How often do you blow out your rockwork?

Alexusmc · Aug 7, 2020

I do it every other week during water changes. No matter how many times that I crank up the powerhead, I believe that using a turkey baster every once in a while does a better job at reaching some areas.

CrunchyBananas · Aug 7, 2020

Alexusmc said:
I do it every other week during water changes. No matter how many times that I crank up the powerhead, I believe that using a turkey baster every once in a while does a better job at reaching some areas.

I've definitely found that to be the case in every tank I've owned or worked on as well

McPuff · Aug 7, 2020

Once in a while... but I actually just use a toothbrush to do the job. I basically never put a pump in and move it all around. I think this becomes unmanageable with larger tanks... but maybe some of you do it on your huge tanks? Curious really.

CrunchyBananas · Aug 7, 2020

McPuff said:
Once in a while... but I actually just use a toothbrush to do the job. I basically never put a pump in and move it all around. I think this becomes unmanageable with larger tanks... but maybe some of you do it on your huge tanks? Curious really.

I've regularly used a mag drive pump to do so on a 700 and a 500 gallon tank

Jeepjeep_0 · Aug 7, 2020

I’ve been doing it with a turkey Baster as well, however I only do small sections of rock at a time. I worry about spiking parameters if I do to much. I realize all that gunk is in the tank already, but don’t you think putting it directly into a suspended state in the water column could do this?

Starkrost · Aug 7, 2020

My rotten pistol shrimp, Chip, rearranges the sand bed every night and has NO PROBLEM burying everything around his lair in sand. So I end up blowing off the base of the rock work and corals close to the sand bed fairly frequently.

Barnabie Mejia · Aug 7, 2020

on the 29 gallon I blow them off at least once a month, on the 75 gallon, I seem to be doing it about twice a week when I change filter socks..... I need to find a baster with a bigger bulb on it, I feel like Popeye after blowing the rocks off, the forearm pump is real!

RobB'z Reef · Aug 7, 2020

only when i lift something really heavy

CrunchyBananas · Aug 7, 2020

Barnabie Mejia said:
on the 29 gallon I blow them off at least once a month, on the 75 gallon, I seem to be doing it about twice a week when I change filter socks..... I need to find a baster with a bigger bulb on it, I feel like Popeye after blowing the rocks off, the forearm pump is real!

I’ve found using an aqua clear powerhead can make it easier, but I don’t want to rob you of those sweet, sweet forearm gains either!

Barnabie Mejia · Aug 7, 2020

CrunchyBananas said:
I’ve found using an aqua clear powerhead can make it easier, but I don’t want to rob you of those sweet, sweet forearm gains either!

I might have to go that route and use my MJ for my recovery days... good looking out!

jordan9095 · Aug 7, 2020

i have an alert on my apex to do it once a week. i usually only get around to doing it once a month. for me, the spots that have algae problems almost always correlate to the spots where a lot of detritus settles in the rocks so probably best to do it as often as possible.

revhtree · Aug 14, 2020

Fourstars said:
Blast away monthly!

Can you explain this set up a little to us?

revhtree · Aug 14, 2020

I purchased an inline pump so I could suck water from the tank and with the other end blow out the rock work. I got the pump well over a year ago and have yet to use it. I have also had bad algae outbreaks so maybe I need to actually do it!!

Greybeard · Aug 14, 2020

The answer is either Never, or Four times a day, depending on your definition of blowing out...

I have a pair of Tunze 6105's connected to my Apex. Normally, they run a 1 minute ramp up, 25 - 40%, inverse, meaning one is ramping down while the other is ramping up, then they swap.

At 6am, Noon, 6PM, and Midnight, I kick both 6105's up to 100% power for 2 minutes. Really moves some water... Each is rated at 3400 GPH, with both running full out, there isn't anything settling in my tank. In fact, I've had to glue down my frag rack

Fish seem to have gotten used to it, though they freaked out a bit at first. Don't seem to mind anymore.

Nothing there to manually blow out

revhtree · Aug 14, 2020

Greybeard said:
The answer is either Never, or Four times a day, depending on your definition of blowing out...

I have a pair of Tunze 6105's connected to my Apex. Normally, they run a 1 minute ramp up, 25 - 40%, inverse, meaning one is ramping down while the other is ramping up, then they swap.

At 6am, Noon, 6PM, and Midnight, I kick both 6105's up to 100% power for 2 minutes. Really moves some water... Each is rated at 3400 GPH, with both running full out, there isn't anything settling in my tank. In fact, I've had to glue down my frag rack Fish seem to have gotten used to it, though they freaked out a bit at first. Don't seem to mind anymore.

Nothing there to manually blow out

NICE!

The_Skrimp · Aug 14, 2020

Just about every week with water changes except for the weeks where I vacuum out my sump because that usually sucks out enough water for the water change. I’m doing it a lot more right now because I’m losing a fight to dinos so I’m having to blow off and change filter socks almost daily.

Ippyroy · Aug 14, 2020

I didn't do it for that first couple of months. After doing it for the first time I now do it the night before water change. Get everything suspended and into the sump and allow water to clear up, then do my weekly 10% and/or monthly 20-30% water change. My PO4 is now at .05 after doing this and NO3 is still steady at 5. The green rocks are little better and the diatoms have calmed down and almost gone away. Same thing with glass cleaning.