Not only did I not use any bottle bac, I used someone else’s old sand. Which from my understanding is supposed to be a big NO NO.. 8th day in and everything is flawless, just started my new skimmer back yesterday. Water is still prestine without any additives, just replaced my filter sock a little sonner than I usually do
www.reef2reef.com
I’m not Brandon but I did something similar last year. Went from a 65 gallon to a 180. I used a lot of new dry rock, new RINSED Caribsea live sand, and Fritz turbostart 900. I used probably 40 gallons of tank water from the 65 gallon and the rest was new salt water. I then moved every fish, cuc, rock and coral from the 65 over to the 180 and set my lights at 30% of what they were and saw zero losses. I increased the lights 3-5% every 2-3 days until I got them where I needed them.
The external refugium has no sand. Currently I pump water from my sump to the refugium and it gravity feeds back. It's more or less a second display. I figure this could give me a head start.
If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here
we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc
Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at the cellular level.
who cares what the species is of your invader-- it's about to be blasted out.
taking time to order a microscope, then extract pictures, and make a species ID is a form of action hesitation, hesitation in action causes wrecked tanks. we undo that habit system
Making your tank 100% clean so that it runs better and your corals start growing again due to the great water quality and feed you can now give has nothing to do with species ID at all.
fixing your tank so you didn't have to use chemiclean, or mess around with altering your phosphate and nitrate levels (thereby trading off the current invasion into a massive green hair algae one) did not require any species ID.
This is simply an action thread.
If you are reading this thread to move or upgrade your reef tank via skip cycle transfer science, we will prep your tank before the move so that you move only totally clean materials. the steps are still the same as those who are reading here for invasion fixes
you will skip cycle into the new setup
we don't use bottle bac here, bacteria will ride over on your rocks and that's all the bacteria we need for every job.
The Official Sand Rinse Thread
The best way to prepare your sand for use in a transferred reef tank, an upgraded reef tank, a reef tank under invasion etc is to put the sand in sections in a bucket and TAP WATER rinse it outside over and over with the garden hose until all the silt / waste is ejected, expect hours of work per bag (bagged sand wet or dry is filthy, see pic below)
when you rinse out new sand or old sand in tap water, to eject all it's waste, you have the option of using RO/DI as the final rinse (to eject tap water) or you can use saltwater to eject it. *mind your salinity drop: if you use RO/DI water, then you have several pounds of wet sand that is a large amount of freshwater about to be added back into your system, consider saltwater final rinsing or just wait and verify the salinity from a freshwater rinse before proceeding.
Your sand can have poisons and irritants in it that kill fish when disturbed, this is how we attained perfect results here with no losses, by never exposing sandbed waste clouds to your animals. this below is an example of what happens commonly when people stir up sandbeds in the presence of delicate fish or inverts:
Sand Bed
I have a stable, successful (by my standards) tank for many years. I has a dsb which may or may not be relevant to that. Seems like all I read about DSB is anecdotal. So, I will add to it. I had to excavate a small section of my sand bed for a plumbing issue. With in 12 hours, both my tangs...
we use tap vs saltwater or RO so that you don't run out, brief contact with tap water + a follow up rinse in RO or saltwater is just fine for your sandbed prep.
Rules of Reeftank microbiology that produced all our results:
The reason all these tanks don't die when rinsing out aged system sandbeds is because the rock bacteria are kept wet in saltwater, we're allowed to eject sandbed bacteria as needed.
the old rules that said sandbed bacteria were required for filtration control are wrong. rocks are enough.
once you think your rinsed sections are clean, place test handfuls in a clear cup of water and shine a light into it viewed from the side to ensure total cloudless rinse of each section, don't halfway do the job.
rinse to startling perfection. if you can't pass the cup test keep rinsing until no clouding forms in the test cup then do your final rinse in RO or saltwater, and that section of sand is now ripped clean and ready for reinstallation.
