Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[Frogger]

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention I have a low bioload in the way of fish, do not feed heavily, hence the need to add phosphates and nitrates to keep a readable amount so my corals have good color. I feed pods and rotifers every day as I grow them myself. 2 different types of pods. I have hundreds of strombus snails, many trocus, a tuxedo urchin and a couple turbo snails. My tank is a 75 gallon reefer. I also run a reverse daylight ATS mainly to keep the O2 levels up during the night.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention I have a low bioload in the way of fish, do not feed heavily, hence the need to add phosphates and nitrates to keep a readable amount so my corals have good color. I feed pods and rotifers every day as I grow them myself. 2 different types of pods. I have hundreds of strombus snails, many trocus, a tuxedo urchin and a couple turbo snails. My tank is a 75 gallon reefer. I also run a reverse daylight ATS mainly to keep the O2 levels up during the night.

I had a 55g long time ago with just three 3-4" fish and saw multiple Cyano mats after 4 years of very minimal
water changes and virtually no sand bed maintenance. Organic nutrient buildup in the rock and substrate is a big culprit and so the NO3 and PO4 readings from the water column typically tell you little about what's really happening in the tank's substrate (NO3 & PO4 are efficiently scavenged/utilized by algae, Coral and other organisms which can lead to very low test kit readings in a system that may in reality be higher nutrient overall).

 

[fulltang]

Really helpful details, very keen and I can tell you've been researching yep. * Not all strains follow our commands as easy and there's one participant in this thread with the same challenge, and it's bcarl77

He had a very noncompliant, tank surfaces selecting type, went to bare bottom, blued lights, manually removed with discipline, still came back just like you describe.

He and I work through chat for about three months trying different ideas and made some Headway but I think I lost track chatting with him when he bought UV and I don't know how that fared. If I'm not mistaken he was already using UV even before the challenge this was a truly non-compliant strain he had-- worst I had seen that I recall. Rare

Brandon, I'm still in the process of setting up my tank (fluval 13.5) and per your suggestions, I'll be using tbs live rock and live sand (.5") bed. While I set up my equipment, I've been reading about dinos here and basically freaking myself out!

I'm curious, do you think it would be a worthwhile investment to purchase a uv sterilizer for a 10 gallon tank right off the bat? What size sterilizer would be effective?

 

[Frogger]

I had a 55g long time ago with just three 3-4" fish and saw multiple Cyano mats after 4 years of very minimal
water changes and virtually no sand bed maintenance. Organic nutrient buildup in the rock and substrate is a big culprit and so the NO3 and PO4 readings from the water column typically tell you little about what's really happening in the tank's substrate (NO3 & PO4 are efficiently scavenged/utilized by algae, Coral and other organisms which can lead to very low test kit readings in a system that may in reality be higher nutrient overall).

My tank only has sand in one corner for the wrasse. The rest is bare bottom. Had no choice I have such strong water motion that the sand was just blowing around and pilling up in the corners. The tank is 3 years old, I used cooked live rock from another tank (2 years in a dark bucket). I have never had a high bioload and I have never had nitrates above 2ppm. I have strong water motion and turkey base the rocks daily. I siphon out the detritus weekly with a 10% water change every week or so. The cyano is growing on the plastic things in the tank first even after I regularly clean the pumps in vinegar.

This stuff is different. I have been keeping reef tanks for over 25 years and have quite a bit of experience.

If I do not add nitrates my corals are brown, colorless. If I do not add phosphates while adding nitrates my phosphates zero out and my corals bleach. The adding of the nitrates allows photosynthesis to occur which starts using all the available phosphates. I know all this because I have been down these roads before.

More to come, just have to get some work done to pay the bills.

 

[Nano sapiens]

.

 

[brandon429]

Fulltang my honest opinion is the smaller the system the more immune to take over due to access. we don’t need hardware at that level of volume because the biological power of rinsing, literal take the system apart and set it on the counter rinsing. Nothing can amass like that, so no hardware cheats needed. No need to even begin running a reef that harsh, it’s just that you can-forced compliance- if required. These larger tanks are incrementally worked, they’re too big to fully part cleaned to be forced into compliance, we’re coaxing the larger systems. Your tank and mine? Walk in the park. Nano keepers are spoiled. Rework any misbehaving nano in the time it takes to watch a movie.

