Someone with an invaded, nutrient imbalanced reef post up for a full rework+ skip cycle reassembly

[MnFish1]

I wanted to update on this. For the rock that I pulled out, all the algae that I doused in hydrogen peroxide made a full recovery and back to its natural healthy burgundy color. It had originally started to whiten and looked like it was going to die - nope.

Naturally, the rock that was simply put in tank water for 72 hours with a small dose of hydrogen peroxide showed no signs of any harm to the algae.

=(

Means the only way this is coming out is either another round with more concentrated peroxide, or more scraping it off the rocks.

@brandon429

what does of hydrogen peroxide did you use

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

I wanted to update on this. For the rock that I pulled out, all the algae that I doused in hydrogen peroxide made a full recovery and back to its natural healthy burgundy color. It had originally started to whiten and looked like it was going to die - nope.

Naturally, the rock that was simply put in tank water for 72 hours with a small dose of hydrogen peroxide showed no signs of any harm to the algae.

=(

Means the only way this is coming out is either another round with more concentrated peroxide, or more scraping it off the rocks.

@brandon429

Did you spray with 3% and let sit out of water for a half hour? I am going to scrub and then spray and let sit out.

 

[jabberwock]

I have done more picking...
Growth rate has slowed substantially, but the only way it is going away is if I pull it out.

 

[xCry0x]

what does of hydrogen peroxide did you use

Did you spray with 3% and let sit out of water for a half hour? I am going to scrub and then spray and let sit out.

Normal off the shelf 3% - it was a brand new bottle.

Spray? I opened the bottle and liberally poured it on the algae .

I didn't time it, but I poured it on and left it out while I cleaned everything else up - so 20-30 minutes.

The algae definitely looked like it was dying. Within 2-3 days it was turning pink and a few days later it was looking more white. But then it started to "recover" and now looks no worse for the wear.

The areas that I scrubbed clean are still clean; which I would expect.

I'll add I also chopped my lighting schedule in half at the start of this experiment.

To be clear, this is specifically very course/dense red turf algae. Not any type of green algae. I'v battled green hair, bubble algae, red turf algae -- the red turf is hands down the worst and most persistent I have seen. It kind of boggles me that it isn't more commonly discussed.

My tank maturing naturally cleared out the hair algae I had. A Vibrant cycle rapidly knocked out the bubble algae. Nothing has put a reasonable dent in the red turf.

With all that in mind, I am starting to see the benefits of removing my sand bed (it isn't all gone yet). A lot of detritus collects on the side of my tank making cleaning it out easy.

 

[Stanzo13]

I have a 30 gallon tank W/ a huge skimmer, hob/no sump. I have a brs reactor that was running carbon+gfo as what I thought was my preference to remove Dino's, I now have it full of chaeto as some recommended it. But Dino's are all over everything in my tank
Salinity 1.025
Alk 8.2
Mg 1150
Calc 430
I have a kessil a360 we light and a 3 layer Cascade external filter with rock media, orx.8 carbon and a bunch of poly filter floss. Been using reef crystals salt and many said to not use low nutrient tanks for Dino's... But it wasn't low out of the gates and seemed to be stable. Then Dino's got everywhere and I got serious, 2 water changes a week about 15÷ each then a 3.5 day blackout with very skimpy feeding and still Dino's everywhere. So over to chaeto rather than carbon and gfo and still no dofference. Some say to wait it out. I have been trying to gravel siphon through a filter sock in a 5 gal bucket to dump the water back in as most said water changes are bad..... I'm looking pretty swamped......

 

[brandon429]

Hey a dino challenge is among the top challenges, but your tank is small enough that to take it apart and clean it fully, vs partial cleaning, isn’t all that hard to do

Worst case scenario is they come back, but a deep clean isn’t harmful to try at all and it just might work. If the dinos are really strong type, then one handy trick is we remove your whole sandbed and make the tank bare bottom until the rocks are cleared of invasion, then the sand goes back in when the tank is uninvaded a few weeks later. It’s easier to clear the system of the dino cells when they don’t have sand to harbor in, and grow back from.

