Cycling a new Biocube 32

[hotashes]

Update: So checked in today after water change and my water is milky again, even with the carbon and water change and filter flood changing more often. I have found two more snail egg trails. Do we know how long they keep breeding for lol? It’s like a breeding party in my tank! Also one of my Duncan’s is growing a couple of new heads pretty quickly!

Wow, crazy... I would just let them be, build some good coral growth from those nutrients. Just stick you your usual husbandry and let nature take its course. Remember, we will never win against mother nature, embrace it and let the goodness enhance those corals. As said, you’ll not got those things from commercial foods

 

[Daniel266jz]

Update: My tank is still very cloudy, I don’t know how long this lasts or it could be that I have more males than females lol. Well I’m running carbon and filter floss only but it’s not clearing up at all. I don’t want to use any chemicals so how would a slimmer sound? I could get a nano slimmer and only run it to clear up the aftermath of the breeding( I see lots of white dots and snail egg as EVERYWHERE). After it’s done cleaning I can turn it off and do thus only when such happens and stuck to my carbon and floss for a while and eventually back into my floss only CPR method? Please advise as I have a LFS right by my project I am on today.

 

[brandon429]

a skimmer is surely ok here.

in the end it seems that to clean the tank out wouldnt be horrible, it'd be #2

standard deep clean/full wc surely would take out snail castings

 

[Daniel266jz]

a skimmer is surely ok here.

in the end it seems that to clean the tank out wouldnt be horrible, it'd be #2

standard deep clean/full wc surely would take out snail castings

I’m looking for one now. I was thinking only use it in situations like this since skimmers don’t use chemicals and I can have it handy just for these things. Other then that I’ll always stick to what I’ve always done

 

[brandon429]

Some of the algae work we do on glass and on surfaces is offset by skimming it’s ok anytime you’d like to run, won’t imbalance things (we feed too well, food restrictors get imbalanced)

 

[Daniel266jz]

Some of the algae work we do on glass and on surfaces is offset by skimming it’s ok anytime you’d like to run, won’t imbalance things (we feed too well, food restrictors get imbalanced)

Yeah I thought having one handy for a time like these where it’s something small that a 12 hour skim can do and then go back to normal. Saves me a drive and some time. Trying to put in as much hours as possible with what happened to my job. Sigh

 

[Daniel266jz]

Some of the algae work we do on glass and on surfaces is offset by skimming it’s ok anytime you’d like to run, won’t imbalance things (we feed too well, food restrictors get imbalanced)

So I was looking into the skimmers and it seems I would have to modify my good and all this other stuff I really didn’t see a point in doing just yet so I packed up my buckets and did a 20 gallon water change that should be about 90% or more. The water looks much clearer and hopefully once all the micro bubble and other things in the water cloud clear up it’ll be super clear again. I siphoned the sand and blasted the rocks with water from a turkey Baster and sucked it all out. I will update on how it looks later. As always I’m keeping it hands on. If all else fails I’ll have to start investigating to see what’s causing the water cloudiness other than the snails and correct.

 

[brandon429]

guaranteed to be a viable method. its the universal nano reef fallback technique ha nice

 

[Daniel266jz]

guaranteed to be a viable method. its the universal nano reef fallback technique ha nice

It’s looking good so far. Has been clearing up more than earlier. Still have carbon in and other than that only filter floss.

 

[brandon429]

be changing carbon even if it looks unused, that w power strip the water. rinse the new carbon really well of the dust/it will help to swap out daily

 

[Daniel266jz]

So I changed my carbon and have waited but my water is still cloudy, I’m at a loss. No algea and everything’s clean even sand and rocks after a 90% water change. I took out my feeder cup and gave that a deep clean also, this did have a fair amount of detritus buildup and algea but no longer. I’m not sure what else I can do.

 

[brandon429]

have u suspended all stepped up feed like the phyto, not dosing anything beyond common refrigerated feed/no extra carbon sources or special dosers? so glad nothing is harmed as you identify the challenge.

 

[Daniel266jz]

have u suspended all stepped up feed like the phyto, not dosing anything beyond common refrigerated feed/no extra carbon sources or special dosers? so glad nothing is harmed as you identify the challenge.