I’ll never plumb uv or dose any retail supports into the reefbowl and it’s thirteen years old. It lives with no biological life span limit because it’s blast rinsed into shape occasionally, and because it’s well fed. Nutrient measures are not factored, I remove detritus occasionally but harshly, all these systems share that strength - we’ve just been told they’re weak, not so. Clouding and detritus is the risk when taking tanks apart or deep cleaning, not air contact time says ten hours in Fiji

Some people export heavy without taking their tank apart and disturbing the sandbed, but they still export in busy ways before it builds up, as a preventative care move. That’s fine, no accumulation with different approach.



I offer to you, Gregg’s implementation of the largest rip clean skip cycle rework I’ve potentially seen.

his person is in the tank heh, sitting down. it’s large and worth more money than a truck.

considering his next move while altering the inside layout with a total takeapart skip cycle cleaning, this biology is not different whether it’s ran on a one gallon system or a 500 gallon one


******potential two month delay to rebuild*** meaning we get to observe CPR safe holding / subsystem approach for quite a long time. A functioning reef, parted out and held for reassembly for weeks can be done, it’s about not moving detritus into the storage systems, move clean substrates only, make the system a low biological oxygen demand initially.





Live rock and corals are held cleanly to avoid cycle while under surgery:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/waking-up-from-the-nightmare-build-the-reboot.538918/


Gregg it’s the largest scale tank surgery I’ve ever seen on boards.

 

[Nano sapiens]

My tank only has sand in one corner for the wrasse. The rest is bare bottom. Had no choice I have such strong water motion that the sand was just blowing around and pilling up in the corners. The tank is 3 years old, I used cooked live rock from another tank (2 years in a dark bucket). I have never had a high bioload and I have never had nitrates above 2ppm. I have strong water motion and turkey base the rocks daily. I siphon out the detritus weekly with a 10% water change every week or so. The cyano is growing on the plastic things in the tank first even after I regularly clean the pumps in vinegar.

This stuff is different. I have been keeping reef tanks for over 25 years and have quite a bit of experience.

If I do not add nitrates my corals are brown, colorless. If I do not add phosphates while adding nitrates my phosphates zero out and my corals bleach. The adding of the nitrates allows photosynthesis to occur which starts using all the available phosphates. I know all this because I have been down these roads before.

More to come, just have to get some work done to pay the bills.

Ok, good to have the backstory. I've been keeping reef tanks since 1985, so we both have a bit of experience. Cyano on just the plastics is indeed strange. I have heard of PVCs leaching phosphates which could fuel localized algae growth, but that's all I got for that. Cyano species can also
thrive in very low nutrient/unbalanced C:N & P conditions by fixing atmospheric nitrogen and being able to efficiently utilize miniscule amounts of phosphates. You may have tried this already, and it may sound counterintuitive, but if not maybe try adding some additional
nutrients via extra feeding a bit more and then see if there is any noticeable
reduction in the cyano.

 

[Frogger]

Ok Time for some more information. I have two tanks currently set up that have this cyano. Because I share tools between tanks it is highly likely its the same strain or combination of strains.

The second tank is a 35 gallon reef with a deep sand bed (plenum)that has been set up for 15+ years. This tank has gone through a whole range of things over the years based on the time I had to give the tank. My kids were younger and a combination of sports school work affected the level of care I could give. I went through periods of heavy bryopsis, hair algae, dinos etc. Due to its current deep sand bed I am a little concerned about stirring up the sand bed too much so as not to introduce anaerobic bacteria into the water column. I had cyano bad in this tank a couple years ago. I got it right after I controlled a bad case of Bryopsis with fluconszole. Understandable as all the nutrients had to go somewhere. I controlled the cyano with chemiclean (erythromycin). Within a month I had bad dinos that almost wiped out the corals. I controlled the dinos by increasing the nutrients and using a UV sterilizer. I had cyano in the tank many years ago that flared its ugly head when I was carbon dosing so I stopped that process.

