Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[brandon429]

I'm not sure how I barely read post #201 here it's basically my entire reefing philosophy
Check mark post #201

Team,

I kicked up my peroxide thread in nuisance algae forum asking for fresh end of summer green hair algae challenges/get the ball rolling for the thread again. Got some nice messages off it, in progress/ ideally we want the threads to hold all the before and afters, I'm fishin for thread work live time challenges. Scare us with your opening volley here for any challenge involving a sandbed or an invader that coincidentally always likes to set up shop there.

So for the sand rinse thread, let's have some fresh Cyanobacteria challenges posted here, they're all over every forum, plenty.

Let's get a tank with mean dinos here which is the ultimate you're-asking-for-it request because dino battling humbles everyone. Nanos are easier, large tanks work the exact same way, but unable to access excuses grow with each gallon and we don't work magic here we just roto rooter deep clean...nothing fancy. Have work gloves on if you post and we hope you post for sure

As post #201 is my unwavering reef philosophy, the opposite of that is any theory threads with no before and after pics and actual tanks on the line. my pet peeve #1 are pages and pages of scientists hashing oceanic theories as the cause for everyone's tank problems without ever helping anyone to actually cure and document a challenge.

The type there isn't useless, someone will eventually get an idea for an action thread off the volumes but here we simply focus on de clouding the rocks and sand, applied work, progress updates, and arranging the tank for access to all substrates. Human hesitation moves to human will, that's all we do while repeating a few rules of microbiology so that no losses occur during tank surgery and rehab.

We manage detritus here as the sole repeating factor so this isn't a detritus debate thread, there's fifty of those and one sand action thread I know of.


Before summer is over post us some work Team, who wants to test the biology from the sand rinse thread?

 

[brandon429]

Updated results for BCarls tank above. With actual work threads come actual challenges of noncompliant tanks. Humblers
What we've done well is not kill anything while upending his tank sideways up and down, his sustained invader mass in the tank isn't gone but by my estimates reduced by 40-50%. his invader hasn't totally abated, what remains is the humbler DNA

it's still teaching us worthy info for sure, his noncompliant invader

we've used his tank work in messages x pages to discern a repeatable locus the invasion keeps showing up...on the rocks and on sand but never the glass, fascinating.


Used to be on the sandbed, that's pulled. It's no longer on the glass bottom where I'd expect it to be if his water was suspect...water is touching everything in the tank yet the invader only locates above sand stored in little cups in the tank or on the rocks, part of the detective work is figuring out what makes the invader self select places all fed by the same water.

 

[xiholdtruex]

So after battling with cyano now for about 5 months I have givin in. I made the deciscion to rip clean my tank two days ago after marinating in this thread for a few months.
So here is what I did. I set up a 5g holding tank and individually removed each rock. Scrubbed each rock of any detritus and cyano. Placed into a second container and flushed with fresh salt water and placed into the 5g holding tank.

Removed all snails and fish and placed in holding tank. Scrubbed the snails shells and flushed.removed any shells or dead snails I found.
Removed pump and heater. Diassembled pump and cleaned. Also cleaned heater.

Took tank out side and flushed sand clean 20 times till it had no signs of detritus and passed a drop test with tap water.

Reassembled tank and poured in some fresh water and placed rocks back in. Waiting till tommorow to place fish back in.

In the process of grabbing rocks I dropped my light on the tank and shocked the out of my arm. Luckily I am ok. Had a ton of detritus and sand was nasty. I'm sure it was feeding the cyano let's see how the tank does now. Redid my scape a little and removed one rock. It was feeling crowded. Had the whole family help on this project.

drop test prior to rinsing

drop test after rinse

 

[brandon429]

I literally pulled over on a dark stretch of road outside of Roswell New Mexico midnight right now to read this post once I saw how much work you put into it LOL

That is so neat to hear the joys of everyone getting together and working on that

Never in my time have I seen a family skip cycle event

I can't thank you enough for that friend. It's a joy to watch and hear!
If there was one thing I could add biologically, it's that to tell you it's not a single pass event is not making an excuse. you took control as a team, you imparted a will. It's a behavior, a threshold you decided to set and then cross to take back ground.

reefing is cyclic, so I wouldn't be surprised if some continued light topical siphoning is needed just to guide it on out to finality


