Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[brandon429]

I had asked for like ten additional detail above tho

pics too, and a vid. so before we can debate the technique we have to be apples to apples here

anywhere in that system I can find a cloud, or have you demonstrate one on a quick cell vid/shaking rocks mid water etc is a big cause of your issue

anywhere there is cyano existing to photograph/against our method it means there was zero hand guiding. it means a partial work episode after months of ramp up was expected to be full cure, with no hand guiding out

I could be wrong, but we'd need the pics and vid to see. Im highly curious to see these details, we think they're rather predictable when the method is ran fully, if you have a truly noncompliant system in decline we're here to analyze that and try and save it/work up. this thread is no theory thread, pure works and post work analysis.

your assessment may indeed be right, but we need the supporting details to know starting w really good update pics

some pics in full white, non blue light, so we can see details too. dedicated detailed follow up helps us learn from/about your system. we need to see those pic and vid details to learn the full scope of before and after and how thorough the method was ran

reducing the white lighting is highly important after a rip clean, for future pages wanted to restate.

* what we're practicing here isn't a single rinse and then hopes for a cure. Its the reinstatement of human hand guiding of the reef, forced export, vs relying on animals or lucky param changes to attain a desired outcome. We expect these tanks to require more than one deep access cleaning depending on details, we show how to do that in a skip cycle manner where you don't have losses associated with ammonia events.

Whether or not water quality/husbandry allows for sps health weeks after a rip cleaning is always variable.

 

[m0jjen]

I had asked for like ten additional detail above tho

pics too, and a vid. so before we can debate the technique we have to be apples to apples here

non apples is anywhere in that system I can find a cloud, or have you demonstrate one on a quick cell vid/shaking rocks mid water etc

anywhere there is cyano existing to photograph/against our method it means there was zero hand guiding. it means a partial work episode after months of ramp up was expected to be full cure, with no hand guiding out

I could be wrong, but we'd need the pics and vid to see. Im highly curious to see these details, we think they're rather predictable when the method is ran fully, if you have a truly noncompliant system in decline we're here to analyze that and try and save it/work up. this thread is no theory thread, pure works and post work analysis.

your assessment may indeed be right, but we need the supporting details to know starting w really good update pics

some pics in full white, non blue light, so we can see details too. dedicated detailed follow up helps us learn from/about your system. The current assessment you're giving has no pics or vid to back up and we need to see those details to learn the full scope

First of. Tank is not lit at the moment. So calm down. Ill provide you with your desired information tomorrow or friday. Im just sharing my experiance. Never claimed it was scientic sound or proven. Just the observation i made.

Sump is squeeky clean. All equipment and sump was cleaned days prior to the sand rinse

No GFO or carbon dosing. Ever as a mather of facts.

Radions running ab+ schedule. Turned T5 off since clean.

 

[brandon429]

I would call this a contributor to the issue if not the complete cause.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/failure-is-nt-and-option.600960/

Your tanks are too big/inaccessible for your chemistry and environmental factors and hand guiding works best from the start, not as the last attempt. The only way to get a change in outcome is to reef where you have access to all the water, all the substrate any time. Bigger is certainly not easier or more stable.

I feel we might not get the promised updates, so I edited this back in. If you hadn't started that thread I'd be left confounded

 

[xiholdtruex]

Would running chemi blue count as a gfo or is it negligible compared to a reactor? It is just in the rear compartments of the tank.

 

[brandon429]

Not sure at all, the reason gfo catches my eye in posts is because we can search out a highly stat significant link between gfo use and matted invaders, tons of them. Any form of search similarity to ‘gfo causing white slime’ or cyano or other issues stands out in # of returns on goog

They’ve also began pulling gfo use in the big dinos thread since it imbalances po4 and hampers natural competitors

