Black out during chemiclean?

[Dylan McKenzie Holloway]

Would it be okay to do a 48 hour blackout during chemiclean treatment, and turn the lights back on when I do the water change?

 

[taricha]

Dangerous. Chemiclean drops Oxygen levels and extended lights out would worsen that issue. Could you overcome it? yes. but how do you know you have enough aeration to prevent O2 from going too low?

 

[Dylan McKenzie Holloway]

Alright, so I won't do that then. Just a 20% water change in 48 hours right?

 

[Redfoxtang]

I have done a black out with chemiclean before but left my skimmer overflowing (removed cup). Also added a couple cheap power heads and pointed toward the surface for more O2 exchange.

 

[Tahoe61]

You should have a skimmer or air stone during treatment and remove what you can of the cyanobacteria manually prior. I have used chemiclean numerous times with good out comes.

 

[Aquavaj]

I believe I did lights out during my treatment too. Left skimmer cup off and ran 2 air pumps with air stones along with my powerheads. Suffered no loss at all

 

[CMMorgan]

I believe I did lights out during my treatment too. Left skimmer cup off and ran 2 air pumps with air stones along with my powerheads. Suffered no loss at all

If you take the cup off, didn't the skimmate just run back into your sump and back into the return to the DT?

 

[buruskeee]

If you take the cup off, didn't the skimmate just run back into your sump and back into the return to the DT?

Skimmer goes crazy so it’s a super wet “skim” if you can call that. It’s basically just creating tons of bubbles and quickly turning back into water. I do this with the cup on but the drain off and tune the skimmer to create a constant flow of water out which also helps with preventing bubbles to overflow the top of the cup. They’re really fine and dense bubbles, not the typical dry big sticky looking skim bubbles.