Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[brandon429]

That's very helpful to know thank you for posting such cross- verified readings for rip clean related follow up.

 

[1mbrews8]

latest and (not so?) greatest!

 

[brandon429]

Video marked private, we can't see

 

[1mbrews8]

Video marked private, we can't see

thx! my bad... fixed!

 

[brandon429]

I just used skip cycle rip cleaning to effectively move my vase reef 6 hours away

Didn't take any pics/ redundant by now/ but I built a cool transport system by getting a styrofoam box the LFS gets in shipping packed full of fish bags

The lid fits nicely

So I put saltwater corals, my starfish and inverts in the box and installed my heater and airstone through a hole in the lid.

Taped on the lid to hold it firm Powered by common inverter it ran all 6 hours and of course I power washed all my sand in tap, washed some new sand to add to it - then mixed all together and transported it as a wet lump in a plastic toy bucket.

Set up the vase at home, installed corals and inverts and sand (it was cloudless lest i risk total hypocrisy lol) and it shined like a ruby of course the same day. I use this trick too, team

My huge eight pound favia colony rolled around in the box and grinded off a few polyps down to skeleton... price of moving and not securing it, but that'll self repair on one year no probs

My vase reef is the most rip cleaned vessel in human existence heh. I cannot possibly count how many times it's been rip cleaned, I use rips to cheat it into old age, seventeen years old this month in fact. I built this thread after rip cleaning it a few years for proof, then upscaled the technique for all my friends with legit square reefs.

 

[chousecat]

Hello,

I am upgrading my tank and will dispose of my old sand and use new sand. The only sand that my LFS had was CaribSea Arag-Alive! Live Reef Sand Fiji pink. Its already wet and the package says no rinsing is necessary, how accurate is this? Have any other users in this thread rinsed this specific brand of sand yet? https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/fiji-pink-arag-alive-live-reef-sand.html

Does it really clear itself on its own with the "Bio-Magnet Clarifiers"

Also how should the order of placement be when transferring my livestock into the new tank? I was thinking of filling the tank with fresh saltwater, then put in my liverock and livestock, and then adding the sand right after. Would this work? I am not putting in any new dry rock

 

[brandon429]

Right now, in the chemistry forum, an upcoming MACNA podium speaker is stating this thread doesn't work nor has value that aquarists can reproduce and seize upon.

I can't wait to see that lecture when it's complete. I can't wait to see if the lecturer has handled sandbeds in any way that we can read about, other than hearing it as a talk/lecture or hearing about how every personal reef they've owned worked perfectly.

I appreciate tremendously the folks willing to investigate new ways of reefing without flaming and without judgment

this is why work threads always get along: we're results based.

If I kill someone's reef here, we'll know lol


and if I don't, on year 8, that means something. Perhaps one day a macna speaker can reveal the value of public work threads/they'd have to actually run one though.

 

[xiholdtruex]

Another rip clean in the books for me, time will tell how effective vs bryopsis and bubble algae it will be for me but it seemed like a good starting point from past experiences to start fresh. I had not cleaned or done any water changes on this tank in a year and a half. Here is the results after pulling everything out of the tank and cleaning out all detritus from rear chambers and rinsing all rocks. Sand was rinsed 15 times to get it clean of all detritus and nasties.

 

[brandon429]

that is about the nicest happy new year pic sequence I could have seen thank you very much for the new run logged.




irony: this is the one thing Vibrant did well/kill valonia better than any liquid invented and this includes algaefix/it's analog.


there's a standing chance that as minor follow up, if you can pull that rock above and rasp it with a knife tip to truly dig out holdfasts, your rock will look like a badger attacked it afterwards, then dribble 35% peroxide straight on the cleaned areas, that can penetrate deep enough to hit holdfast cells and structures but the areas must be debrided first and all topgrowth removed like you did.

I'd consider this right when growback happens. 3% peroxide is babywater comparatively. throw out the 35% when done if kids live in the house, I'd rather have a badger free roaming than access to that frothy devastation but its sooo helpful in stepped-up algae battles. its the ace card.