I don’t mind any of the polyfilters or specific filters but during an invasion we simply strive for the least confounds possible. In order to get consistent outcomes page after page we have to have everyone at the same starting gate: old school reefing setup no fancy chem adjusts, since they brought us here apparently we’d like all former tinkering offline, and no cloud in the sand and rocks, a complete water change as you set back up the tank (big tankers can do whatever degree they’re willing to do) and re acclimate lighting. Don’t rip clean a totally invaded tank then put it up under full production lighting...it’s really hard to trace out unspoken details in non compliant tanks, but we see in continuing work that losses and recycles aren’t being caused by thorough tank cleaning but any form of partiality is the true risk

We’ve always been told to act partially in cleaning, rinsing, sandbed care, all in the name of preserving bacteria so that bad things won’t occur
that’s wrong info

Mixing around a bunch of half rotten waste around the tank is the risk, although in large tanks who wait for invasion control it’s not really that simple to rip clean it all, they’re going to be working in partial increments compared to the nano tanker who resets the entire system in two hours without issue, this is the ongoing challenge in large tank work in my opinion

*gfo and po4 binders have great use* not downing them. on a large inaccessible system I would likely use em in measured amnts to reduce work...we just like to attain the clean condition by force first without any masks in the way. Then use the gfo or binders as prevention thereafter, we're all about simply separating preventatives from removal actions. The current state of the hobby is trying to use preventatives as the removers, and that's why our thread is 23 pages long of pure work undoing the notion.

 

[Steve Erekson]

So I'm about 4.5 months into my current tank which is a very low-tech 20 long. When I set this up it was following a 3 year hiatus from the hobby. When I say low-tech I mean I don't have a HOB filter, I don't have carbon, I don't have a skimmer, I don't have a sump or refugium or macro algae or any of that. I have rock, sand, heater, powerheads, and lights. This wasn't me trying to prove anything, it was just me looking to build a simple and cheap tank and keep up with maintenance and keep a very low bioload (I feed maybe 10 tiny pellets per week worth of food). I do regular water changes of about 2.5 - 5 gallons a week on about a 15g water volume depending on how I'm feeling.

Now the first few months I ran with no lights, no fish. It was a solid 8 week cycle just because it made sense given my IRL situation. Once I added my fish and shrimp and some corals and lights I got the usual ugly stuff. Not much diatom, but some GHA and some cyano has been doing its thing in my tank for maybe 4-6 weeks now. Just on my own (without really reading this thread) I decided I didn't like looking at all of that so once a week I pull the rocks out and scrub them off with a nylon brush and rinse them in saltwater and put them back in the tank. I also try to siphon out the sandbed and stir it really well. This has kept things looking pretty nice so far, but it usually gets ugly within another 7-10 days.

I don't know when I can expect this to stop, maybe it won't for 6 months and I'll constantly be fighting it off for a while. But either way I don't see my maintenance schedule changing anytime soon. I think it's kind of within the scope of this thread to track aggressive maintenance during the first few months of a tank. I'll stop in a few times to let you know about progress on it, or I can give you my build thread on nano-reef if you want to follow along yourself.

 

[brandon429]

Your setup is just like mine, true bare bones. It amplifies the nutrient/invader/opportunist cycle to run reefs like that, BUT its also less fail points and once you coralline-cake everything our setups w work nearly as good n hands free as the fancy automated setups...this mode of reefing is work intensive but it teaches us inherently the link between invaders and causatives, especially since your tank is so small you can easily just rip clean the whole thing to get it back in line if ever needed.


can you post a full tank shot real quick, I always like to try and see if any small details stand out so we can begin reducing your work load. The fact that you would hand-guide the setup to be initially clean vs full invaded is just right for us here, we're against the uglies phase option in reefing, we want our investments to look great as much as possible. lets see pics if poss, thanks for posting nice to meet you!
B

 

[Steve Erekson]

Sure. I just cleaned and scrubbed her out yesterday so everything is pretty fresh right now. Still some traces of cyano cropping up on the sandbed. Also don't mind some of the weird stuff like the chunk of PVC zip-tied to the powerhead, I'm playing with ways to change flow patterns right now as my pumps are a little too powerful. Most corals are still on plugs/in the sandbed because as often as I'm pulling the rocks out right now I don't want to be dealing with the corals when I do that.