Post pics we can develop a cleaning strategy from them

 

[Stanzo13]

I have been slowly removing removing sand as some pushed me that way I was shooting for bare bottom considering this tank has been running over 2 years, one big problem with my Dino's is some softies are attached to rocks and those rocks have Dino's... Any way to remove them without killing corals? I have rx pro dop idk if that can help

 

[brandon429]

Check some of the tank rebuilds here, we never dose anything we just clean the whole tank at once

Post a pic, curious to see how your job looks

 

[Stanzo13]

Check some of the tank rebuilds here, we never dose anything we just clean the whole tank at once

Post a pic, curious to see how your job looks

What about the rocks with Dino's wedged between corals?

 

[Stanzo13]

Is it fair to mention I can run a half pound of gfo on my 30 gallon for a month or will that starve microbial life for a possible cycle/crash

 

[brandon429]

Our work here involves taking the whole tank apart so that you can clean creatively in between the nooks and crannies

Post pics, we can really do well in prediction with some opening shots

Also, check this thread for example tanks that may match yours, this has many tank rework examples as prep for your particular challenge. It’s nice to see jobs done before, during after to see if any creative angles catches your eye:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/page-18

 

[jabberwock]

I did a little more manual removal of the long stuff over the last week, and then tonight, I went after it pretty aggressively. I got a new toothbrush...

 

[Sipec]

Tank: 24 gallon
Light: kessil a360w
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 5
Kh: 9
Calcium: 440
Currently dealing with red slime and bubble algae
Cuc:
1x hermit crab
2 trochus snails
1 turbo snail
1 nassarius snail (maybe)
1 pom pom crab (also maybe)
I've been scrubbing the rocks excessively every time I do a water change (ussuaus about monthly) and I'm thinking of starting to do weekly water changes to help lower phosphates. Would that help?
Also for the bubble algae I don't wanna get an emerald crab

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for posting that is such a perfect candidate for our thread, perfect. It’s a small, fully accessible system which makes for quick work compared to large systems

This is how to fix that system up:
Take out rocks and set them aside

Catch any fish and shrimp hold elsewhere

Take out removable corals if any, hold elsewhere in saltwater awaiting put back

Now the tank can be totally emptied. If you want to keep your coralline spotting cuz it adds an aged look then leave it on the glass. If not, lay a paper towel soaked in vinegar across it a few minutes while drained for cleaning. It will melt off, depends on how clean you want the reassembly to look.

We never treat just the algae or the cyano here, we actually treat it last in the process. The #1 goal for this tank is taking the tank fully apart, rinsing out any sand if applicable before re use, then cleaning off rocks, replacing all the water as well. Then re acclimate animals back in, there must be no clouding in the tank whatsoever upon rebuild. This is how we avoid a mini cycle upon setting back up, detritus clouding causes the mini cycle, not the action of cleaning the tank. Our sand rinse thread has many working examples of full part cleaning / can be studied ahead of time but that above is the process. You are guiding out phosphate and nitrate imbalances by taking all the detritus out immediately, at once. Putting back only rinsed rocks (rocks are rinsed in new saltwater) and rinsed sand if any.


Your phosphates are then totally reset as they should be, in balance, due to the full approach vs the partial one in most threads. Your tank will shine and it won’t recycle, it just moves on looking great. I recommend cleaning the glass walls of coralline but leaving it on the back wall it looks good

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

We wouldn’t use any medications, chemi clean, peroxide or nutrient testing for this particular restore, I’ve seen five hundred examples just like this one and they all turn out the same if you clean them fully like the example threads show- thanks tons for posting we want these examples. An example of a tank similar to your is on page 12 or so, an excellent video of blast rinsing is provided plus follow ups. Last page has good follow ups long after cleaning



The key to algae control in a nano is to match your treatment specifically to the invader. Yours seems to be a minor accumulation/aging issue, oil change time that’s all, no harm. Nothing to rasp off, rinsing will work here

Rooted and anchored invaders need a test rock + an algae kill step so growback stops, to allow for coralline takeover. Cyano is easily just fully rinsed out

We always take small tanks apart to clean them vs just treating surfaces, because the clouding in the system is the feed for the invader, on the rocks, and to clean properly is the real way to win.