Yes, we rinse prep even brand new sand that comes in a bag no matter what it says on the label. if you don't rinse it, your new tank might be cloudy for weeks on end, they don't always self-clear as lucky peers relay to each other in sandbed posts.
if you are considering not rinsing your sand for use in a reef tank still do the cup test on the unrinsed handful, look what it does in the mini model
So your bag of sand says not to rinse
pic by pdxmonkeyboy
Our thread exists to prevent that clouding above.
A rip clean is not a restart anymore than an oil change is a new car. A restart means you’d have to do your cycle over
we maintain the original cycle: the entire point of this thread is to reveal that deep cleaning a tank doesn’t restart it and does not require the use of bottle bac or ammonia protection, like we’ve been taught in the past
we use microbiology here to guide the rules each tank applies. We dont use bottle bacteria
we don’t use testing for ammonia because we are in full control of what filter bacteria do in this thread, and a bunch of API ammonia misreads would only insert hesitation into a thread collection of pure action. there is no testing warranted here, this is an action thread solely.
We remove cloudy waste while controlling the cycle of the tank getting cleaned.
full rinsing is safest, that’s the rule. thats how we got our results here, for anyone's reef tank. they always turn out the same way: sparkling shocking clean and running great with bright happy corals.
We use tap water, not RO or saltwater to rinse sand beds: it’s tap water for a reason (because it's unlimited and you won't run out of water before verifying the sand is totally clean)
The steps here ran on every example link you can find are not different for any job, any size reef tank, or any reason for presenting here for live-time work detailing. it's amazing how many different reef jobs simply rinsing out the sand with tap water can accomplish.
you can run one of these cleanings on a perfectly normal reef tank, as a preventative. A rip clean is harmless waste ejection. Rip cleans are why my reef tank just hit 18 years running with no invasions at all-I'm sharing this longevity trick with reefs of all sizes to show how all our tanks are related, large to small reefs.
you can use this method to recover from tank crashes where other additives littered up the tank and yellowed the water and crashed the corals with degradation irritants, this cleaning approach flushes out a reef using common tap water and skip cycles an injured reef back to bright and shining and ready for stronger feed input (which is where the growth comes from)
if you have a GHA, green hair algae covered system you can rasp off rocks using a knife tip, not a brush, and rinse off in saltwater as your tank is disassembled. We clean sandbeds here: this is the most thorough sand cleaning thread on the Internet.
If you have filthy dinos, get the tank apart and make it not be 100% covered, then put all your focus into prevention. don't sit there with a wrecked tank for months on end when every example here is clearly showing you a better standard of reefing.
The whole purpose of this thread is to show you the biology of safe tank handling, transfer, cleaning and upgrades
how to physically handle reef substrates so your tank doesn't die.
rip cleaning is a reef tank medical procedure...what we do is reef tank dentistry and surgery
we flush out organics and we rasp off algae adhered to rocks during tank upgrades using metal tools, like a dentist scrapes tartar roughly and not gently but it's precision/we work around corals affixed on rocks like that
we rinse brand new reefs, day one assembly, to total cloudlessness to prevent that above. we don't skip rinsing the sand in tap water, as bad as that may sound initially
consider our results.
you're handling poky substrates in this thread
wear gloves and stuff so you don't harm yourself from electively keeping dangerous microbes as a hobby, you can get infections on your hands if you get cuts or scrapes handling reef materials as roughly as we handle them.
old sand has some risks associated with it due to bacteria built up and complexed with waste food stores, various states of oxygen etc (sandbeds have wildly varying chemistry depending on variables)
New sand from a bag, like pic #1 above, isn't a handling risk it's chalk dust clouding from sand grains that rubbed together and silted out during shipping and handling. some bags cloud worse than others, it's variable, not rinsing has variables.
this whole thread is tap rinsing reef sandbeds, its the #1 thing we do, and it's all wins.
your tank will at some point in this process be disassembled, it's what we do.
Make the glass this clean before you begin the re-setup process. ***if you have back wall or side coralline you want to preserve don't scrape it off during takedown leave it adhered and keep it wet for the rebuild. don't leave sand grains and mud stuck to the glass, be clean in this thread.
