Old tank syndrome is vanquished in reefing now

[Paul B]

Gordon as you may know I hate DSBs. But if you want a UG filter, the ones sold don't have holes in them. They have thin slits which wouldn't clog with gravel and the slits are thin enough to prevent most finer particles from going under neith them. As I said, mine was good for 40 years.

Of course most of the space under there was filled with mud and detritus but that is to be expected and may be a good thing as opposed to a bad one. It is in that layer of mud that is the beginning of the food chain.

Don't put a screen over it as that will clog, the slits are perfect.
I use a DIY manifold to feed water evenly to my 3 UG plates and each plate gets about 150 gph down each tube which is very little and almost the smallest powerhead you can find is good for that.

Much more flow than that and you are asking for problems as it will collect more detritus than can be processed and that will also make it clog rendering it useless and it will become a DSB.

Remove your creatures before you disturb that bed as I think it will stink and be filled with hydrogen sulfide. You may have to open some windows.

 

[Aqua Man]

I am anticipating a full rip of a 20+ yr tank

Wow! How deep? Would love to see a picture!

 

[brandon429]

Gordon in my opinion we should plan that carefully agreed pics to plan is best

for whatever sand you’re about to use/ old vs new/ are you prepared for about four straight hours of tap water rinsing to earn complete and total clarity

it’ll take half a day on the sand wash alone for a large tank


new sand if unrinsed is mere annoying chalk dust, but it obscures the clean water assessment we directly use to gauge safety of a rip clean, crashing reefs change to gray water vs clear and if chalk is causing gray we can’t watch for vital proofing

partially rinsed old sand to be reused is dangerous for obvious reasons, either way if your plan is any kind of half rinse there’s complete risk in that and you’d be amazed at the number of umpires who will downplay the need for pre rinsing, which is 100% of them lol


laser clear laser clean, that’s every example linked here. Not one is cloudy or they wouldn’t be linked here, only cloudless is safe.

reef tank surgery on a twenty year setup is massive undertaking, the time spent building up that system has a cost/worth factor in excess of its actual components. If you’re dedicated to clarity I’ll promise safety in the final assembly. This is a no bottle bac job, we don’t need competing aerobes we need only those stuck to your live rocks and those rocks are rinsed in saltwater / twist swished in buckets of saltwater or totes of saltwater so they bring no detritus into the new tank. Their bottoms will for sure have adhered detritus


sand in tap, then final rinse RO, rocks rinsed in saltwater, fish held in covered buckets so they won’t jump, re ramp lights in the new assembly don’t run full power, match salinity and temp to the holding water is the guaranteed factual safe plan for a twenty year old tank rip clean and commitment to sand rinse is the #1 requirement above them all

rinse out the actual empty tank with vinegar or something, total glass clarity. we had a rip clean for dinos get cloudy because he left old sand grains stuck to the walls of the tank as he refilled, it was totally cloudy and short circuited all his rinse efforts on the sand.


when you estimate the sand is rinsed ready, drop a handful in a clear glass of water and hold to light to check for total clarity on the model scale, this prevents guessing and clouding in the new tank which would be a huge let down

this process will reset your tanks aging back to infant new while still retaining all the rock pigmentation and coral size that indicates age, it’s the fountain of youth for reefing and it’s wise to intercept before outbreaks as preventative vs in response to outbreaks associated with old tank syndrome.

 

[Radman73]

If nothing else this thread reminded me to deep vacuum my ~2" sand bed. My tank says thank you!

FWIW, I vacuum it to a ginormous filter sock in the sump. Very easy.

 

[brandon429]

preventative export is excellent agreed, we do big catch up runs here for the hands off mode.

