(Kind of) rebooting...?

[Gobi-Wan]

You wouldn't need to add the ammonia if you used bottle bacteria. From my reading,

FritzZyme Turbo Start 900 is the best starter bacteria. If you cant get your hands on that, bio spira or fritz zyme 7 or dr tims can be used but they take a little longer. I would add your fish back in slowly starting with the clowns. ​

However, the two livestock that make me nervous about doing this are the mandarin and the anemone.
1. Does your mandarin eat frozen foods? Typically, if the mandarin doesn't eat prepared foods, it requires a heavy population of pods to constantly feed off of, which comes with an established tank. Or you would have to purchase and dose pods until the tank becomes more established.
2. The anemone, they can be tricky because they need stability and a "new tank" takes time to achieve if you are starting with "dry riock".
*If you aren't particularly attached to them, you could re-home them if you don't want to risk a casualty.

If you do a complete restart, I would also consider starting with new live sand or at least take yours out and rinse it really good several times. A lot of nutrients could be built up in the sand bed. ***** do not disturb the sand bed until you have removed your inhabitants to another holding tank. If it hasn't been disturbed for a long time, doing so, can cause an ammonia spike.

Agreed about the livestock. I have a mandarin and my cleanup did not affect it. Lots of pods left after scrubbing and using hydrogen peroxide on the rocks. However lots probably died too and I have a large tank and tons of rock so it could be different in a smaller tank. I did dose pods once after the rip clean. If you do decide to skim my thread, page 2 you’ll find pics of the algae and page 3 is where I did the process. The rest of the thread is quite a bit of arguing lol

 

[rmorris_14]

Agreed about the livestock. I have a mandarin and my cleanup did not affect it. Lots of pods left after scrubbing and using hydrogen peroxide on the rocks. However lots probably died too and I have a large tank and tons of rock so it could be different in a smaller tank. I did dose pods once after the rip clean. If you do decide to skim my thread, page 2 you’ll find pics of the algae and page 3 is where I did the process. The rest of the thread is quite a bit of arguing lol

I lurked on your thread back when it was originally posted! HAHA ......Glad to hear that you are still pleased with where the tank is at

 

[Waters]

Did you run any filtration while they were in there? Probably a stupid question. I'm considering doing this.

I did not run any mechanical or chemical filtration.....just used the existing, GHA covered live rock as bacterial filtration and did partial water changes. I ran my whole tank out of a Brute using powerheads and heater while I set my tank back up.

 

[Tob]

Agreed about the livestock. I have a mandarin and my cleanup did not affect it. Lots of pods left after scrubbing and using hydrogen peroxide on the rocks. However lots probably died too and I have a large tank and tons of rock so it could be different in a smaller tank. I did dose pods once after the rip clean. If you do decide to skim my thread, page 2 you’ll find pics of the algae and page 3 is where I did the process. The rest of the thread is quite a bit of arguing lol

Oh man I just read the whole thing. I should have popped some popcorn!

Thank you for the link though, I'm going to start where you did. I think I even have a steel brush handy. Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

I couldn't quite understand what you did with the sand - did you wash it like one washes rice? Like filling it up with water and pouring off the cloudiness until clear? And if so, did you do that with salt water or tap water + final salt water rinse?

 

[HudsonReefer2.0]

If I were you i wouldn’t hesitate w starting over. Your rock sand and water all on your terms.

 

[Tob]

You wouldn't need to add the ammonia if you used bottle bacteria. From my reading,

FritzZyme Turbo Start 900 is the best starter bacteria. If you cant get your hands on that, bio spira or fritz zyme 7 or dr tims can be used but they take a little longer. I would add your fish back in slowly starting with the clowns. ​

However, the two livestock that make me nervous about doing this are the mandarin and the anemone.
1. Does your mandarin eat frozen foods? Typically, if the mandarin doesn't eat prepared foods, it requires a heavy population of pods to constantly feed off of, which comes with an established tank. Or you would have to purchase and dose pods until the tank becomes more established.
2. The anemone, they can be tricky because they need stability and a "new tank" takes time to achieve if you are starting with "dry riock".
*If you aren't particularly attached to them, you could re-home them if you don't want to risk a casualty.

