Beginner in need of help with a picoreef

[Kaisentlaia]

Thank you @brandon429, of course feel free to share this post. I'll keep posting updates, I'm curious to see if and how much algae will grow back in a week and how the corals will do.

Just for reference, here's another couple of pics of the kind of algae that was growing in the tank:

@58e970b2-3f88-4897-87ba-5 thank you so much for the pump advice for mixing saltwater, it made things definitely easier!

Thanks to everyone else who replied as well, after all your input and insight I was finally able to do some targeted research and my understanding is now definitely better than it was before. I still have lots to learn but I feel like I took the first steps in the right direction.

 

[Rmckoy]

I’d love to see how this ends .
something new ......

20 years ago we wouldn’t dare removing anything or cleaning in fear of removing any or all beneficial bacteria .
Essentially .... removing all bacteria being the result of cleaning too much at once .
Is a mini cycle or a full blown ammonia spike possible ?

 

[brandon429]

The way it works is removing all the clouding detritus removes the cycle risk, the bacteria always retain a base layer even after deep cleaning we found

It works in all reefs, this is how we move them to new homes without a recycle, by cleaning them then moving clean surfaces. No re cycle, any reef.

 

[brandon429]

We have a single thread that has five hundred of these on file


What the new science has found is that a basal layer of filter bacteria remains even after a deep clean.


Any number of times we want to run it is ok but the removal job needs to be thorough


The partial action ones are the dangerous way. Surgical takedown allows for total control i know it is very backwards lol.

I'm about to get banned in another forum I post in for promoting this very action, some places won't have it. What you mention is such the firm standard, there's no allowance for development in the method.

Thank goodness r2r not heavy handed. They know the market will decide if rip cleans remain, not a mods opinion on the practice. Rtr manages their forum in a way to allow development on the old rules


And for that, membership, exponential.

I agree 100% the only thing that matters is someone's update. We want each one rinsed perfectly, then they'll all skip cycle. It's the greatest secret in reefing.

 

[Rmckoy]

We have a single thread that has five hundred of these on file


What the new science has found is that a basal layer of filter bacteria remains even after a deep clean.


Any number of times we want to run it is ok but the removal job needs to be thorough


The partial action ones are the dangerous way. Surgical takedown allows for total control i know it is very backwards lol.

I'm about to get banned in another forum I post in for promoting this very action, some places won't have it. What you mention is such the firm standard, there's no allowance for development in the method.

Thank goodness r2r not heavy handed. They know the market will decide if rip cleans remain, not a mods opinion on the practice. Rtr manages their forum in a way to allow development on the old rules


And for that, membership, exponential.

I agree 100% the only thing that matters is someone's update. We want each one rinsed perfectly, then they'll all skip cycle. It's the greatest secret in reefing.

Interesting .
but this is the only one I’ve followed from the beginning . @Kaisentlaia keep us posted if you have a spike in ammonia over the next few days .

@brandon429 new ways are good .
but I personally have been stuck in the old way of reefing for far too long to be a believer

 

[brandon429]

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

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...

www.reef2reef.com

The new way prevents losses. Skipping the rinse makes losses and threads where for ten pages people debate what caused the loss but one still occurs. and it costs $ and time to recover from skipping sand rinse when moving tanks or when commanding them back into compliance


But there above, no loss/ no debates and the one thing we do different is the sand rinse. The old ways are literally harmful you can see vs what's on file here and above

In your thread I was the only one advising you it was your sand, I recall that detail. The reason I don't agree with the crowds assessment of your loss is because they dont have any work threads to show focused study on the matter.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Day 1 update

The water is still crystal clear

The pistol shrimp survived, overnight he dug a new burrow under this rock:

The sinularia looks pretty happy, all the polyps are open:

The two discosoma are still sulking bad, especially the striped one. I hope I won't lose it:

I missed a few spots on the big rock (which was the hardest to clean):

Light is still blue only at 50% power (6W blue led on, 6W white led off - I'm turning white on just to take pics). I just tested NO2 and NO3: nitrites are at 0 and nitrates at 1! That's the highest I ever saw in this tank, before cleaning it used to be between 0 and 0.2. They're finally showing up now that the algae aren't soaking them up anymore. A bit of nitrates and no nitrites looks good, sounds like the nitrifying bacteria are still doing their job. I'll keep monitoring in the next days.

This was the first step but I should plan my next moves to prevent another algae bloom. The astrea I got died (I was too hasty with acclimation, I'll go much slower next time) and my only CUC right now is a small starfish. There are still a few algae spots that I should keep an eye on and possibly eradicate. So my questions are:

• Should I get another couple of snails? I was thinking one astrea and one nassarius to move the sand around a bit. I'll have to order because lockdown so it won't be that cheap but still feasible.
• Would it be good to spot treat with peroxide the few algae spots that I missed?

