BB Monthly Maintenance

[john.m.cole3]

I've been running my tank bare bottom for 3 months now. It's hard to keep the bottom sparkling clean looking. I've developed a monthly routine to keep it clean looking and functioning well.

It actually starts on a daily basis. every night when I come home and before I feed, I crank my flow up to 100% for an hour to bring any settled detritus into the water column and down the overflow for the skimmer to get.

Once a month I do a deep cleaning. I set up a 10 gallon tank next to the tank half filled with tank water. This is the beginning of my water change for the week also. I have most of my corals mounted to rubble so they are easy to move over to that 10 gallon tank. After moving them over I slide my rocks around and take a razor blade to the entire glass bottom. I dip any corals that have algae on them and manually remove it also. Then I take a MJ 1200 and mount it on the side near the top of the tank so most detritus will blow to the area under the MJ pump. I siphon that out, replace corals, and any water needed.

The smooth clean bottom looks good and detritus can glide along the bottom and re-enter the column for easier removal.

Thanks for reading!

 

[jsker]

Good post John

 

[john.m.cole3]

Thank you friend. I forgot to mention that after the deep cleaning, the LPS polyps are very inflated w/ feeder tentacles out. I'm not sure if it's bc more particle food is in the water, or if they are just happier from the clean tank.