Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[yellow73]

So crushed coral is gone from the scene now that's how long it's been from when I had my reverse flow system. And it's best to rinse the sand.

 

[brandon429]

About twenty thousand reefers would argue the alternative recommendation (to not touch the sand/conventional means)



This here is merely a guide for rule breakers. It’s a guarantee we know how to rinse, swap, upgrade, downgrade, move across town, move across the state, cure cyano for 23 pages (mostly) without ever recycling or losing a tank. This thread is a microbiology application thread, with thousands of dollars of other people’s money on the line. Many are interested in curing their tanks of invasions caused by non bed access...we had no where to go for reliable bed science since the majority were focused on preserving the bed + its waste even if it meant riding out the invasion to a total loss

Rogues had to break free to get it done.

We’re sandbed slayers admittedly (but it’s all cyclic, they just build up worms and mud all over again infinite loop style)

 

[yellow73]

All I did 25 years ago was run a reverse flow system with canister filters with rinsed crushed coral and dry rock I would run my water through a charcoal filters then mix with salts then into tank it took for ever to cycle even when adding bacteria but I don't remember my fish really ever having problems. But that was before all my surgeries and I might just not remember it all. Lol

 

[brandon429]

That’s a great method/ ejecting of detritus vs compacting it into the bed, great preventative maintenance design

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/nuvo-10-crash.630156/page-2#post-6276100


Perking up coral by rip cleaning. A thorough application, we are not case closed this is observe right after surgery how the micro system heals. It's a test of predictions.

the greater portion of the hobby, as in I don't have any tank ripping initiating friends lol, would have addressed his system like this:
Do nothing big or fast, only bad things happen fast in reefing. Take tests. Spend a hundred if not already on testers, we cannot help you without knowing phosphate. Nitrate. Selenium. Argon. Nitrate. pH. Ca+++. Alk. Salinity from strictly a refractometer

And while all that hesitation is going on, a resolute individual simply commanded his tank back into shape in one half a day because he did not want to lose it. Using no different a method than is used to transport, upgrade or downgrade the reef tank without causing a recycle or unstable event. We attempt to cause stability by doing the number one thing the masses would never do, the total deep clean detritus reset. Detritus is the major locus of concern and planning for any rip clean.

why are the masses advising each other of ways to fix systems that still store the waste in place for a future event

Our results come from opposite action

We show here for pages very simple prediction and assessment patterns that highlight detritus as the sole and total concern in so many eutrophication tank challenges. Yes many systems are ok storing up waste, and have the volume of water to dilute such storage, but we get tighter outcomes and tighter lifespan control over systems that are at least occasionally rid of organic stores

Send here your challenge tanks for work we want tough jobs where tank seems in decline
if there's not bare white skeleton loss we can arrest most decline spirals with a rip clean run.
B

 

[brandon429]

Bump

D was able to force out a cloudy water annoyance with the takedown cleaning / all at once option. Don’t know how long it stays gone but we like the safe rebuild update, no recycle for the system in total

Never ending bacterial bloom that returns once UV is removed

So I've had a 20 high tank set up since January. I added all dry rock, used some Dr.Tim's ammonia to start the cycle and waited. It's been cycled for a while now. It slowly got cloudy which I expected, so I waited. And waited. And waited, as everyone seems to say. It has not gone away. People...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Slarti]

I go back a few pages on this thread but the long and short of the story is that I struggled with algae for an extended period of time. This was after moving the tank and then an unexpected power outage just when I thought I got it under control. I tried everything from chemical to more regular and larger water changes to less water changes and everything in between. I came across this and decided to start cleaning the sand bed one square inch at a time. The 'square inch' size depending on how much space I had left in my bucket during clean-up and normal water changes. Took probably 3 months to get through the tank and lo and behold the algae cleared over time.

So after a good 12 months of struggling the tank was clean for the first time, still get the odd algae around the place but nothing like the invasion I had before. I am a true believer and will tell anyone who struggle to start cleaning the sand bed. Maybe it does not work for everyone but it did the trick for me. Still clean a spot with every water change and I am amazed at the dirt I still lift out of the sand.