I'd like to start feeding more as well to help those few corals get back on track, I have a bottle of aminoacids and I could save some dethawed frozen food juice for spot feeding. Would that be a good idea?

 

[brandon429]

Yes can easily lift out rocks now and dab algae externally with peroxide

Since the sand is clean this won't upset or upwell waste
Rinse w saltwater and set back


No need to dose peroxide into the water that's not targeting enough. You can keep it off corals by working externally

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Day 2

Water still crystal clear:

Mushrooms still sulking hard:

The bigger one might be starting to stretch up a bit, the other one is all scrunched up. I might have banged it around too much while cleaning. Sinularia still happy with extended polyps.

I left a small piece of fish outside the pistol shrimp burrow yesterday, a small peace offering. He didn't react but overnight he came out to get it.

Parameters look good:

• Salinity: 1024
• Alk (dKh): ~9 (went down a bit!)
• NO2: 0
• NO3: 1

I'm really happy about the higher nitrates, so far so good. I'm not seeing any noticeable algae growth, I've been blasting detritus off the rock with a small baster daily and I will siphon thoroughly the sandbed at the next wc.

I'm considering leaving the tank alone for a week to give corals time to recover and to evaluate algae growth compared to pre rip cleaning rate.

Yesterday the Sinularia polyps retracted completely after lights on, but only in the morning. After the midday light break it looked much happier and the poplys stayed open all afternoon even with lights on. I might start reintroducing white light slowly beginning tomorrow.

I will attempt more frequent and heavier feedings to try and rise phosphates and nitrates a bit.

 

[brandon429]

those close up shots are perfect! The rock has been detailed perfectly

Nano Build - Jar of Rocks

Just looked it up thats a cool looking fish. Not for $100 beans though lol i am way to cheap for that. Would love to put a clown goby in there or a war paint. Maybe a blenny of some kind but my LFS hasnt really had anything of the nano/pico variety lately. Really dont think i can fit a hippo...

www.reef2reef.com

this is helpful here because we get about six months update after a rip clean on a pico jar, helps to see long term stasis

 

[Tokash23]

Great job on the rip clean tank looks great. I would try and give that mushrooom some shade see if it bounces back. I almost lost mine in the beginning to the point it detached and floated around the jar for a day or two before i got it to reattach and its been fine ever since. Brandon is the man when it comes to picos i followed his instruction to the word and got my tank to bounce back big time after things were just crappy for awhile. Like he said i dont test for anything i just make sure salinity and temp is the same when i do my water changes and go for it. If you doing them weekly that will keep your parameters stable enough for what you have.

 

[brandon429]

Tokash and I worked well in chat for a good long time tuning up his tank, nice way to stay focused you simply commanded the win it was awesome to see, and now others can get a feel for the deep clean process by seeing these similar examples

 

[Kaisentlaia]

@Tokash23 thank you for the suggestion. I moved that struggling mushroom under the filter, let's hope it will get better in the shade. I had a similar experience when I first got the tank: the big bluish purple mushroom was all crumpled under the rocks, I fished it out and set it on a rock but it kept floating around for about a week until it found a place it liked and then it attached and started growing exponentially.

I dosed half the recommended AA quantity today, hopefully this will help as well. I'll slowly ramp up to full dose if there are no ill effects.

I've been thinking about the root cause of the problems here and I think it was a combination of not enough water changes, cleaning, and nutrients, plus that big water change I did all wrong. The tank was already showing algae growth at that time (not too bad, but still) and I guess it was barely holding it together, then the sudden change of parameters threw it completely off balance.

I'm planning to keep up with regular maintenance now: sand siphoning, rock blasting and scrubbing, frequent algae removal even if it's not a nuisance yet, and more feeding to avoid starving the tank again. Hopefully this will be enough to prevent another invasion in the future. I decided to get a couple of snails and some shrimp to get a little help with keeping algae under control and getting rid of leftover food, and to have another reason for feeding as well. Who knows maybe this will lead to detectable phosphates one day.

 

[brandon429]

the funny thing is this is never harmful

readers are like:
WHEW you barely pulled it off


you can do 200 more if you like. I estimate my pico reef has been rip cleaned two thousand times. as a flushing reef wave in nature continually contacts a strike zone, that area is flushed, highly oxygenated, low storage, and a decent place for corals. its ironic that all the still running, hands off part is the abnormal stuff

problems arise if we burn the corals/no light drops or if we upwell a bunch of cloudy waste in suspension, on about 5%~ of systems like that some losses happen due to whatever the bad stuff in the mud is for some tanks.

if we're careful about detritus contacting coral, no amount of rip cleans is harmful. not five thousand.