Since then I have always had some cyano in the tank but easily controlled by siphoning out the mats when they formed. I have found that UV has had no affect on the cyano. Best option for this tank has been periodic cleaning and living with it. I rarely have to add nutrients to the tank and have never used GFO.

 

[Frogger]

The main tank is a 75 gallon mostly sps tank with high water motion, very little sand, low bioload etc. Cyano only became a problem 6 months ago after the issue of a faulty heater and thermometer. The increased temperature likely reduced the O2 resulting in the death of a large otherwise healthy yellow tang. The fish disappeared and could not be found. The spike in nutrients combined with the lose of the hair algae eating tang, combined with the elevated temperature caused the hair algae to start growing. I have been unable to find a useful hair algae eating anaimal. I currently have a bristletooth tang that wants nothing to do with healthy hair algae a tuxedo urchin that only eats film and coraline and many hundreds of snails that won't touch the stuff. I currently have a one spotted foxface in quarantine that I will be adding soon to the tank. Ihave managed and continue to manage the hair algae with manual removal and pulling the rocks out to spot treat when the rock is removable (very effective on hair only). The cyano showed up when I started dosing vibrant. I only dosed for about 3 weeks before I stopped. You need to know cyano was always there it just needed the Vibrant to kick it in.

I have treated the main tank with chemiclean (erythromycin) two times. Both times the product eliminated the bacteria from the tank, or at least it wasn't visible. After about a month both times it started to return.

Now I have stated that it is manageable in my tank however if I do not actively remove the matts when they form with a week it will be forming thick matts over pretty much everything that is not a fish or a live coral. The smaller tank I only need to clean it once every 3 or 4 weeks as it does not grow as fast. It does not grow on plastic surfaces in my small tank only on the lower rocks and on the surface of the deep bed sand.

 

[Frogger]

Now here is what I know and what I suspect. Everyone's tank is different, what works in one tank may not have any affect in another tank. On a whole we really do not know that much about cyano bacteria most of the research that has been done is anecdotal at best (I may be wrong).

I could treat my tank with chemiclean again and it would likely work for a short period of time.

I really do not want to do that because the last thing I want to do is create a erythromycin resistant strain of cyano. I do not think blacking out my tank would do anything more than eliminating the cyano for a short period of time.

What I am guessing is happening is every time I treat with erythromycin I am killing off many of the gram positive bacteria in my tank not just the cyano. Even though many of the bacteria is not affected, we know this because it does not completely destroy our biological filter in our tanks. If it did we would have a major ammonia spike in our tanks. But what it does do is reduce the biodiversity in our tanks. This loss of biodiversity has resulted in an environment that is ideal for the proliferation of the cyano bacteria hense the recurrence of the plague a few months after the treatment.

What I think will be a better strategy to control the cyano is to increase the biodiversity of the bacteria in my tank. Competition will be likely be the best defense. It has been proven in other bacterial outbreaks (not reef related) that lack of diversity has the major cause of the problem. Now as I am somewhat a soil scientist I do not believe grabbing a handful of soil from my garden (as recently mentioned elsewhere on other threads) will do anything other than just fuel the cyano.

The question I have for you Brandon, as you mentioned it before is how effective is products like "Waste away" or "MicroBacter 7" will help with this goal. I am not familiar with the effectiveness of these products or the biodiversity that these products actual contain.

Maybe treating my tanks with these products either after the tank has been treated with erythromycin or just treating Waste Away on its own would help me achieve the biodiversity that I believe my tank lacks due to the previous treatment of erythromycin.

 

[brandon429]

Those products have been seen in enough tank work threads that I recall them being effective enough to consider, cheap if ineffective and of no harm to the tank if tried/like them from that reason

Trying soil cannot hurt, we've vectored it in the tank already several times anyway / diversity won't harm to try.

 

[Frogger]

Brandon Thanks for replying.