 

[Hemmdog]

Any tips for getting rid of Ulva(Sea Lettuce) @brandon429 . It’s slowly been taking over the past month. It’s consuming all the nutrients in my water leaving me with 2 NO3 0.02 PO4 I have a tomini tang and a rose urchin and various snails for algae management but they don’t seem to touch the stuff. Did my first dose of vibrant last Thursday as a hopeful cure, grasping at straws here.

Manual removal is very difficult. I’ve tried, it’s really on there.

 

[brandon429]

Laser clear pics and setup, nice tank wow! We know your sand is clean a la goby so detritus doesn't factor, only unlucky hitchhiking-this plant needs only a ride in to set up shop and a missing grazer to expand after setup, not sure who the right grazer animal would be

I have two thought modes in reefing: how can we get a cloudy tank cleaned and 2. What can be target killed with peroxide


That algae is among top 3 most susceptible to peroxide / helpful character

Large tank= hard to pull and treat rock yes but so far nothing works anyway, we can model some proof and then you choose the upscale if needed

Fluc is a good choice. Not being the result of detritus problems it's a fine thing to try

None of your corals are peroxide sensitive in the known safe dose so as another option we can prove readiness wo experimenting with your whole reef, by two test rocks

Try to access one test rock somehow lifted up and out of the tank

Pour peroxide across target, avoid coral, straight 3%, let sit for a minute or two cooking, rinse w saltwater, leave the algae attached and put back. We chart it's tested dieoff and growback if any. This represents tank access and spot kill, hard work, but easy to model.

Second test models the easy option, full tank dosing. Take another test rock and sit it in a five gal bucket of saltwater with half a milliliter of peroxide in the water

Submerge test rock a few hours/half a day then pull it out and put back

We will know in five days what works for sure, wo risking your tank during testing

This species is top 3 easy to kill w peroxide. Any lysmata cleaner shrimp are a loss risk...weakest animals we keep regarding peroxide use

 

[Hemmdog]

Laser clear pics and setup, nice tank wow! We know your sand is clean a la goby so detritus doesn't factor, only unlucky hitchhiking-this plant needs only a ride in to set up shop and a missing grazer to expand after setup, not sure who the right grazer animal would be

I have two thought modes in reefing: how can we get a cloudy tank cleaned and 2. What can be target killed with peroxide


That algae is among top 3 most susceptible to peroxide / helpful character

Large tank= hard to pull and treat rock yes but so far nothing works anyway, we can model some proof and then you choose the upscale if needed

Fluc is a good choice. Not being the result of detritus problems it's a fine thing to try

None of your corals are peroxide sensitive in the known safe dose so as another option we can prove readiness wo experimenting with your whole reef, by two test rocks

Try to access one test rock somehow lifted up and out of the tank

Pour peroxide across target, avoid coral, straight 3%, let sit for a minute or two cooking, rinse w saltwater, leave the algae attached and put back. We chart it's tested dieoff and growback if any. This represents tank access and spot kill, hard work, but easy to model.

Second test models the easy option, full tank dosing. Take another test rock and sit it in a five gal bucket of saltwater with half a milliliter of peroxide in the water

Submerge test rock a few hours/half a day then pull it out and put back

We will know in five days what works for sure, wo risking your tank during testing

This species is top 3 easy to kill w peroxide. Any lysmata cleaner shrimp are a loss risk...weakest animals we keep regarding peroxide use

Great ideas! I’ll grab some new peroxide today and give it a try on a test rock. Thank you for the reply and advise! I’ll report back.

 

[brandon429]

What are the root causes of Cyano?

This subject has been a mine field for 15 years or more, hence why these threads are constantly started, the trouble is there is no data on cyano and ratios, simply reading through this thread in its entirety will tell you it’s not as simple as change the ratios to this and cyano disappears...

www.reef2reef.com

I like to relay Dan and Taricha’s work there because they’re using professional technique quality control and environmental control to study the nature of organic waste in the expression of aquarium invasions

they’re making article gold for chemists and scientists to use in so many beneficial ways

 

[CheckeredPants]

So glad I came across this thread. Thanks, @brandon429!!