This whopper scrub skip cycle run did seventy five or better percent chance of sustained cure...but any holders on are also allowed to manifest for more guiding though they're not going to win after just a bit of expected guiding

We're claiming they're knee capped now, the marauders

not the dominant mass in the tank now. Food source ripped... takes time for cells to die, passes drop test please inform everyone who participated that this will help other people take on a big job with joy and confidence like your family team did, and they get an A+ grade/

So pleased. Documentation best I could hope for, and the only way to not plateau is to feature the follow up work for our global friends to see

The resolve is what's about to cure your tank, not the first pass. Called it, as the weeks go by post any compliance or noncompliance we're here for the long haul

Blessings
B

 

[brandon429]

Your anemones are open wonderfully

No anemone opens up with free ammonia, we use bioindicators to monitor skip cycle completion...no test kits required. You all have completed a skip cycle job remarkably documented. Last supporting evidence: how does that rascal smell

With one little waft under the lid a human nose can detect fractional ammonia instantly. It's allowed to smell a little reefy/a little gamey after surgery, but there's a quick detectable difference between storm-at-ocean side smell vs rotten egg, let us know if the smell test passes. I'd trust that over salifert~

B

 

[xiholdtruex]

Your anemones are open wonderfully

No anemone opens up with free ammonia, we use bioindicators to monitor skip cycle completion...no test kits required. You all have completed a skip cycle job remarkably documented. Last supporting evidence: how does that rascal smell

With one little waft under the lid a human nose can detect fractional ammonia instantly. It's allowed to smell a little reefy/a little gamey after surgery, but there's a quick detectable difference between storm-at-ocean side smell vs rotten egg, let us know if the smell test passes. I'd trust that over salifert~

B

Smells like the ocean side lol before when I drained the tank and was taking it outside I took a wuff. Man it smelled like straight rotten poop. My niece was like what the heck is that fart smell. I'm like it's all the crude in here the water acts like a very good smell barrier.

This morning the nems are looking very good and open even more.

I forgot to add, after final tap water rinse I rinsed the sand in clean saltwater prior to setting getting back up and added a 1ml of prime just in case to take care of any residual tap. My area uses a ton of chloramines.

Here is what it looks like this morning.

 

[brandon429]

Linked to:

-detritus, is it as bad as it seems 13 page thread

-what are the root causes of cyano thread

 

[brandon429]

Linked to a massive cyano debate thread. Your work and follow up is likely to be mirrored and used in other tanks starting right about now

 

[xiholdtruex]

These are pictures of what my tank would look like from May. I would clean it and it would return with a vegence the next day.

These are from last night prior to the rip cleaning.

 

[brandon429]

Those pics help us tie in visual pic clues to what's really going on in the bed. In May that cross section picture of the sandbed would not have struck me as laden with detritus.

At each stage featured above, a set of margarita snails and a few other potential reef janitors could have kept that in balance which is why so many are against cheat cleaning to just force things clean.
(And they'd have caused massive pellet detritus addition into the bed)
Others could have told us exactly how much nitrate or phosphate to add/subtract to coax it out

Others would have said your tank is in the uglies phase and show you a thirty year system yours will become one day if you wait longer.

And they're all right. Every way works given its own pros and cons

What i hope our thread shows is just consistency, that's all. Predictability, trust in one option of many.

Large reef tank owners can't do what we do (as easily) so they naturally would be driven to more hands off/chemistry type work. Or, plan the sandbeds ahead of time differently based on collected works...

Where we interject some ruling into this madness is where large tankers step in and say yous -can't- rinse without destabilizing. Without removing precious sandbed micro life to prevent things from getting worse, without causing more harm than good. Sometimes fed up people just want their investment back, you show a way to guarantee that as an outcome. That above is certainly in the top three best sequential documented works we have

 

[Lasse]

@xiholdtruex I hope you will succeeding in this strategy but depending on the growth pattern of your Cyanobacteria mats - I think you have more serve problems than just detritus in the sand bed. This because I can clearly see cyanobacteria mats on the window and how to rinse windows from organics? I case - I would try to have a PO4 level around 0.05 - 0.1 and NO3 level between 1 and 4 ppm, no panic if the get a little bit higher but not much lower.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

I don't mind nutrient tuning at all for preventative work, agreed. As long as an invader is removed, and this tank gets hand cleaned since that's what we study here, and passes clouding tests, then any number of balances can be attained to prevent growback and I support logging nutrient tuning work when correctly positioned as not the mass killer and export, but solely as the growback prevention from the zero-mass invader condition.