If you do a complete restart, I would also consider starting with new live sand or at least take yours out and rinse it really good several times. A lot of nutrients could be built up in the sand bed. ***** do not disturb the sand bed until you have removed your inhabitants to another holding tank. If it hasn't been disturbed for a long time, doing so, can cause an ammonia spike.

I'm not 100% sure what the mandarin eats or where the woman got him from. But he's survived for 2 months with me and I do a rotation of brine shrimp eggs, frozen brine shrimp (for the anemone then I dump the rest in the tank and everyone loses it over them) flakes and pellets. I did buy a bottle of tiggerpods but by the next day I couldn't see a single one so I have no idea what happened there haha!

The anemone does concern me too. I'd like to try and keep it because he's everyone's favorite to watch when they see the tank.

I think the approach I'm going to take is multi step (and if anyone sees a problem with this, I'm all ears) : full rip clean and sand clean this weekend with peroxide spray and another dose of reef flux (thank you Gobi!) Then once things seem stable, I'm going to pile everything to one side and put in half of my new aquascape dry rock in to the tank so it can get a jump start on curing. Once that's established, I'll remove some or maybe all of the rock that's in there now and put in phase 2 of my new dry rock aquascape and then be on my merry way with coral frags galore. I'm considering going bare bottom because of how much easier it would be to keep the tank clean but haven't totally made up my mind on that yet. But I figured with established rocks, going sand-less wouldn't be such a nightmare.

 

[Tob]

If I were you i wouldn’t hesitate w starting over. Your rock sand and water all on your terms.

Thank you!

 

[tharbin]

Welcome to R2R! Lots of good advice already given so I will just add Good luck and just keep plugging away at it. Your approach seems very well thought out.

 

[Tob]

Welcome to R2R! Lots of good advice already given so I will just add Good luck and just keep plugging away at it. Your approach seems very well thought out.

Thank you!

 

[1ocean]

Sounds like you have a lot of work to do with this tank...

 

[Gobi-Wan]

Oh man I just read the whole thing. I should have popped some popcorn!

Thank you for the link though, I'm going to start where you did. I think I even have a steel brush handy. Guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

I couldn't quite understand what you did with the sand - did you wash it like one washes rice? Like filling it up with water and pouring off the cloudiness until clear? And if so, did you do that with salt water or tap water + final salt water rinse?

Sand washing method

youtube.com

You have to be aggressive with the hose. It takes about 15 minutes to do a bucket half or 1/3 full of sand. I think I did like 8 or 10 buckets with my 125. When you first start a bucket it will probably be solid brown water for a few minutes. The closer you let the sand be to the edge the more fine sand will flow out. I like to get rid of the real fine sand so my diamond goby doesn’t cloud the tank up. To rinse I just pour out the tap water and pour in a gallon of distilled water and stir the sand around picking it up with my hands for a bit then pour that out.

 

[Tob]

Sand washing method

youtube.com

You have to be aggressive with the hose. It takes about 15 minutes to do a bucket half or 1/3 full of sand. I think I did like 8 or 10 buckets with my 125. When you first start a bucket it will probably be solid brown water for a few minutes. The closer you let the sand be to the edge the more fine sand will flow out. I like to get rid of the real fine sand so my diamond goby doesn’t cloud the tank up. To rinse I just pour out the tap water and pour in a gallon of distilled water and stir the sand around picking it up with my hands for a bit then pour that out.

Thank you!

 

[RedoubtReef]

I'm doing something similar but not due to hair algae. I've got all my rock and sand (rinsed sand well first like was suggested in previous post) 'cooking' in' a brute can with a skimmer and no light. will be that way for probably 3-4 months while I'm rebuilding my setup. Doing it this way will kill off all the bad stuff and give the rock and biofilter a 'recharge'.