Jack
nice job on having incredibly high standards, that reef looks great. I have about twenty comparative pics from other tanks just like that, looking far worse, youre acting way earlier than most.
you sure can clean that system and clean the sand, without a recycle. And it’ll be bone white. Or, get a $80 turbo twist uv sterilizer and thatll cheat burn it out. Congrats on taking action early, before a big job builds up.
you can practice direct action if you want, and it’ll work, or you can cheat burn it out, or wait for more tank maturation to drive it out.
that light substrate growth would also likely respond to reduction of white lights and going hard blue on the tank.
direct cleaning doesn’t hurt any reef, a 35 page thread is kicked up here showing direct cleaning action it’s called the sand rinse thread and we do tank surgery as fast as I recommended it to you first post. My goal was to tony little your tank 1997 style, but it’s such an easy growth you have other options too. Cleaning a sandbed directly is never, ever harmful it extends the life of any reef, our massive thread shows. Nice tank here. Take out a rock and set it in your sink as a test.
use a knife to detail scrape off targets, rinse in saltwater, don’t scrape good stuff. Rinse in sw, put back, that’s direct care reef dentistry and we dont need to know any param to do that work. I can see you have an accessible reef with an open scape, therefore your job is not hard. Nice job acting early, most pre-leave jobs are forests of work needed. This tank looks as it should, for its age, we just need to meet the looks standard you want, I like my reefs clean and hate algae similarly. After seeing pics of low growth clean open scape I’ll strongly urge direct cleaning over any other algae / diatom control here, you don’t want to cause dinos messing with params.
our direct cleaning never causes dinos. We don’t need to ID the pest, or take a reading, we need to sit down in the dentists chair is how I make large work threads for reefs.
hahah