If nitrate and phosphate tuning doesn't work, examples are shown the giant threads I kicked up today, you can always rip clean without harm per the pics. Smaller tanks have it unfairly much easier than large tanks.

This tank gets a little whiter light vs blue and that selects well for this invader we see in thread patterns. Anyway one could blue up the light and lessen the white here will certainly help in prevention.

 

[xiholdtruex]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cyano-attack.394440/page-2

This is my original cyano problem thread. I tried everything I could to no avail. Peroxide dosing, every other day water changed with removal of all cyano and sand vacuuming, chemipure blue and purigen.

Tested for peramiters and all showing stable to no avail.

 

[brandon429]

A neat way to see sandbed cleaning is that nobody's tank dies when they go bare bottom.

We can't count the number of high quality, mixed coral systems that have no sandbed (so they can keep detritus out)

Therefore, cleaning a misbehaving bed down to just grains isn't harmful, they just fall down like a snow globe harming nothing along the way. Here's my local fish store's frag reef, it's not in the throes of death from not having sand.

I told them I appreciated them selling me frags from a clean system. Thank you for not cross vectoring into my business, pros. Purple coralline real live rock is plenty all the diversity needed, and cleaning live rock affects 1% of its working areas, mainly the invader portion. They'll pump micro life forever, regardless of number of cleanings i show in advanced tank age studies work.

The chances this tank above will ever have the slightest invasion, zero. There's a recurring pattern in how invasion-proof tanks are designed, and handled.

 

[Lasse]

Is this thread turning from a thread about a method of stirring sand (in order to get a white sand bed) to a thread about gravel or not?

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

No this thread is purely about taking the harshest fullest possible action on a sandbed to render it not a source of invasion feed and housing.

Sand stirring is kid gloving

This is a before and after pic factory in the strictest sense. What anyone does with their sandbed after they make it pass a drop test is fine by me.

What we mean by drop test is that video prior, he reaches in grabs sand and drops it, cloudless.

We advise here to start a sandbedded aquarium that way, and re attain it as needed while doing initial hand guiding of the tank in the early phases.

The title of this thread is one against many, it’s not designed to present a popular opinion, it’s designed to be the only actionable source of real work on the subject I can find. People want to know how to deal with sandbeds without killing their tank, because what’s in between the sandbed grains is the killer, and invader fuel and housing, not the actual sand grains.

We want to take real world responsibility for what happens in other peoples tanks here. If my methods killed anyone’s reef it would be horrifying, they’d report it fast. If clean-reef methods and ordered skip cycle tank access biology continues not killing anyone’s reef, then maybe we’re onto something
look where I’m at as I reef fine science with you ladies and gentlemen, it’s a fine day at twelve thousand feet. hunting for terrarium moss. Billy the Kid was here 140 yrs ago, fact.

=surgical precision scrape rasping time

 

[Lasse]

Is this thread turning from a thread about a method of stirring sand (in order to get a white sand bed) to a thread about gravel or not?

Sincerely Lasse

My bad - I was posting in the wrong thread - I thought it was the thread My white sand method I was reading It was not - it was your thread - I have an opposite view of thing compared with you but I will not argue with you in your own thread about your method. But I will argue with you in other threads, started of others - when you advocate for detritus to be the modern 42. I´m sorry for my mistake and will leave this thread

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

You’re always welcome anytime Lasse for sure. Good exchange is good science and I like how you work in mass aquaculture production + reefing it’s a valuable perspective, we’re all puzzle pieces self assembling and lining up in strange ways to evolve reef science.

 

[xiholdtruex]

Tested my water to have some numbers to go with the visual of the tank. 29 hours after rip cleaning.

Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 2-5 ppm
Phosphate - 0.03 ppm
pH - 7.8
Sg - 1.023

Looks good so far.

 

[xiholdtruex]

One week after sand rinse and rip clean. Only see a tiny quarter size amount of cyano on a rear piece of rock which I'm going to clean off in a little bit. Tested my water and everything is looking solid. Upgraded my light as my bulbs were over due to be replaced and cost the same price as a low end A80 knock off.

Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 2-5 ppm
Phosphate - 0.03 ppm
pH - 8.0
Salinity - 1.23