Shadow_k’s excellent build are the pics below.
wipe your glass down this clean before re assembly
watch out for scratches as you takedown and clean the system
we never put a handful of old sand on top of your new sand. That adds clouding to a perfectly clean rinse and can transport fish disease components tank to tank. 1000% pure tap water rinsing is what we do, all sand used, new or old regardless of it's source. this is a sand rinse thread.
hidden risks from bacterial compounds and various states of decay are best kept out of the topwater, we have to take your tank apart vs work with the sandbed near your animals because the clouding in the sandbed can kill, we use a careful order of disassembly steps to prevent clouding sandbed waste from contacting your sensitive animals.
Look how clean I rinsed my pico reef's sandbed below, this is my glass cup test but in a vase:
DO NOT TRANSFER A HANDFUL OF OLD SAND INTO YOUR NEW TANK AS SEED
that can kill your reef by transferring fish disease or harmful compounds from sand waste in the unrinsed sand
here is a nano reef from DannoOMG that we ripped clean to move up as a skip cycle transfer to a larger new nano tank. we moved his current rocks and coral into a larger tank and we didn’t test for anything and we skipped the cycle: the new tank was instantly ready to carry animals
Brand new pre rinsed ocean direct live sand from caribsea was used for the new tank, the old sand was tossed out.
the old tank we are upgrading from
holding vat of water for corals and fish
here is the new bag sand getting rinsed in portion to total clarity
rinse it over and over until clean. For hours, final rinse is in RO water until tap water is removed, the cloudless sand is now ready for use in the new tank and won’t cloud when you fill it up
The new tank has rinsed sand, fish and corals and rocks were ready to move over
some of the new made water from the yellow holding container was used to wash off rocks, before they moved into the new nano
algae was detail scraped off the rocks, they were swished clean in the clean water, then set back into the new tank to build this:
now that’s shocking laser clean rip clean tank transfer!!
Look how much waste was the in the old tank: out of sight and up under rocks doesn’t mean free from consequence, sandbed waste fuels algae invasions
his tank is balanced and clean now. He’s re ramping up the lights safely and no bleaching will occur.
DannoOMG added pods into the tank after the rip clean transfer now his tank is better off than he was before
Cook’s job completed in 24 hours no algae left, totally clean sand, huge reef tank. Best rip clean for 2021
Build Thread - Cook's 105 Planet Aquariums Crystaline Reef - 48x20
I've had my tank going for two years next month. I'm moving this build over from another forum, so the time stamps aren't going to reflect the original's. I will try to document the original dates as I go. It's also an opportunity to edit my build, there was so much at the beginning I didn't...
rip clean done on a nano that was power out for one week after storm Ida, and a rip clean is how you fix storm-damaged reef tanks. It’s also how you move them, or upgrade materials into a bigger reef, and it’s a way to fix cyano invasions and dino invasions we will show. Sandbed rinsing helps reefing in several different ways.
A week without power - Recoverable?
So, tank went without power for a week following hurricane Ida. There was no flow(obviously) and temps hit 85-86 during the day. I came back to the city to rescue my 2 clowns who are currently living in a 5 gallon bucket with a bubbler. Basically my question is: what are my options from here...
When tanks/seams break, we assemble back completely rinsed and clean systems for the skip cycle win, no bottle bac used thank you Hawk82
EMERGENCY - Help! 40 breeder leaked all over floor
I woke up at 2am to use the bathroom and heard the sound of water splashing. I went to look in my living room in horror and disbelief. Then I saw it, half the water gone! I think the stupid hob protein skimmer overflowed, because I dont see any cracks in the tank. But I had to drain the whole...
