My battle with GHA. Think I'm winning.

[Scorchx1245]

So my tank is 8 months old. 12 gallon aquapod, homemade air driven skimmer, media rack with filter floss, carbon and gfo (gfo changed every 3 weeks), cooling fan, ATO, new fuge installed today,
Params are as follows.
PO4 = .03
NITRATE =20
SALINITY 1.025
NITRITE 0
AMMONIA 0
Calcium = 350
Mag=1200
Alk=10dkh
PH daytime = 8.3

So I have been battling GHA since my light got stuck on due to my cat playing with the cords (been taken Of) for 48 hours, with started the algea bloom. My attack plan is -

Installed refugium in my tank to help combat nutrients. Currently w/c every week, manual plucking every chance I get, adjusting skimmer with bigger air pump,and changed my filter floss changing to every 3 days vs 5, adjusted flow, manual scrubbed rocks in bucket, 1 min hydrogen peroxide dip diluted 10:1 solution rinse in rodi the back to display, removed live rock rubble from back chamber ( didnt know how much gunk can get in there!) And adjusted light schedule anyone else got any suggestions ? Been feeding mysis every other day, and pellets once a week, very stringent on amount given. CUC 5 blue leg hermits, 1 turbo, 4 ceriths, 1 nass. Snail. 2 occ. Clowns.

 

[brandon429]

Hey want to also give a nod to rip cleaning nothing beats it

Our method would clean your sand out to cloudless perfect grains

Only spot treat the rocks. Not dip, preserve life

While tank is apart clean it all

Reassemble a perfectly new tank, lose nothing, skip cycle deep clean removes invader and the waste that the current approach leaves in

I have a thread where we've done thirty of these in tanks just like yours if you want to see before n afters. No biological method of reeftank care available would impart lifespan to that nano while preserving coralline (kudos ) better than a skip cycle reef clean, it's perfect intercept point for it in such a small tank

100% new water change fills up the clean tank with sparkling glass, back areas, sand is spotless clean rinsed, rocks have no detritus and no algae due to spot treatments

You'll get a long long time of low algae work if you fix the tank, not the algae. The waste spots in the sand are unaddressed in the current approach and the dip is too much, we shouldn't turn the rocks back to white not needed. To do your tank right, you'd take it apart and reassemble it totally clean, anything else is leaving unhelpful waste and invader in place. We are on page 13 of rip cleans so far~

Our entire method revolves around the fact that deep cleaning is of no bacterial loss concern. Once you're free to really clean vs incremental clean the system responds as you want it to, and you can spot feed corals better which fattens them up further. Deep cleaning makes room for better feeding=coral health formula

 

[brandon429]

Hey hotashes

Going off pics how bad do we want to rip clean this tank, 100, 105, or 117%?

Check out that coralline back wall

rare

Aged tank, we'd save most all of that coralline by working around it

If there was algae on it, only spot removal work. Sandbed cleaning alone would have the greatest impact of all possible actions on 12 gal system, this amount of purple coralline here is sharp I'm jealous. I can't totally see your algae in pics that means it's not bad, your system was really balanced to be able to take a lighting changeup and have only minor challenges after, well done.

 

[Scorchx1245]

Thank you I thought about replacing the sand bed....how hard is it?

 

[brandon429]

In a small tank not hard at all, I’m on my third bed replacement/12 yrs on mine

In your tank it would go down like this: catch fish and hold him elsewhere alone with corals but not with rocks or sand...anything that holds detritus not held with fish since detritus has the recycle/ammonia risk. So fish n corals are held in a bucket to the side of

Now left is only rocks and sand and the aging around the tank

Drain off all the water and take out rocks to be held and swished around in another bucket of saltwater. Swish em and work em around and change that bucket of sw out as you swish the rocks inside and it gets cloudy due to detritus coming off them if applicable, be rough and dislodge any pent up wastes

*take each rock and use a kitchen knife precisely to dig in and surgically scrape out the algae at its anchor point, actual digs to rip it out but be precise and work around the coralline. Only use a few drops of peroxide on the -cleaned spots- not on the non target areas of the rock

Let that treated area cook in the air about two mins then set the cleaned and no detritus rocks back in a clean container bucket awaiting use. Dental scraping is what removes the algae, the peroxide was only cleanup for missed cells.

Discard the old sand and now the tank is empty BUT we’ve got fine coralline to try and preserve here have a water bottle with saltwater ready to keep the coralline misted and wet on the back wall as you clean the chambers and other parts with vinegar or more peroxide it doesn’t matter which (if you don’t want to mess with it then scrape it clean and start fresh either way is fine)

Buy new wet pack sand like ocean direct, Fiji pink etc

Before use, rinse that new wet pack sand in cool tap water for about 45 mins literally, until it’s cloudless. I mean cloudless
Cloudless. Not just about cloud free, cloudless new sand


Do the sands final rinse in saltwater, to evacuate the tap.

Place cloudless perfection sand in the tank and fill up with all new sw mixed to the temp and salinity of the old water and put fish and rocks and coral back in, acclimate your fish slowly if he’s sensitive. Corals don’t care just put em all back in the new water.


All actions above are condensed from this big thread:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


Since your tanks life is on the line it’s good to take an hour to read those links and see the ordering above being applied in others tanks before yours goes under the knife

Other methods of slowly turning your tank around never address the waste portion. This way sure does and the method is well documented it’s not that dangerous since you are replacing sand

Those who keep old sand sometimes won’t rinse it till cloudless and that kills tanks doing partial work. They worry about bacteria so they don’t rinse correctly but the bacteria are not the concern here, it’s the detritus cloud we are concerned about. Pls take pics of it all so we can link there and help another soon on the process
B

 

[Scorchx1245]

I gotchya, I'll try it this weekend.

 

[hotashes]

I gotchya, I'll try it this weekend.

Any update on this?

A.

 

[hotashes]

Hey hotashes

Going off pics how bad do we want to rip clean this tank, 100, 105, or 117%?

Check out that coralline back wall

rare

Aged tank, we'd save most all of that coralline by working around it

If there was algae on it, only spot removal work. Sandbed cleaning alone would have the greatest impact of all possible actions on 12 gal system, this amount of purple coralline here is sharp I'm jealous. I can't totally see your algae in pics that means it's not bad, your system was really balanced to be able to take a lighting changeup and have only minor challenges after, well done.

Totally agree with rip cleaning, I've kept my nano 14 gal going using this very technique.

A.

 

[Scorchx1245]

I'm setting up my 40g right now so the nano is getting back burned at the moment besides routine maint....I'm still plucking but I noticed the GHA has pretty much stopped growing?