I had 60 lbs. of CaribSea Hawaiian Black Arag-Alive to rinse for my new peninsula build. At first, I put one 20 lb. bag in a bucket with a high-pressure nozzle on my garden hose and spent 4 hours trying to clean the batch. I was starting to lose my mind and called it quits for the night. The next day I broke the 20 lbs. into smaller batches and after two more hours there was still silt and cloudiness. I even reached out to Brandon to see if me losing my mind was a reality. He instructed me to keep going and that my efforts would pay off.

After thinking this over I realized that I had a mesh strainer in my kitchen tool arsenal and decided to give it a try. I also removed the nozzle from the hose to get a wider flow of water. This resulted in a quick and painless effort to get the sand silt free and 100% cloudless!!!!! I had to run the sand through the strainer 2-3 times, but overall it ended up only taking about an hour per 20 lb. bag once I discovered this method.

Here’s a video of the process:

And, here is a video of the result:

Now let me tell you about my next headache. I purchased 80 lbs. of dry base rock and had it placed in the tank before putting the clean sand in. I soaked and rinsed and soaked and rinsed this rock for two weeks and figured it would not cloud my water. Well, I was wrong. My sand is 100% cloudless, but after getting the rock wet while filling the tank, cloudiness started as silt started to come off the rocks.

Since I am waiting on a replacement piece for the plumbing of my new tank, I am unable to run any kind of filter and the powder/silt from the rocks is settling on my fresh batch of clean cloudless sand. Hopefully, once I get this plumbing piece and can stir up the sandbed I’ll be able to get 100% of the rock silt out of my tank without having to remove any of the sand from the display. I'll update once I can get my plumbing finished and attempt to stir up and remove the silt the rocks have introduced.

Thanks again to @brandon429 and everyone that has contributed to this thread!!

 

[brandon429]

My bed will get the participatory blast rinse in a couple mos, wanted to update sandbed diversity. Worms and pods are cyclical, cleaning your bed resets its lifespan, it doesn't make it devoid of life forever, they seed back off the rocks. Same type of worm I posted on early pages, several sand rinses later and a few years of them, same micro and meiofauna return. Cyclic

what's being removed is the detritus and it comes back too, that's why we have to maintain the sandbeds regularly somehow depending on the dynamics of your tank. Don't wait until a problem comes about, be proactive




I might use some of that black sand this round you show above/change of pace for a couple years

 

[Eclyps19]

Hiya Brandon! Here’s my challenge tank, hoping to become another successful datapoint.

Prognosis: moderate dinos that covers 70% of the sandbed (unknown strain).

Tank is 7mo old, 30g. I pulled about 95% of the sand and replaced it with newly rinsed sand. I did not pull the rocks, and the 5% of sand that was not replaced was just the stuff under my rocks. Pulling the sand required a roughly 30% water change

New sand was great - no cloudiness, looked wonderful on day 1. On day 2, it was almost entirely covered in dinos again.

I’ve stopped skimming and have intentionally let my tank “dirty” up to build some algae that has been outcompeted by the dinos. This has mostly resulted in some crazy tufts of long flowing hair (actually looks kind of cool).

In a previous thread, you recommended a rip clean rinse of the sand and the rocks. Is this still what you would recommend? If so, I would likely just go purchase new sand and rinse that.

For my rocks, I have a pretty happy rock flower anemone, some zoas, and a couple other corals that are pretty fixed to the rocks. Should I remove as much of the coral as possible before rinsing the rocks? Should I remove all of the algae that I’ve let accumulate?

I have enough fresh saltwater to do a 100% replacement post-rinse.

Let me know what your plan of attack would be here. Thanks!

