My first rip clean

[exnisstech]

My reefer 170 has been a mess recently. I had a massive amount of GHA and I think briopsis. I used Flux rx and sure enough it took care of the nuisance alage then cyano took over. I used chemiclean but it was just a bandaid. After a couple of months I decided to pull the rock and clean it along with scraping the tank bottom and a large water change. One thing I learned is if I do it again I will submerge the rock being cleaned in a spare aquarium filled with tank water. The rock being in the water makes it so much easier to see the algae. With rock out it's all just pasted to the rock and hard for me to see all of it. I made a couple of frags and knocked a couple of frags off but nothing catastrophic. I'm sure I didn't get 100 % of the alage but at least is looks better and my Gal doesn't keep telling me my tank looks like crap lol.
Before (it was actually much worse before I vacuumed some of the cyano out

Several days after

 

[Waters]

@brandon429 would be proud

 

[exnisstech]

It was reading so many of his posts that finally gave me the nerve to do it.

 

[brandon429]

Hey I just saw this while on lunch what a great job! Really that's a job well done. It won't fix recurring issues but it aligns control directly in your favor by removing invasion + detritus feeding the waste. Plus you can now easily lift out rocks for quick spot guiding outside the tank, instead of altering your parameters inside the display, and each lift/ set back in of the rocks won't perpetuate the clouding of waste being cast all around the tank

You'll be able to feed your tank very well now vs having to withhold feeding to avoid furthering any invasion, and also any prevention methods you experiment with now have -99% less target mass to work on, you've amplified whatever your preventative measures will be against the target by pre removing the target

Super sharp looking rock, it's coralline and pigments now unblanketed

You increased your nitrification capacity by uncovering formerly blanketed surface area as well

 

[brandon429]

My favored prevention steps based on feedback:

Lowering overall light intensity down from current steady state and hold for two months in evaluation before ramping back up, the corals will be fine with this simulation of cloudy skies reef photointensity reduction

Instating uv sterilizer in this newly clean condition, before the mass builds up again

Targeted siphon extraction runs of a few gallons to absolutely disallow any remassing of invader, a quick 3 gallons siphon+removal of any new cyano works to guide it out as you seek methods to reduce your required gardening work to maintain that pristine condition you just earned

I don't like messing with nitrate and phosphate much, too much dinos risk in that we can plainly see in dinos help threads and I'm not much for guessing with clean up crew additions because they're such disease vectors nowadays

 

[exnisstech]

My favored prevention steps based on feedback:

Lowering overall light intensity down from current steady state and hold for two months in evaluation before ramping back up, the corals will be fine with this simulation of cloudy skies reef photointensity reduction

Instating uv sterilizer in this newly clean condition, before the mass builds up again

Targeted siphon extraction runs of a few gallons to absolutely disallow any remassing of invader, a quick 3 gallons siphon+removal of any new cyano works to guide it out as you seek methods to reduce your required gardening work to maintain that pristine condition you just earned

I don't like messing with nitrate and phosphate much, too much dinos risk in that we can plainly see in dinos help threads and I'm not much for guessing with clean up crew additions because they're such disease vectors nowadays

Thanks for the advice. I have 2 radion xr15 in a 4 bulb t5 hybrid fixture (over kill I know) so I think I'll just kill the t5s for a couple of months and watch things.

I have a uv unit NIB in the basement.

I've been doing small 1 or 2g changes daily trying to keep up on it.

This tank has always ran low nutrients and even required dosing N and P but that seems to have stabilized over the last few months.

I have a couple large turbo snails and few other smaller snails along with 2 tuxedo urchins. I'll most likely end up pulling the urchins and turbos before they starve. I have another larger tank that has plenty of algae!