*******Notice every job we do here for fifty pages is the same disassemble, rinse, reassemble, don’t use bottle bac and for sure do not post any ammonia readings unless they’re from seneye******
we don’t like api or Red Sea ammonia tests here, anyone who owns a seneye is welcomed to post readings. Non digital test kits cause misread panic: look how well we do eliminating them from every job. The way you know we skipped the cycle in each job is because the reef stays alive and vibrant
Look how JD Inshore used rip cleaning to clear out mushroom coral overgrowth below
Build Thread - JD's 90 gallon mixed reef
*90 gallon mixed reef* Ruby Trigger 36 sump Reef Octopus 150 skimmer 2- EcoTech Radion XR15 pro Kessil H80 Refugium Light EcoTech Vectra return pump Icecap gyre Lifeguard media reactor This tank has been up and running for almost 4 years now. Its gone through some periods of neglect as other...
***you can remove aiptasias during a rip clean using that method above he used to remove 200 invasive ricordeas
see how the tank wasn’t invaded or out of balance? He only has mushrooms
we went ahead and rip cleaned it to buy more smooth running time
reefs work better without all the waste we collect in the sandbed
Rip cleaning is not harmful it’s a surgical process by which we can access reef tanks for various reasons and not cause recycles. several mushroom anemones were removed there and this works for aiptasia as well.
The opposite of Rip Cleaning: messing up the tank with cloudy rotten waste-
here's some in-tank sandbed work nearly killing the fish, soon after disturbance:
Dr. Tim here writes that over his years of experience he’s had several reports of sandbed disturbance killing the system.Re-aquascaping nightmare!!!!!! Nearly killed all my fish!!!!!
Did you smell rotten eggs? Sincerely Lasse
Creating a safe anoxic environment.
Over the past few months I have come across information regarding the creation of anoxic environments in aquariums, one of them being a deep sand bed (around 10+ cm?). I have also heard that some people worry that it could create hydrogen sulfide, which could creep out if the sand bed is...
a nano wiped out by disturbing the bed, inside the tank
Nanoreef crash after DSB cleaning
Hello R2R. So... I nearly wiped out one of my 14G Biocubes after an aggressive cleaning. The system has been running and doing well-enough for about 6 years. It is home to a handful of "easy" corals, a couple of clownfish, and a few mobile inverts. I bought an external filter (generic HD10...
Harmed tank by disturbing and unrinsed bed
Disturbed sand bed.
I have a 75 gallon fowlr tank that has been up for about 2 years. I have had nothing but trouble with this tank. Long story short i decided to clean tank yesterday. Toothbrush to rock and vacuum out detritus. I stirred up sand a little with the vacuum but worse the circulation pump must have...
Labored breathing fish after in- tank sandbed disturbance:
Clown laying on sandbed, breathing rapidly, and not eating after switching tanks. Stress?
I had a pair of clowns in an old tank, which I broke down. I moved them both into my qt tank for 48 hours while I set up the new one. All throughout the time in qt, the mocha has been fine, but the black ice immediately sat on the bottom with very rapid breathing. I moved them both to the DT...
Why for fifty pages have we no losses like those?
We have designed an ordering of waste removal that prevents system crashes. This thread is exclusively that practice, opposite from the loss links above
notice in each work thread example, we do the same set of moves:
-carefully disassemble the reef without stirring up bed
-hold rocks and corals in one container, fish in another w inverts, and take the tank apart with the muddy sand and rinse it to 1000% perfection using cool tap water. final rinse on sand is RO, to evacuate the tap. now the sand is perfect
not 99% cloud free, 1000%
-swish rocks around in -saltwater- (we do care about live rock bacteria and that's all we need to run a reef) to jet out their waste. do not move muddy live rocks from a holding container into your cloudless reassembled reef. swish them free of attached detritus.
-Don’t use GFO and Chemi pure and waste absorbers in the new cleaned system, they’ll be over stripping. Wait weeks or months as needed before adding back absorbent cheats.