 

[brandon429]

rare rare rare to get a picture of a tank already being hand guided


From this I must extrapolate that guests don't see a ton of dandelions in your yard when they come over for dinner, am I off here

talking about a trait not so much the aquarium pic ~ the trait of being uninvaded by will. the trait of disallowance of anything uninvited.

but really that's cutting edge way to start a reef in my opinion... not letting it go filth invaded and then slowly work back. I have nothing to add other than applause, and to watch for your updates.

**you can see by the number of invasion posts in the Tank Emergency forum, and the Nuisance Algae forum, that tons of keepers with rocks like yours are in distress. they're not coralline loaded yet bc they haven't earned that condition, the pavement is too choked with algae for anything to take hold. Keeping that path clear allows for accretion, not plants. If your tank was part of the ocean, a parrotfish would be doing the rasping along with some conchs for the lower part

The reason your tank makes everyone want to own it right now is not because of param detailing or external causes or esoteric ones

its because you keep a clean reef house, so rare for new tanks.

You selected rock that you get to mature, and guide, on your own and you get to control a lot of what goes on with it now over the coming months. The price for not buying centuries-old purple live rock is more initial hand guiding, and better eco conscience for sure/sustainability, and others get to watch your method so they can bring up their own rocks. This is a tank to watch for updates, its already steered I understand your first post totally.
B

 

[brandon429]

I hope the part in your first post about you responding to your internal initiative to hand guide, before reading here, stands out to all readers. You didn't have bacterial concerns that your tank would destabilize...a sensible cleaning program ***opted you out of the uglies phase**

People take that to mean we don't have to work to earn the clean condition, not so. Its that you have the option to work, without killing stuff-we should be seizing that not wrecking new reefs with early onset invasion conditions to seed the tank with fragments forever.

If someone can attain control by just arranging things and be uninvaded, that's great. But we don't have to settle for the loss if we can't reef so easily

 

[maevepotter]

Tl;dr? Such a long thread, can't tell what the actual steps you're recommending are to get rid of dinos. Just take out sand and wash it?

 

[brandon429]

do you have an example tank to post, more variables than that are in play with dinos but sand rinsing is a core portion. curious to see the tank in question if possible

rocks need work too, dinos take refuge there as well. we have been handling sand differently than we handle live rock, pics w help catch unspoken details if possible

 

[Steve Erekson]

You're pretty on the money about my front lawn. I spend several hours every week weeding it by hand since my neighbors' weed encrusted lawns keep encroaching on my nice clean grass and I don't like using chemicals if I don't need to. At least when I work on the tank I get to do it in the air conditioning.

 

[TheHarold]

Is your personal experience still limited to a vase?

 

[brandon429]

Steve
Im the other neighbor lawn-wise, but not reefwise, so call that irony and perhaps Ill go clean up tonite/conscience


Harold
When you post we want to learn things, this is a work thread. what you wrote is trying to derail, pls chill or find work for us to repair/help out a lil perhaps?



this isn't an opinion thread, thats why we're all getting along



where I come from in reefing wont impact final results, we use only a select few methods to clean tanks here it’s independent of vase vs square tank. incidentally, if you're right, vase reefing might be secretly great full reef control practice + your official welcome into scalable biology 3301.

We’re not practicing anything strange... using real world microbiology to redefine the limits of tank access for the purpose of absolutely controlling what expresses and what doesn’t in a reef tank. Tanks will die when the science is inaccurate, if they don’t die for twenty pages then consider the work as it exists to find your own patterns. Even better, make a tank work thread and give it a try.

Our intent is really clear and pretty example-based in my opinion.