 

[brandon429]

A new restoration job is coming up. A tank cycling through dinos, green hair algae and overall surface area impaction is about to get jimmy snooka’s flying arm bar. Pics to follow shortly. Job barely wrapping up.


we did not dose things to the tank or alter water parameters to kill a set-in mass

that adds to further surface area reduction via waste impaction. We did opposite: change sandbed and fully rinse the new to snowglobe perfection. The rocks were treated as if they went to the dentist: there was metal-on-tooth scraping there was rinsing and washing of the hosting rock, leaving only corals

those rocks were set back on clean sand, and new water is in the system.

the old way of keeping reef tanks, the 90s, you set one up and only once. Live or die, ride it into the ground if required and then start over with all new rocks, corals sand etc.


we save animal/coral waste and start overs by intercepting during the downslope of the bell curve of eutrophication and keeping the rock that’s in the system


we reset by storm churning export effort to now first step upward bell curve. Results and step pics shortly.



the impacted substrate we remove here, the locus of Old Tank Syndrome is cast away waste, particulate organic matter in some circles- from other larger animals in the reef, it’s particulate waste that the surface area naturally catches. It’s food substrate for excess bacterial loading that can foster disease and oxygen competition and dont improve overall filtration- waste substrate is extra biological oxygen demand in aquatic systems. It lowers systemic surface area by clogging micro channels in live rock.

in this thread we reverse eutrophication by removing all the waste, all at once. We surgically restore the live rock to full open pores and no impaction

 

[brandon429]

Looking for advice on my 5 month old 13.5 Evo. (warning LOTs of information)

I have been trying to get some reef tank services to come and consult me on how I should improve my tank but nobody has gotten back to me. I guess they are too busy. Information I will include hoping it will give you guys an idea of where I should go from here : *Lighting/Tank/Pumps etc *What...

www.reef2reef.com

Start to finish micro modeling of new reef- maturing reef- eutrophic reef-oligotrophic reef at the end. And now we get to track it's performance using this new control system, live time. Today is day one in the new setting, the absolutely clean wide open surface area setting. No bottle bac was used in these jobs.



Nano reef tank restorations are super valuable models that large tankers can use to control their huge tanks before crashes and invasion takeovers. Large tank owners should think twice about piling sand on the glass bottom in a common display tank in the usual manner, that's a storage nightmare for most systems we track out during restoration jobs.

 

[brandon429]

Watch the battle against dinos above.

Before/ invaded/ eutrophic

See how the color palette is different between clogged/ plugged/ eutrophic and clean/open/oligotrophic state

The system breathes and respires and oxidizes better than before, due to storm simulation cleaning

After the rip clean: same day

No bottle bac used. We will now leverage the clean system to carry a much higher feed frequency sustained for eight weeks like a workout program of feed+water change CPR strokes, which adds mass to corals. Danno can easily remove any small regrowth during feed and clean runs, and the system will never be invaded again if this new option is selected for

Instead of withholding feed to prevent invasion, we reverse: feed more than ever and export more than ever, coral body building. Sedentary reefs go eutrophic

Busy active and clean reefs will go awesome

 

[brandon429]

Bump


who has a reef that needs a trip to the dentist


anyone need preventative work, before your tank gets bad that way we aren’t playing catch up?

 

[MnFish1]

Bump


who has a reef that needs a trip to the dentist


anyone need preventative work, before your tank gets bad that way we aren’t playing catch up?

I would be interested to see how that tank looks today. Also - I would bet that most people would like to know how to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.

 

[brandon429]

@Llorgon


Your work would be among my top favorites here.

 

[brandon429]

Exactly like a mouth that has never gone to the dentist will be in serious trouble, it will be advanced aged, this thread is about the testing rasping, flushing, preemptive work vs reactive work, low storage and interstitial cleaning of surfaces by dentist’s tools if at all attainable. a common knife tip is the stand in

not a brush, we never pestle remains of algae into the crevices, that’s what the masses do and it’s plugging up the surface area

we rinse in saltwater across rocks, picking, with metal we target the cracks and crevices and scrape that algae out. Peroxide on the cleaned surfaces, not the pre-scraped surfaces

we do everything backwards from the common method here.


we are doing reef dentistry as a means to cause unlimited reef tank lifespan and your tank is completely perfect for this thread.