MUST KEEP YOUR LIGHT LEVELS REDUCED SEVERAL DAYS IN THE CLEAN SETUP to avoid coral bleaching
we have you match only temperature and salinity between the old and clean tanks, no other params need to align like pH or calcium/alkalinity
Dropping your light levels back to ramp up phase prevents coral bleaching in systems that had all their waste removed like we do, you must ramp back up your light power slowly over ten days to guide the corals back to full ability. Be using your newly cleaned tank to spot feed corals extra well
Rinsing New Caribsea wet pack live sand, ocean direct and Fiji pink:
we always rinse all sand the same way, whether it’s new or old, live or dry sand.
if you don’t pre-rinse your caribsea sand you risk this:
Caribsea Ocean Direct Cloudyness
Recently filled my tank with RODI + Tropic Marin Salt, Ocean Direct Sand and now just waiting before planning how to cycle it. My question is, how is the best way to clean out this dust cloud from the tank? I don't have any kind of mechanical filtration but I could easily Cable-tie some filter...
typical animal behaviors can cause ongoing headaches in unrinsed new beds.
pistol shrimp making tank sandy and cloudy!
My pistol shrimp never wont stop stiring sand. Eversince it got paird with yasha goby its constantly digging entrance all over the tank. Its doing that all day and now my tank is so sandy and cloudy. its also knocking all the corals near him and im afraid all that little particles will go passs...
We pre rinse all sand, all the time, that’s being transferred or going back into the final assembly setup
The true cause of the mini cycle is upwelling of waste and not lack of bacteria
we are able to control all these cycles not by additives or testing, we don’t use bottle bacteria here, we control cycles by controlling how waste is removed from the sandbed
Starting out a new tank with perfectly rinsed Caribsea sand
here's how long it takes to pre rinse effectively:
How many times to rinse sand?
I have some Red Sea Pink aragonite sand that I've been washing for about an hour now. I must have rinsed it at least ten times now yet the water cloudiness will not go away after each rinsing. How many rinses does it take before this stuff stops clouding the water full of silt?
Pre rinse your new caribsea live sand before use
some bags of sand don’t clear like the label says they will
two days still cloudy
Cycle question
Ok so I finally started my tank. I have a 45 gallon tank put in two bags of live sand and rodi water with salt. Have a wave maker and hob filter. I have been monitoring amonia but I have yet to see an amonia spike. The tank is hazy and cloudy. I’ve read that’s the bacteria bloom. I have 20lbs of...
Pre rinse your new caribsea live sand because:
‘took months to clear’
Add new sand without rinse
Hi guy, I just add new special grade sand without rinse. I added slowly 1/3 bag per day, but didn’t rinse. My tank seem cloudy, but I have skimmer and 2 filter socks. My tank has sps, lps and 9 fishes. Should I expect a mini cycle. I concern my coral and fish die tomorrow
more examples of tanks who didn’t pre rinse not clearing 48 hours
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/so-i-didnt-rinse.592624/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/sandbed-stirred-up.544852/#post-5723606
Tank cloudy after adding live sand
I added some more sand to my tank that has been running for 6 months. This has caused a lot of cloudiness.. will this be detrimental to the fish and what are the best ways to solve this?
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/very-cloudy-water-after-sand-and-rock.559386/#post-5735864
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/question-about-vacuuming-sand-bed.616059/ https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/new-tank-milky-cloudy.616519/
Ocean direct live sand from CaribSea
Has anyone used ocean direct sand and what are your thoughts? I used it in my nano and noticed that any sand movement clouds the area pretty quickly. Any fixes for this or is it just part of having this sand
10 days, still won't settle and clouds fully
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cloudy-tank.576835/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bummer-could-use-some-help.558301/
After a rip clean, your tank looks this good, and your pods arent dead they lived in the rocks as you rinsed the sand:
courtesy, Shadow_k from page 45
before rip clean:
After rip clean:
-I see pods all over now rocks sand i really thought they all died off haven’t seen them in months.
this above is just after rip clean, and surgical precision sand rinsing Shadow did
heres one month later
here are pods on the glass 2 days after a full tap water rinse of Shadow's sandbed:
--- it’s exciting to see things breathe in the tank my pods came back
Probably want to rinse that with rodi or salt it’ll hold a good bit of water.