***You effectively showed us how to reset via skip cycle, with no bottle bac, keeping all your media, losing nothing, making a totally clear reef with zero organic slick waste that can now be fed really well vs starved. You are fighting the invasions from the clean condition, not the invaded one, you're a 1% er to the bone. thank you very much. I won't forget reading about your other rip clean about two years ago parked up twelve thousand feet in the ice in my jeep listening to pantera on high volume, I knew you'd be great in follow up analyses.

 

[brandon429]

Balancing out sales myths by collecting a thousand tank transfers done without bottle bac:

see this caption, from Brightwell, second to last paragraph

to replace bacteria killed by extensive cleaning of substrates and surfaces.



it's not that their product harms a reef, and it's not that we haven't removed a billion functional bacteria in this thread without putting them back.


it's that the inference is false, it's playing on your false fear to sell bottle bac for that reason

they are playing up on the fact that reefers have been convinced their ammonia assessments are correct and that removing bacteria necessitates putting some back, they know you think this way, it's written in forums for twenty years among peers. they elbow in to that observed market demand, and write that stuff above.



we never put any bacteria back for the last eight years in this thread we only remove bacteria, by force.

we don't get tricked by sales gimmicks in this thread and we have enough pattern to call out falsehoods now, solidly.


here's how well reefers can't measure their ammonia correctly:

Sustained Ammonia spikes are misreads

The reason you think your reef tank can’t control its ammonia is due to false training from old cycling science. That and you don’t own a seneye on the tank in question: if you did, you wouldn’t ever think your ammonia was out of control...

www.reef2reef.com

*you can find instances of fear-based bottle bac sales in that thread too. that thread is a fine cross section of everyman's reef and how false ammonia measurement impacts us all. not one single tank in that eight page example thread had an ammonia control problem, that's mass hysteria on file and building.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

Thankfully I found this thread before I picked up a RSR170 setup. I've done a lot of tank transfers and I've always rinsed the sand using tap water at ultra high pressure with a garden sprayer attached to a short hose in a utility sink or outside, about 1g of sand in a 5g bucket and blast it until it runs clear...so maybe I've been doing it right all along. Will take pics and keep posted

 

[brandon429]

a lot of us old school aquarists never feared tap water, we came from an era where fear of bacterial loss was not a factor in aquarium keeping

I always rinsed out my filter pads with tap water vs RO water in my freshwater setups, we just never believed a brief rinse in tap would kill anything since it never harmed us slurping it up copiously through various garden hoses as we ran among homes in el paso in the 80s lol.

to the benefit of bottle bac sellers nowadays, that old school tenet has been squelched, everyone fears bacterial loss-they will click to buy a replacement peace of mind

its one of the prime reasons I want to keep not using bottle bacteria here/sets the market fairly straight.

readers can see: if the meanest thing you could do to a reef tank still doesn't require new bacteria, what does require it> unmask the truth that the sellers withhold


the other customizations such as never adding any old sand (the 1 handful as a seed source routine) and always re-ramping lights are further developed means of stopping losses as we've evolved. the goal was to write a work thread that a new tank transfer/sandbed swap customer could replicate solely off the examples and patterns, without needing a customized setup.

if we let people add 1 handful of sand in a tank transfer, because someone else did it, their tank dies 1/500 jobs like this one:

Upgrade disaster

Recently had a huge leak in our 90 gal reef which forced us to upgrade sooner than expected . The upgrade being a 230 gal with a 48 gal sump . Mistake #1 I added some of the old sand assuming it would be beneficial to have a little bacteria .. I was wrong . Nuked the whole tank killing all fish...

www.reef2reef.com

Rcm I need to use your link because there's an uptick trend in the recommend to add 1 handful of carryover sand, it helps people actually see why we should not do that

ensuring the new / receiving tank is 100% cloudless, all sand and rock is cloudless so that we assess success by clean water, is part of the evolved methods we arrived at here on year 8.


out of this entire thread, the only 2 losses I recall were fish jumping out of the holding tote. we are at 100% safety rate in all displays after rip cleans, not on just this thread, everywhere. rip cleans are on all major forums except reefcentral, they're not into evolutionary changes within the hobby lol.


also by this thread we can see that sandbed bacteria, once claimed a vital link in all reefs, simply aren't


sandbed bacteria and their complexed waste are bioloading only you don't get to enjoy it like we do with fish bioloading. sandbed bacteria use up some oxygen, they output collective waste gasses, they emit acids as they reduce substrate to gain feed/this is bioloading. this is why pent up sandbeds require fifty pages of special techniques to have safe outcomes, we are dealing with bioload when we deal in sandbeds.


reef tanks tolerate sandbed waste and bacteria; it's actually more beneficial to be free of the waste loading altogether/hence the success of bare bottom setups.


we also discovered here that reef tanks are better turned into bare bottom not by partial removal of sand in sections, but all at once, then with a light re ramping thereafter.