Just ordered some Waste Away and will give it a try. Not prepared to put garden soil in, for a variety of reasons in the tank. However I strongly believe biodiversity and increasing competition will be the best way to control the growth of this bacteria. Like you said Cyano bacteria is a natural part of a healthy natural reef.

I will let you know how the battle goes and if the waste away has any affect. I will continue manual removal and blasting the rocks as this seems to have been the best defense so far.

 

[fulltang]

Fulltang my honest opinion is the smaller the system the more immune to take over due to access. we don’t need hardware at that level of volume because the biological power of rinsing, literal take the system apart and set it on the counter rinsing. Nothing can amass like that, so no hardware cheats needed. No need to even begin running a reef that harsh, it’s just that you can-forced compliance- if required. These larger tanks are incrementally worked, they’re too big to fully part cleaned to be forced into compliance, we’re coaxing the larger systems. Your tank and mine? Walk in the park. Nano keepers are spoiled. Rework any misbehaving nano in the time it takes to watch a movie.

I’ll never plumb uv or dose any retail supports into the reefbowl and it’s thirteen years old. It lives with no biological life span limit because it’s blast rinsed into shape occasionally, and because it’s well fed. Nutrient measures are not factored, I remove detritus occasionally but harshly, all these systems share that strength - we’ve just been told they’re weak, not so. Clouding and detritus is the risk when taking tanks apart or deep cleaning, not air contact time says ten hours in Fiji

Some people export heavy without taking their tank apart and disturbing the sandbed, but they still export in busy ways before it builds up, as a preventative care move. That’s fine, no accumulation with different approach.



I offer to you, Gregg’s implementation of the largest rip clean skip cycle rework I’ve potentially seen.

his person is in the tank heh, sitting down. it’s large and worth more money than a truck.

considering his next move while altering the inside layout with a total takeapart skip cycle cleaning, this biology is not different whether it’s ran on a one gallon system or a 500 gallon one


******potential two month delay to rebuild*** meaning we get to observe CPR safe holding / subsystem approach for quite a long time. A functioning reef, parted out and held for reassembly for weeks can be done, it’s about not moving detritus into the storage systems, move clean substrates only, make the system a low biological oxygen demand initially.





Live rock and corals are held cleanly to avoid cycle while under surgery:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/waking-up-from-the-nightmare-build-the-reboot.538918/


Gregg it’s the largest scale tank surgery I’ve ever seen on boards.

Beautiful, thank you Brandon.

Second question, would you recommend that I go with TBS's live sand as well? Should I clean it before adding it to the tank, or just let it do its thing?

 

[brandon429]

Hey do you have a link to that live sand, I’m used to seeing only caribsea stuff which we do pre rinse, curious to see if this sand is live with animals

 

[Be102]

Hey do you have a link to that live sand, I’m used to seeing only caribsea stuff which we do pre rinse, curious to see if this sand is live with animals

I got curious and came up with this as the link. It might not be it but sounds pretty much what he was linking. This one seems interesting however. It says it comes from the ocean and doesn’t have any “ silicates” and also says it has microscopic organisms such a as bivalves , feather dusters and crabs that are all microscopic...

Im curious to see what you recommend for rinse or no rinse.. knowing you I’d expect it to be “ rinse!” And I support it after how clean my recently added pre rinsed live sand is doing and how healthy it is!



Oh yeah... the link!

https://www.tbsaltwater.com/thepackage/contents.html

 

[brandon429]

Well done

Mmkay for the first time here in twenty pages

No pre rinse

They did it legit ha, animals, macro and micro, and no silt or detritus from what I can extract from that read

I’ve opened eighty six bags of different caribsea sand in my time. Found a large snail shell once, and never motile and macro animals

TBS has been reviewed in our microbiology of cycling thread as a business who is founded on the principle of mailing skip cycle substrates to people, when we get their rocks we begin reefing, not with a rotting shrimp lol and when someone gets their sand, you just put that stuff in and smile ha