Matted invaders, unanchored ones like mild cyano infestations respond well with no chemical cheats and mere manual cleaning top to bottom.

 

[brandon429]

Jabberwock are you ready to fix your tank up, let’s do two specific actions that cause your weeks long algae growth to stop.

That step above isnt how we fix tanks I always recommend we never use a brush (fragmenting, smashes algae bits down inside the pores, doesn’t remove detritus, causes it, six other reasons) and instead we clean the cloudy sandbed feeding your full invasion, then kill the algae off the rocks so you can plant corals on it, to help stop algae growth from taking advantage of bright reflective surfaces. The algae still on the rocks after cleaning has absorbed lots of detritus that will be evident if we can clean them externally, not using a brush. Your lighting is too white, this must be changed to take back ground. Intensity dropped to half what it is as we work on actions other than brushing

The after pics from using our method will be polar opposite to those above, I vote yes we should take back that nano. Your growback will stop drastically by running the whole method-but we also value the updates of scrubbing surfaces only / it helps us track growback when compared to full mode approaches.

Any hesitation you have for cleaning the tank/destabilizing it due to cleaning is addressed in the large work thread above, see follow up posts.

 

[Sipec]

Thanks for your advice, but I don't think I'll do it this way:
Reason #1 I like my rockwork how it looks, and in times past of removing rocks I can't seem to put them back right
Reason #2 my fish are next near impossible to catch, I have a blenny and a royal Gramma that lodge themselves in the rocks for safety.
One time I took out my rocks, my Gramma fish was inside one, and it was kinda scary.
What I'm going to do is start doing weekly water changes instead of monthly, which I'm ok with doing anyways now that I have sps, it will keep parameters in check to. Also I've started to remove my sand, because it gets dirty and dosent seem to add to the tank in any way I know of, except biological filtration. When I get things more under control, then maybe I'll add a sand sifting star and more nassarius snails.
I'll keep u posted on how it works out

 

[brandon429]

Ok message me the updates, this thread is for full tank reworks. not being mean/ promise/ it’s to keep a consistent data set going

Am trying to distill only a certain type of algae control here so that we don’t muddle with the other approaches. We are posting here ready to work, ready to post after pics in like a day or so, so we can track the role of skip cycle deep cleaning in invasion control.


that sand rinse thread I posted above-it’s eighteen pages of taking tanks apart to the bone... all we are doing here is making a twin version of that thread, starting fresh for 2019.

In order to have an algae control method tested which revolves completely around detritus control we have to collect only those kinds of works.

vs trying to control the inputs / examples here as pages unfold, all I can do is ask readers to consider the first post. It filters out the types of tanks we work on here vs the ones that don’t.

 

[Sipec]

Ok message me the updates, this thread is for full tank reworks.

Ok

 

[jabberwock]

Thanks for your advice, but I don't think I'll do it this way:
Reason #1 I like my rockwork how it looks, and in times past of removing rocks I can't seem to put them back right
Reason #2 my fish are next near impossible to catch, I have a blenny and a royal Gramma that lodge themselves in the rocks for safety.
One time I took out my rocks, my Gramma fish was inside one, and it was kinda scary.
What I'm going to do is start doing weekly water changes instead of monthly, which I'm ok with doing anyways now that I have sps, it will keep parameters in check to. Also I've started to remove my sand, because it gets dirty and dosent seem to add to the tank in any way I know of, except biological filtration. When I get things more under control, then maybe I'll add a sand sifting star and more nassarius snails.
I'll keep u posted on how it works out

I would recommend a Tiger Sand Conch. I love mine, keeps the sand moved around, and very comical to watch.
Also, in a tank of your size, I would try smaller daily water changes. I change out 64 oz everyday, or every other day (sometimes I forget). My nano guru says it achieves the same result as larger changes but with more stability and it simulates "dosing".

 

[brandon429]

send your nano guru here


I’m going to sell them on action in order to save your tank from more weeks of invasion. We have a tough time convincing aquarists to become uninvaded, we have no tough time uninvading the tank.