatments and it should amplify the effect on the target, now we get to see good luck in your battles for sure

Thank you brandon.. i agree they seem to live in the sand... remove the sand you remove their home.. will keep you all posted

 

[merereef]

I have removed majority of the sand last noght and more today... good news is i HARDLY saw any dinos today after removing sand... just a bit on the rocks and just blew it off.. i didnt want to remove the water or the rocks just syphoned the sand out corals and fish are absolutely fine.. if you have an established sand bed you should NOT do this.. do a bit at a time

 

[merereef]

So finished removing most of the sand today... i have increased sump turn over and blew a lot of the dino off the rocks so the overflow can suck up more of the dinos so the uv steriliser has more chance of killing them

 

[brandon429]

Bumps ~
Merereef you have been really helpful to Alex and I. Nice work n updates

 

[brandon429]

Daniel@RTR

Can you let us know the digital ammonia measures you saw when removing sand

When removing sand, did your rocks have enough time to take on new bacteria, or from the measures did testing indicate they were already able to handle the bio loading without the sand?

 

[merereef]

Bumps ~
Merereef you have been really helpful to Alex and I. Nice work n updates

thanks man thanks for all your help...

heres a shot today everything is starting to bounce back

 

[brandon429]

its simply clean that was a team effort, can you summarize some of the extra measures beyond sandbed surgery it took to wrestle that into compliance?