even though its cheating, welcome to the first discovered method for ageless nano reefs and it works for everyone. the cooler thing would be total internal processing of waste, no rip cleans needed. some can do that in nanos, I cannot. there are no moral qualms for me however in rip cleaning and growing corals for decades in the same jar. that has become the natural way I guess, the occasional rip current storm clean situation.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Day 3

Water still crystal clear (blue lights today, didn't want to mess with the timers):

I think one of the polyps here is starting to open up:

Today I brushed the rocks, scraped some small bits of algae off (inside the tank, didn't want to further upset the corals moving rocks around so soon) and tried to siphon the sand during a small water change: I got the smallest siphon I could get and it's still too big for small partial water changes so I opted for leaving it be for now.
The filter sponge needed a good rinse so while it was out I had the brilliant idea to let run a small pump for a bit with a filter sock to catch some of the debris I brushed off the rocks, but I forgot to rinse it and turns out it was all dusty so I ended up doing a 30% wc anyway and now the tank is still a bit cloudy. :\

Water parameters unchanged aside from alk that measured about 10 dKh today... I probably mixed up my numbers yesterday. I tested Ca and Mg out of curiosity and they're still pretty high, Mg 2340 and Ca 700 (I had to do the half and half trick again to be able to measure them). I'm pretty sure salinity is right though since I checked my refractometer with a homemade solution and it was spot on.

The difference after this rip clean is unbelievable. Before everything was constantly chocked up by algae and trying to keep up was like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. Now I have to look really hard to find any algae and even the glass is spotless, I brushed it a little today just to get rid of some dirty spots that I missed when I set up the tank and the rest of the glass had just the faintest invisible film growing on it.
The difference is really impressive. I wonder how long this will last because it seems too good to be true!

 

[brandon429]

we have also linked your thread to help others make the jump, nice documentation here for sure its helpful for others to see.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Day 4

The cloudiness caused by the dusty filter sock is gone (I know it looks like I'm posting the same picture over and over but I swear I'm not):

The striped mushroom is still very angry:

Parameters are stable, nitrates look slightly higher (I think almost 2!), alk isn't going down anymore. Probably I was struggling to keep it up because the algae was consuming it all (some algae can convert carbonates as a carbon source for photosynthesis).

I sprinkled a tiny amount of powder food yesterday, figured some ghost feeding wouldn't hurt. Added some more AA today (still half dose) and tried to feed a couple of small pellets and a tiny piece of fish to the big mushroom but it's not interested in food apparently. I saw the pistol shrimp behind the rocks so he's definitely alive and he'll find plenty to eat tonight.

I added a small paper screen on the light fixture and went back to blues only since yesterday after the white light was on for an hour the big mushroom looked kinda shriveled. I'm going to wait some more before ramping up.

It's been 4 days and aside for the stressed corals (but that's my fault for banging them around) looks like everything is doing really well. No cycle to be seen so far.

I miss the microfauna I had going in here, all the tiny amphipods and the brittle stars died when the algae went rampant months ago. I hope there's still some tiny critter hidden somewhere that will repopulate the tank given enough time.

 

[brandon429]

others are benefitting from seeing your update nice follow through.

it doesn't matter if a reef is one gallon or 1000 all this scales up the same way. Im trying to convince a 100 gallon owner to do surgery/let's see if he's fed up enough with green hair algae to be at the action tipping point

 

[Tokash23]

Your on roughly the same trajectory as i am since the last rip clean i am on day 5 since mine. The clarity and cleanliness in the tank makes me happy and i am lucky enough to have mine on my desk at work so i see it all day. One thing brandon had mentioned when i first started working with him was to tone down your lights a bit which it looks like you are working on. I may have missed it but what sort of lights do you have on the tank? After awhile of back and forth we found that the light i am using is pretty aggressive and i had to tape off sections favoring more blue than white to make the corals happy.

 

[Kaisentlaia]

Hey @Tokash23 I saw your thread and you did a great job! Looks like your jar is bouncing back already.

what sort of lights do you have on the tank?

I have two lights: Leddy Tube 6W Marine (10000K) and Actinic (20000K) for a total of 12W so not too powerful. They used to be both on 9:00-14:00 and 16:00-21:00, and the blue one another hour til 22:00 so 10h white and 11h blue with a 2h break in the middle.

Everything was doing fine at the beginning with this schedule, the mushrooms seemed to love it. When I asked for help here (so about a week ago) I reduced the white light to 5h to try and keep the algae at bay.

After rip cleaning I left only the blues on for the usual 11h (so only 6W). I'm sure the mushrooms are fine with higher amounts of light since they were doing well before but they hate being touched: every time I cleaned the tank they spent a couple of days sulking especially when I brushed the rocks around them, so it's not a big surprise that they are so angry now. I don't expect to see them bounce back for a week at least, probably more.