When I leave for a few days, I set up a pellet auto feeder to feed 2x per day. When I return, my phosphates will be up due to the food source. When I'm home I only feed frozen.
I just use a small fish net to strain. I drop 2 cubes in a plastic cup with little tank water. Thaw them and strain into fish net then add to the tank.
here's a toss-up- Looks to me like cyano bacteria
Hey thanks so much! Im gonna try this tomorrow when i do a water change! maybe even tonight lol!
I sure don’t, but I needed all the help I can get as far as adding phosphate, which is the main reason. If I get to a point where they don’t drop anymore, I might start at that point.
I’m saving this knowledge for later use. Thanks!
Correct! Numerous threads on here about just that topic and consensus was no need to strain.. some people do and that’s fine but it’s not a necessity at all.. I don’t rinse as the majority don’t.
I certainly don’t either. I use Reef Frenzy and I’ll either stick a chunk in a defroster in the tank or I’ll stick it in a cup with tank water and shake and then add to the tank. If I had to rinse and strain it everytime, I don’t think I’d ever feed frozen.
There’s numerous threads about this and @brandon429 is the master of them knowledge wise.. I did it with my 275 gallon I just set up and had zero issues.. within 7 hours I drained that tank, moved it, washed all the sand and set it back up at my house and it’s ran flawless and didn’t lose a single coral… I have mostly Sps which everyone knows are temperamental… I don’t normally push these rip cleans but I can tell you it’s simple and effective on a small tank after doing my 275 I wouldn’t hesitate on a small one… wish I did my 60gal cube when I was battling them..
Fantastic knowledge to have in the back of my mind for when I need it. I can see this as being a safer route then playing chemical roulette and crashing a tank. Lots of horror stories on here about people having a small parameter fluctuation or a small amount of algae and then dosing too much, then trying to dose to bring a parameter back up and then the whole tank crashes.
tap water used to wash out the sand didnt affect anything in your tank afterwords? that is the only thing that is stopping me from trying this... From your experience it doesnt seem so.
I was actually thinking this too while i was reading all the threads about vibrant.. cyano happening after they rid of a problem.... sps dying off because they didnt test and found out the phosphate level was already 0 before vibrant was dosed.... sheesh...
Nope! It’s fine! Drain it the best you can and just put it back together… prolly take you 2 hours max and save you a couple months of frustration lol… I can’t promise they won’t come back in time but you’ll have the upper hand in the battle. I even used all brand salt water… live rock and corals were the only thing used without washing from the previous move.
I know some people are die hard about not using tap water so I’m not sure. One option would be to rinse well with tap water and then do a final rinse with RODI water. I just don’t have 50 gallons of RODI water sitting around to rinse sand with and then dump out personally.
I used my hose.. lol.. even good ole melves reef back in the day has YouTube videos using a hose and tap water.
I’m still new so I’m still learning how to work outside the box lol but a lot of the beginner sources tell us if it isn’t 0 TDS don’t let it anywhere near your tank. So far, I think that may be a little too over the top. Heck some people on here are using unfiltered tap water in their display all the time. Sure, a problem is more likely to arise eventually doing it that way, but I just can’t see a few remnants of unfiltered tap water killing off a tank.