BRS tried to remove their sandbed, it harmed their tank, they skipped the light acclimation step. they're still juniors in the game, albeit rich ones / bottle bac sellers

 

[brandon429]

A keen eye will see from this thread that the completely made up rule of live rock taking on bacteria having to do with removal of another surface in the tank was totally made up the entire time

example: you must remove your sand in sections to be safe, allowing the bacteria time to transfer or build up on rocks. the hint is that you must wind up with the same degree of bacteria you started with, to not crash


what have we been doing for the better part of a decade here (opposite of that rule above, shattering it)


Live rocks manage their own bacterial colonies which flux up and down based on lots of variables. water shear is a huge regulating factor, and it has nothing to do with us removing a sandbed or not

this thread shows a discerning eye that reef substrates operate independently with regards to filter bacteria, they're not linked like some chain waiting to crash


**********************************Live rocks in a reef display, any reef display, are enough to run that system even if you remove the other accessory surface area we packed in by happenstance, or for peace of mind**************


and that's why we get away with this madness for 50 pages...revealing a huge degree of reef rules to be flatly made up.

using the disassembly steps we do here, and the light ramping tricks, we can take any reef tank on this board that isn't a bare bottom reef and instantly make it a successful one. we eliminated hesitation and purchase requirements for managing reef tank filters with every completed/non crashed job on file.

we showed that detritus packed into various zones of decay have varying degrees of consequence, so that means if someone reads an internet study on detritus, and it says detritus is inert, perhaps they pulled it off the floor of a bare bottom reef tank (highly oxygenated) to make the test

detritus that comes from blackened areas of a ten year old sandbed can't be listed as neutral. context matters, we show.

Any crashing we see involving reef tank filters doesn't come from lack of bacteria, it comes from the upwelling of dangerous stratified waste/detritus.



A lot about Old Tank Syndrome can be inferred by the before and after pics in this thread, thanks for posting Floyd

I have referred people to your scrubbers more times than I can count. solid products

 

[brandon429]

again I want to reflect the market presence and drive behind bacterial replenishment

look at the second to bottom example, to replace bacteria killed by extensive cleaning of substrates and surfaces


can you get any harsher in this world than a rip clean?

for fifty pages, we didn't replace bacteria we removed it, because reef tanks run excess not lack of, and even when we remove sand we're still in gross excess due to the inherent nature of live rock's active surface area

surface area amplification of presenting bacteria is rarely discussed in sales ads, because sales is all about the number of bacteria being better, they never present the truth that the thinnest non caked up veneer of bacteria encasing the right amount of surface area, not the most you can fit in, is the safest and most efficient reef design.

I spent 8 yrs here reducing other people's reefs to the thinnest veneer of living bacteria on the least leftover surface area we could arrive at. **A keen eye will see in a few jobs, we reduce their display live rock by half or more and still didn't use bottle bac

that's because most tanks are running 75% past the amount of surface area they need, in my estimate, even after going instantly bare bottom.

our reefs are no where near lacking bacteria in numbers. sales ads play on your assumption that more is better

more can mean caked up, that's never better. More bacteria means less surface area, a thicker "veneer" lessens the channel spacing in the cracks and crevices of live rock. Less bacteria correctly presented is ironically better.

the reason we work all these reefs without loss is because going to the dentist and having them flush out and rasp our mouth and teeth roughly, not passively,-without putting any bacteria back- works great.

reef dentistry works great... it's far more science than just rinsing out a sandbed in someway. markets are impacted by what we do, hopefully as less sales based on fad.

anyone who believes in old cycling science is going to have a hard time accepting the outcomes from this thread.