I guarantee someone out there has killed cyano three times over with chemi clean, or they’ve used fluconazole to kill a bunch of gha


your surface area is getting reduced by plugging, compounding with daily feed waste, this makes your live rock retain vs express waste. Eutrophication in action


head off the delayed community crash from the med use, get out your dentist tools preemptively let’s get some works going.


interesting side note:

anyone here, take a sample section of live rock and clean it per above.

flow saltwater across it, make it really free of waste.

set in a white bucket of clean saltwater (so you see waste buildup) and circulate it overnite

notice how it started totally clean then still got detritus, in the bottom of the white bucket

it wasn’t plugged up it was free to express, oligotrophic conditions for the rock, high surface area, much better ammonia nitrification by orders over.

our tanks don’t have enough shear export force


they swish around waste, redistribute it

but we intervene with a flushing scrape run on reef rocks

a sandbed flushing, total water change, using tap water, we do a complete export run for the win on any eutrophic reef tank.


Notice we havent been using bottle bacteria



how resilient are your tank’s bacteria, based on works shown here


do we really need to purchase bottles and bottles of product



@Eric Cohen

I wanted you to see this work thread.

we had been discussing work threads and I wanted to post one I’ve been working on. wanted to show how force export works and is not upsetting to the system like so many would claim. I believe red slime remover has a place in the market


I have saved large tanks with it from cyano doom, too big to rip clean, by telling the tank owners to buy it in separate work threads, it’s a valid tool.


I wanted you to see why I thought it wasn’t fair to offer red slime remover without seeing a full tank picture of the presenting job, to look for areas of accumulation that call for export, not just a chemical option. It’s a valid tool though, don’t think I don’t respect its tens of thousands of strong testimonies.


it is important in my opinion to have places where surgical options at least can offer medium-sized to nano-sized tank owners a method that really does work, free of charge and because it causes less green hair algae tradeoff invasions down the line by not killing targets in the tank and then sinking the mass into the sandbed and rock crevices.

I am 110% in favor of using red slime remover post rip clean, as growback prevention. for persistent cyano tanks it’s the first thing I’ll recommend, after flushing has cleared all target.


we have some cyano tanks so persistent, the cells regroup even back on cleaned surfaces. red slime remover at the right stage of the equation would be very powerful.

 

[brandon429]

GHA Has Destroyed My Passion for the Hobby

I spent 3 hours or so rinsing sand. First with cold tap water and then a last rinse in RODI. This was the view as I was dredging the sand out: This is how it looked IMMEDIATELY after the sand was back in. To my surprise, underneath the GHA, the chaeto in the in-tank refugium looked...

www.reef2reef.com

Humuhumufan did a great job de-aging his reef tank.

*why that example belongs here vs other reef tank algae threads: because he rip cleaned it to remove a bunch of dirty waste in the sandbed, and any other method leaves the waste in the sandbed to fuel cyano and dinos outbreaks

as a first time tank surgery performer, he simply followed through top to bottom. we did not use bottle bac

we didn't wrestle with api and red sea ammonia kits to cause cycle doubt, you can see by pics his tank is alive, shining, de-aged, and robbed of algae and invasion feed. sub to him to watch for future updates. success. total success he commanded. pics:

before beginning the job, pent up waste + GHA present, eutrophic condition in effect:

after the take down, notice how much total waste was in this sandbed. posters in his thread adamantly recommended we leave all that in, and solely dose the water with things. He would get revolving cyano and dinos outbreaks if we killed his GHA< and added that rotting mass to already rotting mass in the sand feeding GHA> so glad he opted for reef tank surgery.

look at his transfer of living materials into a holding tank, 1st skip cycle transfer for the job, see the holding tank's clean water? that's what makes a skip cycle materials transfer...permitting no clouding in the holding vessel (or the final assembly display tank)

here's his rocks in a holding bin, getting knifed to scrape off the algae. peroxide on the clean spots, after erasing the algae with metal/steel:

after hours, literally hours washing the sandbed in tap water then saltwater as the final rinse, this was the second to last picture, see how clean this water is?

and now the final assembly pic with fish, skip cycle rip clean gold, a de-aged tank not setup to break out in dinos and cyano cyclically like we see in hands-off threads:

the oligotrophic condition is now restored. for a while


well done, well done, well done H.

we used no bottle bac, no dosers, no meds, no testing and no hesitation to get what is shown above. we did the opposite of what the masses recommend.

 

[brandon429]

if this thread doesn't make people rethink owning sandbeds up under their rocks, fish and corals, that's awesome...we will have more surgery jobs coming/keep em coming!

 

[MnFish1]

if this thread doesn't make people rethink owning sandbeds up under their rocks, fish and corals, that's awesome...we will have more surgery jobs coming/keep em coming!

Said it before will say it again - lets the tank in 3 years.

 

[brandon429]

that's fair. at least we are starting the work regarding physical rip cleaning to track, nobody else is.

in fact, we have three + years of data to check for fluconazole treatments

Bryopsis Cure: My Battle With Bryopsis Using Fluconazole

The Poll In This Thread is For Bryopsis Only not GHA,Turf,Bubble Algae or any other Algae The 2 week treatment is for Bryopsis algae. For GHA,turf algae and bubble algae it may take as long as 4-6 weeks to kill. GHA,turf algae,bubble algae are different than Bryopsis algae. Bryopsis algae will...

www.reef2reef.com

thats a very low cure rate overall, and a very very high tradeoff invasion rate. Fluc is excellent at an initial kill, we can see, and terrible at long term sustenance. its right there for the patterning.

and for nitrate/phosphate dosing/hands off stuff, and it's a wreck. 10% fix rates, see the nuisance algae forum. tradeoff invasions, cyano and dinos and GHA in succession:

Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

@ecas12 Vacuuming out nuisance is good and necessary. Don't leave it for the sake of competition. Not clear to me what type it is from those pics. Video might help. Fuge may or may not make a difference. I'd go ahead with whatever the overall plan was. Thanks for the advice. Going to start...

www.reef2reef.com

additionally, I don't know of any threads where the most wrecked tanks are worked to conclusion, we want to provide that. those two threads above are massive tangles of non fixed reefs/attempting to work via hands off/using fully opposite ways we apply here.

we now have physical handling threads to begin long term tracking, several different threads.

I want my thread here to be evaluated based on outcomes vs theory, so when/if there are bad outcomes I'll be here to account for sure.

 

[brandon429]

I rarely use my own reef in work thread examples but it applies here since tank de-aging is our focus.

I'm acting preemptively vs allowing a wrecked tank and catching up **the work in the tanks is the same though **


The oldest pico reef on the planet got that way by rip cleaning. Multiple rip cleans before it goes fully eutrophic is how i did it.


I can see how rip cleans may be cheating, so when someone posts a seventeen year old pico reef using legit means we'll take note here.

This is year 17 and a pico vase is ideal to study tank aging since I have no dilution to offset heavy feeding and rock + coral density. Pico reefs age very quickly given these working ratios

 

[brandon429]

in fair disclosure we need to incorporate someone approaching 17 years using legit means lol.


Martiza, the nicest pico reef on the planet who grows topshelf corals in a fishbowl on year 11 and not one rip clean. By year 11 I had to do about 10 rips. 90%+ of those corals have been in there the whole time, no changeouts. they cull and clip as needed, it's dang near full.

this is not wrecked tank correction, but this is avoiding the matter in ways that don't require sandbed intervention, this is the unicorn because it's modeled in a gallon setup that will age at light speed compared to a full tank yet they run it hands off, no takedown cleaning, truly all waste from copious corals, rocks and sand is processed in the bed:


I have a text message picture of the bowl from this weekend, it's astonishing. They don't want to update yet but trust me when they update the bowl is amazing. I have been texting with Martiza the entire time from the start of that vase's build till two days ago. It's an amazing process, the thing just sits there behaving forever. Bob Ross could paint full landscapes with a broken q tip...Martiza is the Bob Ross of pico reefing.

that entire system has only been fed benepets dry feed for about 8 straight years. I've never seen it have an invasion from start to present.

Both of these pico systems are immune to old tank syndrome, though they arrive at it differently. People who run tank correction threads in other systems are searching for repeatable hands off methodology, it just hasn't been found yet. This thread here centers around the hard work mode because that's what I can accurately transfer outbound to other tanks in need of reboot and it can be done in full confidence for the safety of their corals and fish.

 

[Tamberav]

Yummy

 

[brandon429]

that is indistinguishable from a vanilla frap at the ritzy coffee place

thank u for posting to our detritus logs, I love to see that. it is a known zone in reefing, we want to look at it and see if we can attribute it to bad vs good vs neutral outcomes.