 

[maevepotter]

do you have an example tank to post, more variables than that are in play with dinos but sand rinsing is a core portion. curious to see the tank in question if possible

rocks need work too, dinos take refuge there as well. we have been handling sand differently than we handle live rock, pics w help catch unspoken details if possible

Here's a few, but it's been much worse. A bunch of strings keep ending up all over my coral and is starting to smother it. I need to blow them off daily. I know we had a bit too much food while on vacation

 

[maevepotter]

Here's a few, but it's been much worse. A bunch of strings keep ending up all over my coral and is starting to smother it. I need to blow them off daily. I know we had a bit too much food while on vacation

A few from now

 

[brandon429]

maevepotter

I don't want to rinse your sand

your cross section pics, the worm tracks...its at the bell curve arc of what a dsb should be

and, either your dinos (tbd) challenge is light or you've kept on top of hand guiding a bit possibly too, its not blanketing everything at least in the above pics.
It would be ideal to be less invasive off the bat on your system~a trial run of things that preserve the current layout


we already know we can skip cycle clean it if needed, but you've earned maturation here and I don't go ripping it apart if can be timed for a better interval


Your tank is on the larger size which is why if it was mine I'd be ordering an amazon.com pond UV sterilizer, check it for a few weeks make sure its helping and evaluate its handiness. I wont own an aquarium nowadays larger than a nano without having UV, its not worth the disassembly work it takes to remedy a light invasion when some simple burning is likely to work. if you don't want to make a $ purchase, as a pond sterilizer needs to be about $175 worth to have a good shot of being helpful, then we can rip clean it but really IMO these accessory purchases are to be factored into the unpredicted expense category of large tank ownership, and a totally unhelpful unit can be evaluated by amazon reps for return which is why I will use them occasionally. not trying to offend the whole lfs realm, just saying amazon helped me evaluate and was hassle free and I have cured dinos in this manner on prior threads, we did one at nano-reef.com in the peroxide forum.

I wouldn't think that just hooking up UV is the key swoop

its the hand guiding + the UV cheat that is best positioned, before winding up as a rip clean which wont hurt your tank but resets that aged bed back to pure white, an aesthetics downgrade

as you are dedicated siphon removing the invader, have that UV running to pick up castings and any diurnal movements the various species of dinos might employ. Another key feature of your very balanced, but lightly topically invaded system is that you are ripe for tuning the in-tank competitors against this light dinos. hand removing doesn't hurt anything, you wont be scooping deep into the bed to siphon off unattached growths its all take/put back work

there are bottle bac competitor additives that can be tried without risk or much $

there is nitrate and phosphate tuning you can at least tinker with a little bit before resulting to rip clean, but by all means don't drive your system into a green hair algae invasion with that stuff, we see this from time to time.

I would surgery/rip clean your tank if the rocks were under particular invasion or if there was black pocketing/low animal diversity in the bed cross section pics but I think its something we wind up with vs initiate

 

[Marcom12]

I have a 75 gallon tank with a home made 30 gallon sump.
I am interested in removing my sand to clean it fully. I dont feel i cleaned it well enough before putting it in the tank.... nor do i feel i have maintained it properly. With that said.... i do not feel i have a huge problem in my tank at the moment. but would like to avoid one in the future.

I dont know what little issues i have in my tank exactly... but my sand gets a "brown" coating or dusting every 4 days or so. There seems to be little tufts of green algae here and there, but nothing im worried about.

At the moment i am not running a skimmer. I have live rock rubble in sump along with a Cheato ball with a grow light on it. So just a 3 chamber sump and live rock in tank. i have about one inch.... maybe 1.5 inches of caribsea special grade aragonite.

So, Basically i want to remove my sand and give it a good rinsing or washing... but am unsure of any potential issues or how i should go about it.

 

[Marcom12]

I have a 75 gallon tank with a home made 30 gallon sump.
I am interested in removing my sand to clean it fully. I dont feel i cleaned it well enough before putting it in the tank.... nor do i feel i have maintained it properly. With that said.... i do not feel i have a huge problem in my tank at the moment. but would like to avoid one in the future.

I dont know what little issues i have in my tank exactly... but my sand gets a "brown" coating or dusting every 4 days or so. There seems to be little tufts of green algae here and there, but nothing im worried about.

At the moment i am not running a skimmer. I have live rock rubble in sump along with a Cheato ball with a grow light on it. So just a 3 chamber sump and live rock in tank. i have about one inch.... maybe 1.5 inches of caribsea special grade aragonite.

So, Basically i want to remove my sand and give it a good rinsing or washing... but am unsure of any potential issues or how i should go about it.