TBS is apparently awesome all the way around. Now for the long term question: can that sand stay perpetually unrinsed if used in a nano reef? Would it mineralize all the tank detritus and waste wo having to be hand guided over time? I vote no, but somone set one up and we can see, the smaller the tank the faster the results. Some of the beneficial organisms seeded initially with that sand will house in other areas, filter compartments and live rock...so even a blast rinsing on the third year of setup wouldn’t totally sterilize the sand, these organisms re seed from live rock/ we have pics of this re-worming happening on the first pages here. Very neat read you linked us to

Any tank using tbs live rock, tbs live sand and a very low fish bioload/high coral and invert bioload could really be dealing with a very stable, very low invasion risk over the long term compared to the common fare we see... looks like a combo really set for success (fish bioloading being the number one cause of the requirement to clean display tank beds)

 

[fulltang]

Well done

Mmkay for the first time here in twenty pages

No pre rinse

They did it legit ha, animals, macro and micro, and no silt or detritus from what I can extract from that read

I’ve opened eighty six bags of different caribsea sand in my time. Found a large snail shell once, and never motile and macro animals

TBS has been reviewed in our microbiology of cycling thread as a business who is founded on the principle of mailing skip cycle substrates to people, when we get their rocks we begin reefing, not with a rotting shrimp lol and when someone gets their sand, you just put that stuff in and smile ha

TBS is apparently awesome all the way around. Now for the long term question: can that sand stay perpetually unrinsed if used in a nano reef? Would it mineralize all the tank detritus and waste wo having to be hand guided over time? I vote no, but somone set one up and we can see, the smaller the tank the faster the results. Some of the beneficial organisms seeded initially with that sand will house in other areas, filter compartments and live rock...so even a blast rinsing on the third year of setup wouldn’t totally sterilize the sand, these organisms re seed from live rock/ we have pics of this re-worming happening on the first pages here. Very neat read you linked us to

Any tank using tbs live rock, tbs live sand and a very low fish bioload/high coral and invert bioload could really be dealing with a very stable, very low invasion risk over the long term compared to the common fare we see... looks like a combo really set for success (fish bioloading being the number one cause of the requirement to clean display tank beds)

Interesting info, I'm going to shoot TBS a message and see if they scoop up the sand from the ocean similar to how they go to their aqua culture plot to pick the rock to order. I figure if they hold the sand for any significant length of time that might make an impact, perhaps an opportunity for detritus to collect?

What you describe is pretty much exactly what I'm setting up, I'll let you know when it's wet. I plan on taking a lot of pictures.

 

[fulltang]

Richard at TBS promptly responded and let me know that he collects the sand right next to the rock and it ships under water!

 

[brandon429]

FT
Hey I thought for 24 hours about an ideal way to maintain the sand that you’re paying extra to be inclusive of special diversity and it’s this

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-white-sand-method.252861/page-5#post-4449703

That’s the way in my opinion. We can’t let detritus stack up inside over time, sandbed animals -produce- fecal pellets they don’t just eat them I know you know (in addition to castings from live rock/daily/fish and animals) so that maintenance stirring above to eject detritus and coral snow feed the tank, before it compounds is the way if I had neat sand like you are getting, thank you for bringing that source and discussion to our thread

Blusops and team manually remove detritus they just do it incrementally vs a catch up rip cleaning during invasion, they’re our kindred cousins ha

 

[Frogger]

Just an update for Brandon to let him know where I am at with the cyano in my tank. I have been aggressively siphoning out the cyano and the detritus. I also clean what sand I have and blow all the rocks aggressively with a turkey baster. In the beginning it was every second day, now I have been able to reduce it to once every 5 days to a week. The cyano is not near as aggressive only grows in limited areas. On Saturday I started adding my first dose of Dr. Tim's waste away. I added a half dose. We will see where this goes.

My derbesia issue has not subsided. I manually remove as much as a I can every week. I plan on adding my foxface to the tank this weekend. Hopefully this will help. I might have to add a Sea Hare, just afraid of it dying in the tank and polluting the tank.

I have also purchased an oxydator, not going to use it until I have finished dosing the Waste Away so that I do not confuse the results.

I want to avoid adding any chemicals to the tank.