I have not dosed phyto since my RIP clean. No additives at all. Only filter floss and the recent carbon that I will run for a bit, but that is activated carbon ONLY. Everyone seems fine , corals are all open and fish are all looking good. I am stumped

 

[brandon429]

if it goes several more days and u get tired of seeing it, do a takedown cleaning where the tank is simply disassembled and sand taken out and rinsed like we do. All new water

Set it all back up with no snails, perfect clean bed
HA’s suspect mechanism for the cloud is snails so when it’s time to force act, start with whole tank vs 90%

that patterning comes from the sand rinse thread we have zero instances of persistent cloudy water after a rip clean. 90% wc leaves snails, and it left sand so those are the two zones when you need to step it up, perhaps it will resolve before then but we’re closing in on over a week already


it might be unideal and a lot of work, save it for last place then. Stumped too, but there are basic patterns to fall back on as well. Disassembly cleaning, 100% animals taken out and tank cleaned, has no cloudy water rebounds in 30 pages of the thread. *CWentz from the SR thread is posting some rework challenges with a type of persistent dinos or diatoms, but that’s a benthic growth on the sand we see and his water is clear. *suspended* growths are unique in that something has to keep pumping them up somehow so in the end we can guess which topical cause might be at play but cleaning from the bottom up is different that cleaning from top down and only as a partial move. Save the big three hour job until you can’t stand it lol

it will never harm a nano to disassembly clean it, and it won’t cause dinos. It is just a good work session as the tradeoff...annoying, but we r running out of alternates to try too

 

[Isiah1820]

Brandon would a complete tear down like that cause benifaelcal bacteria to die? Or any other negative affects on livestock?

 

[brandon429]

no there's a neat and ordered way of running those jobs, nanos r easier than larger jobs. check out this thread, search it out: official sand rinse thread

that's about 400 sandbed swaps considering all the link examples back edited in. we have become efficient at deep cleaning without loss, its just a lot of back-work/actual calories burned for the tradeoff of not adding things to the water. but we get tight controlled outcomes, sharp tanks, the pages show. Daniel's unclear water has me stumped, if HotAshes hadn't mentioned snails Id be doublestumped.

that's one reason I like the sand rinse thread as a fallback....ID: out the window. same action, all presenting reasons (moving homes, combining reefs upgrade/downgrade, fixing cyano, all the same moves-a takedown cleaning)

 

[MohrReefs]

Brandon would a complete tear down like that cause benifaelcal bacteria to die? Or any other negative affects on livestock?

I hear the bacteria is pretty bulletproof once it's in the system. I believe I read on her that even a vicious scrubbing wouldnt quite get rid of them. Plus it's in the filter media too so I probably wouldnt worry about it.

As for livestock, yeah it could stress them but just work smart and be gentle and you should be able to limit that.

 

[Isiah1820]

Thanks guys.

 

[brandon429]

Sand/tank RIP clean - During - After - Updates

I’m guessing that’s what this is. So some of you know I’ve posted some threads about diatoms in my established tank. I can’t rid them for the life of me with water changes and 2-5 ppm nitrate and .3 to .10 phosphate. My tank itself is stable and looks good except for this dang brown sand. so...

www.reef2reef.com

I consider that an important, with-updates example of a rip cleaning and its not even turning out perfectly. Its still a perfect example

what did work out-cloudless reassembly, no loss, happy corals and fish


what did not work out: a one time pass fixing his invader, whatever it is its mean and strong.
daily its coming back, he has to hand-guide. *that's considered a rip-clean fail, by some*

reason its a perfect rip clean example even though not a one-shot fix: what controls has anyone offered there that have worked? he's bought everything under the sun...only the rip clean is saving his tank from total takeover until X is found. Without the surgery, he has a full on eutrophic tank, every surface covered, corals starved total takedown.

the key is, we don't let the tank go downhill until the preventative is found that's what the masses do. We force clean, and then one day finding X allows us to stop. and the corals live through it all

 

[Floppyfish]

I’m 5 weeks in on my biocube 32 build. I rushed the cycle, added bunch of live rock and lots of light. Had really only cloudy water once for a few days in the first week. I did have a pretty good diatom bloom which has died off and transition to some hair algae a week and half ago. Clean up crew has attacked it pretty hard now.
Now I didn’t read the entire thread to this point,but if I can try to help like everyone else here has,I will. The cloudy water has me stumped. In my build I have added an intank media basket with poly filter at top, chemi clear blue 2nd, and fluval biomax media in the bottom. Also running a tunze skimmer which is finally broken in and starting to remove organics. Not sure if this even will help any.