Pics from today in various lighting conditions.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you tons for posting am so happy to see that nice tank! @Alexreefer he was able to win over a nearly exact challenge with a powerful initial rip clean and follow up guiding, and then he did run the hands interval where competition balanced things out, just like you said

I think plan looks good, and to save work I would not put sand back until system complies. You can sterilize the sand then, so it doesn't reinfect and then put back later. Where possible this is neat bc it allows total access during your battle action time after initial mass cut

The rocks are fine without the sand to carry on filtration. That's one initial brainstorm going off pics

Another: lift out rocks and scrape off algae. Put peroxide only on that former anchor spot and leave two mins then rinse off. This isn't harming the overall diversity battling Dino's it's just algae specific guiding

Then afte rocks are clean, even with sand still a little challenged, install a $150 pond UV sterilizer off Amazon and cheat burn it a couple months, with hand guiding. Never letting them amass and then you can take it offline to check for sustain. I recommend tinkering with through export work before the sustained dirty phase. We can fallback on that for sure but there's also fun in seeing if the tank responders quicker, ideally, to rip cleaning and planned kill


That's a $ method though so it's not always practical but wow on the percent chance you don't have to rip clean, UV is powerful when oversized. It would mount in an annoying way bc it's the gear deciding fate of tank for this round...when it's removed and your system sustains using the discovered combo then the tank will look awesome. Doesn't have to mount pretty to be used...water in water out can help stop that invasion

The lysmata in there is sensitive to any form of peroxide contact, work carefully there in planning.

 

[skijumpersc]

I'm about to upgrade my 32 gallon to a 75 gallon. My 32 is running really well right now, I've had no algae or any other issues for the last few months. I think part of this is due to a sand bed swap I did to combat a dino outbreak so I would consider myself an acolyte of the sandbed rinse method. I'm planning on reusing the sand I have in my tank, after giving it a thorough rinse. I’m undecided on using the sand from the tank I’m buying.

The tank I'm upgrading to has been neglected for awhile and the rocks are full of bubble algae and Aiptasia, however they also have lots of nice coraline and are very aesthetically pleasing so I would like to rehab them and incorporate them into the new design. I'm also going to use the rocks I have in my old tank, like I said these are in great shape with no problems at the moment. How would you go about making the rock thats coming with the tank ready to go into my new design? Is there a similar process for rinsing detritus from live rock as there is for the sandbed rinse? If so, I’ll probably put the rock my old tank through it as well.

This is going to be a full upgrade with my current livestock and corals so any tips you can give me are much appreciated!

 

[brandon429]

Hey that's so great to hear, I'm confident it will transfer upgrade smoothly and a few methods we like for accessible live rock evacuation is just swishing in a bucket of fresh saltwater. The detritus will cast off with a twisting motion in the water of the bucket. Take pics of any surgical work for us and we'll build on the momentum

 

[skijumpersc]

Hey that's so great to hear, I'm confident it will transfer upgrade smoothly and a few methods we like for accessible live rock evacuation is just swishing in a bucket of fresh saltwater. The detritus will cast off with a twisting motion in the water of the bucket. Take pics of any surgical work for us and we'll build on the momentum

For cleaning off the rock that is coming with the tank I want to scrub as much of the algae off as possible, does it have to be clean salt water or can I do that in tap water? I'm going to run out of buckets pretty quick with the volumes I need to store to do the swap

 

[brandon429]

Rinses in saltwater is best for rock mainly for the pods and worms if present so they won’t get osmotic shock

We can just use five gals of made up water in a bucket and use it for a few rocks until it’s not clear water, not sure of a better way.

I’m certain that freshwater rinsing of rock will not, will not kill the filter bac. They’re not that weak for the intervals we’d be rinsing but I do think any pods, sponges, coralline growths might be harmed.

 

[skijumpersc]

Rinses in saltwater is best for rock mainly for the pods and worms if present so they won’t get osmotic shock

We can just use five gals of made up water in a bucket and use it for a few rocks until it’s not clear water, not sure of a better way.

I’m certain that freshwater rinsing of rock will not, will not kill the filter bac. They’re not that weak for the intervals we’d be rinsing but I do think any pods, sponges, coralline growths might be harmed.

So the live rock has been sitting in my cooler in the garage for the past day with a powerhead in it, I haven't had a heater in there since I figured I didn't have to worry about it getting cold this time of year, but just to be sure I went and stuck a thermometer in it and its at 93 degrees F, I guess mostly from the powerhead generating heat. Do you think thats hot enough to have cooked the bacteria? I'm guessing they're more resilient to temperature swings than livestock is.