 

[Cthulukelele]

What are your feelings on products like chemiclean given your view on bacterial volume and reef surface area?

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for posting

In my opinion its a valuable tool but used incorrectly by the masses.

Where I would use it (Red Slime remover or chemi clean, or any cyano product)--> in a cleaned up reef that is not full up on waste storage like most reefs are. Don't dose these products before you've exported the waste substrate from the tank, to-be-killed targets will compound on your initial waste, feeding those targets

use direct-kill dosers like slime remover and fluconazole in the post ripped clean condition, if you have persistent strains, for the win.


90% of the time or better, no matted invasion is coming back after a rip clean for months on end. Those dosers cannot be discounted, I cannot discount the ability for reef flux/fluconazole/to help people with large tanks and massive GHA invasions.

*the reason those tanks go from GHA/ dead then into cyano/dinos invasions is this compounding event/hyper-aging of the tank

to use these meds after a rip clean is very very helpful in some cases. I don't want to re apply slime removers lots of time; I don't want any habituation to happen to the targets. that's why we focused on the measure of how well does solely a physical attack help: it helps tremendously. I honestly believe these pages hold more cyano cures, true cures, than a fifty page Slime remover thread. those certainly have a few tank crashes/coral bleach posts too. we have no bad outcomes. if a persistent slime develops in a reef that's never used Red Slime remover, then the shock of using it the first time, when the invasion was pre-reduced markedly, is your best fighting chance

the masses (are told by peers and sellers) use it on a whim. I've seen this sales practice in effect before, the blanket recommend to use it for any type of red cyano.

Ironically I can say as a fact that taking apart a ten thousand dollar sps reef and rinsing it's sandbed in tap water is far more safer than adding the twelve dollar doser, lol that's serious reef irony.

there is no Slime Remover thread out to a mere ten pages not reporting some kind of noncompliance, or loss event (among several wins too/granted)

we don't want that mix of safety here, we don't kill or bleach anyone's reef.

 

[Cthulukelele]

Makes sense. Most cases I've seen of complications people talk about are when using something like chemiclean to treat a symptom (buildup of organics) then wonder why there's an immediate explosion of another nuisance organism filling the niche of the cyano.

 

[brandon429]

when dealing in those super large tanks like the 17 foot home reef here, or the big 450+'s, those water-borne dosers are tank savers but I'm now sure that nano reefs are best served by rip cleans vs targeted dosers.


I say that based on solely the after pics here and tank follow ups and because to rip clean gives the side benefit of agelessness, it is the literal undoing of old tank syndrome, preemptively.


our hobby just can't fathom why backflusing of waste is beneficial vs too mean/removes too many crucial bacteria


every rip clean feels to a reef tank exactly like we feel leaving the dentist


we go to the dentist on repeat

I got my vase out to 17 years old using rip clean age cheats.



only reef systems that are designed with high storage, low throughput designs need rip cleans (deep sandbed tanks, sandbed tanks at all)

someone who'd never use our thread:

100 gallon reef, all empty

live rocks are not set on sand, they're set on a plastic grid that holds them up off the bottom where fast-flowing water touches all sides, carves and shears all sides.

waste detritus from the rock, animals, daily feeding is quickly swept in currents to a rollermat or other catchment filtration system not built into the actual display, like a sandbed. the export of mass in this alternate design tank is that catchment material being exchanged regularly/the actual display is too high-current to store much waste. routine maintenance is removing detritus from the designed catchment zone, the display handles itself.

we work constantly in the display reef as surgery here because the masses demand to store their waste under the rocks.

a full throughput display tank would not need a sand rinse thread. I thank Dr. Shimek in the 90s for his sandbed advice, it'll keep us busy most likely permanently. high throughput reef displays are .5% of presenting jobs

 

[Cthulukelele]

Yeah I am a proponent of a clean sandbed after my crash a year for sure. That is what I think did me in even more than the protracted power outage. Marine snow isn't meant to compound for years on end in one place

 

[Keko21]

Wow. It took 8 hours but dang does it look better than before! All fish looking good corals are opening up, parameters excellent! Hopefully these dinos dont cone back!!!

before:

after: