The Bacterial “Rip Clean” Method

[sixty_reefer]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

Can you assist with generic ingredients of

Tropic Marin Reef Actif, 100 ml./60 gr.

Tropic Marin Reef Actif, 100 ml./60 gr.

www.aquacave.com

Tropic Marin Reef Actif, 100 ml./60 gr.​

It’s 100% carbohydrates from seaweed and plants, Lou and hans don’t hide it.
They even go further with it.

 

[sixty_reefer]

It appears to be a conscious decision to wreck everyone else’s thread and convert views to his own, probably works too, especially with new folk.
@sixty_reefer please continue. Even if I’m not convinced about your theories some times, it’s all brain food

I just like to emphasise that this is not a miracle cure, as in the opening post, this is just a way to “rip clean” with bacteria, allowing them to do the hard work of cleaning a system by reducing uneaten food and waste in a system that seems to allow for nuisance to thrive if left unchecked.
This is also a way to establish strong lower trophic levels that will add food source to lower organisms.
I did emphasised earlier that this won’t cure all your problems standard CUC will still play a big part on the algae and other nuisances fight although by using them all correctly they will perform the “rip clean” for you instead of doing it yourself.
I’ve also mentioned that coral growth may have to be sacrificed temporarily wile this nutrient are being reduced, both coral and algae thrive on the same types on Nitrogen and one has to ensure to have nitrates and phosphates to avoid starvation and heterotrophic bacteria limitations.

it’s a slow process although it’s a natural process that takes time.

I would really encourage folks at reading the peer reviewed paper on the first post to understand it further

edit: wend I look at standard rip clean all I see being done is a way to remove build up detritus and organic matter that is building up the system, this excessive amount of trapped nutrients is the root cause of nuisance blooms.
A standard rip clean doesn’t kill algae as many will have it back not long after. Some times by performing a clean you may get rid of a nuisance due to having a more “clean system”

in here we offering the same, just a way to remove organics that would feed nuisance and transform them into good nutrients via predators. Coral, clams, copepod, and other lower trophic level feeders will play a big role in it to complete the cycle due to them being able to trap the nutrients into their body mass. All we doing is passing nutrients from uneaten food into the mass of organisms via trophic levels.

 

[Big E]

Leroy Headlee passed away in 2012

One of the best pieces of info he passed along was when/if things go a bit haywire do 10% water changes 10 days in a row. Every time I employed this strategy it usually only take 3-4 days of this and my acros would respond. I never had to go through with the whole ten days.

 

[Subsea]

Considering the selection of seaweed concentrate available at garden centers, what generic product will supply necessary long polymer chains of carbohydrates?

 

[Subsea]

I like this product description, I have ordered it and will receive it tomorrow morning. In my vegetable garden I will soak my spinach seeds prior to planting tomorrow. After I work out concentration of seaweed extract, I will begin with modest additions of extract. Since I will also receive Reef Actif the same day, I will add one of each product to my two oldest systems at 25 years for 75G display and 120G system with 120G display tank.

 

[MBruun]

I'm trying to get my tank back on track using TM Reef Actif, carbon dosing and dosing live phyto (750 ml/day). I've been dosing Reef Actif for 8 weeks now, starting with small amounts but are now at full dose.
Tank size is 750L (200G), sps dominated but with a lot of lps too, been up for almost 3 yeas now (huge issues with GHA and RTA first year) and are again having the joy of lots RTA again and some cyano after it almost crashed last summer, but are now succesfully adding coral I feed frozen food heavily and my fish are fat and healthy - They say Thanks to Paul B. ;-)
This summer my tank overheated for several weeks, due to the hot summer. I had no cooler , my house became very warm and I had to travel .... I lost like 80% corals and several fish - my tank crashed. I guess the heat started a bad spiral resulting in high ammonia and afterwards high P and NO3 (NO3 was way above 100).
It has taken me a lot longer than expected to get the here, but I think I'm on the right path. Next "minor" goal is to get rid of the RTA.

I've started to see good progress for the last week or two.
Lots of small patches not having RTA where it use to grow and longer between the glass cleaning (wasn't aware of this as a parameter before this tread). But also lots of the corals look better, and the KH comsumption slowely increase (increased calcification = more growth).

I changed the circulation pumps two weeks ago, which also have an impact, but if the RTA and cyano dissapears, or gets reduced to small patches, I'll consider approach of carbon dosing and Reef Actif to be a success

 

[Subsea]

I'm trying to get my tank back on track using TM Reef Actif, carbon dosing and dosing live phyto (750 ml/day). I've been dosing Reef Actif for 8 weeks now, starting with small amounts but are now at full dose.
Tank size is 750L (200G), sps dominated but with a lot of lps too, been up for almost 3 yeas now (huge issues with GHA and RTA first year) and are again having the joy of lots RTA again and some cyano after it almost crashed last summer, but are now succesfully adding coral I feed frozen food heavily and my fish are fat and healthy - They say Thanks to Paul B. ;-)
This summer my tank overheated for several weeks, due to the hot summer. I had no cooler , my house became very warm and I had to travel .... I lost like 80% corals and several fish - my tank crashed. I guess the heat started a bad spiral resulting in high ammonia and afterwards high P and NO3 (NO3 was way above 100).
It has taken me a lot longer than expected to get the here, but I think I'm on the right path. Next "minor" goal is to get rid of the RTA.

I've started to see good progress for the last week or two.
Lots of small patches not having RTA where it use to grow and longer between the glass cleaning (wasn't aware of this as a parameter before this tread). But also lots of the corals look better, and the KH comsumption slowely increase (increased calcification = more growth).

I changed the circulation pumps two weeks ago, which also have an impact, but if the RTA and cyano dissapears, or gets reduced to small patches, I'll consider approach of carbon dosing and Reef Actif to be a success

Thank you for your post. Paul & I are friends of several years. While in Long Island this summer, I visited him at his home on the North Shore. Yes, his wife is a Super Model and a very nice person.

Dosing phytoplankton is a type of live carbon dosing. Kudos to you,

 

[sixty_reefer]

I'm trying to get my tank back on track using TM Reef Actif, carbon dosing and dosing live phyto (750 ml/day). I've been dosing Reef Actif for 8 weeks now, starting with small amounts but are now at full dose.
Tank size is 750L (200G), sps dominated but with a lot of lps too, been up for almost 3 yeas now (huge issues with GHA and RTA first year) and are again having the joy of lots RTA again and some cyano after it almost crashed last summer, but are now succesfully adding coral I feed frozen food heavily and my fish are fat and healthy - They say Thanks to Paul B. ;-)
This summer my tank overheated for several weeks, due to the hot summer. I had no cooler , my house became very warm and I had to travel .... I lost like 80% corals and several fish - my tank crashed. I guess the heat started a bad spiral resulting in high ammonia and afterwards high P and NO3 (NO3 was way above 100).
It has taken me a lot longer than expected to get the here, but I think I'm on the right path. Next "minor" goal is to get rid of the RTA.

I've started to see good progress for the last week or two.
Lots of small patches not having RTA where it use to grow and longer between the glass cleaning (wasn't aware of this as a parameter before this tread). But also lots of the corals look better, and the KH comsumption slowely increase (increased calcification = more growth).

I changed the circulation pumps two weeks ago, which also have an impact, but if the RTA and cyano dissapears, or gets reduced to small patches, I'll consider approach of carbon dosing and Reef Actif to be a success

Really happy that all is going in the right path for you and that you are seeing positive results with the implementation of phytoplankton and reef actif. Could I ask, why you chose that approach? What’s the difference between doing glass maintenance between now and before?

 

[sixty_reefer]

I like this product description, I have ordered it and will receive it tomorrow morning. In my vegetable garden I will soak my spinach seeds prior to planting tomorrow. After I work out concentration of seaweed extract, I will begin with modest additions of extract. Since I will also receive Reef Actif the same day, I will add one of each product to my two oldest systems at 25 years for 75G display and 120G system with 120G display tank.

In another hobby of mine ( Bonsai) I use this once a week during growing season, terrestrials and aquatic environments have a very similar bacterial function.

 

[TokenReefer]

What kind of seaweed I wonder. Nori? Could a diy solution be made?

 

[sixty_reefer]

What kind of seaweed I wonder. Nori? Could a diy solution be made?

All types of seaweed and plants produce carbohydrates, it’s part of the carbon cycle.

it seems that this is not widely known as I would say this is the one cause of mortality in our systems wend using algaecides.
Killing large volume of algae will cause for large amounts of carbohydrates to be dissolved into the water column. Folks bottoming out nutrients wile killing large volume of algae is fairly common in our hobby and the fault is often given to the algaecide and not the nutrients released by the algae that will thrive bacteria numbers up.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Still better than having to clean the tank myself imo.

Happy to hear any thoughts from others

People have been trying to develop a repeatable 'no maintenance/great outcome' reefing system since the beginning of the hobby. While using a product like Bio-Aktiv has been shown to work as intended, it locks the reefer into the product (or something similar) to maintain the clean conditions.

This may be perfectly acceptable to the reef keeper and I make no judgement here, but the enjoyment/challenge in reef keeping for me personally is in the hands-on experience of keeping the system balanced with just the bare essentials over an extended period of time. Regular and consistent maintenance, when done correctly, dispenses with the need to 'Rip Clean' since the system is never allowed to digress that far towards eutrophication. This is especially important in pico and nano sized aquariums since the smaller volumes of water don't allow for longer periods of neglect.

 

[brandon429]

Well said

for fifty pages in the physical rip clean thread we are doing catch-up work for a massive amount of allowed/sinked and stored up waste. It was optional to choose to store up that much waste, the stick-stirring crowd doesn’t really need our rip cleans at all. They routinely translocate detritus from the middle sections of the sandbed to the filter media via the water column in very large tanks using dowel rods to simulate reef storm turnover events

 

[sixty_reefer]

People have been trying to develop a repeatable 'no maintenance/great outcome' reefing system since the beginning of the hobby. While using a product like Bio-Aktiv has been shown to work as intended, it locks the reefer into the product (or something similar) to maintain the clean conditions.

This may be perfectly acceptable to the reef keeper and I make no judgement here, but the enjoyment/challenge in reef keeping for me personally is in the hands-on experience of keeping the system balanced with just the bare essentials over an extended period of time. Regular and consistent maintenance, when done correctly, dispenses with the need to 'Rip Clean' since the system is never allowed to digress that far towards eutrophication. This is especially important in pico and nano sized aquariums since the smaller volumes of water don't allow for longer periods of neglect.

I understand your view, although I am in a different view as I use it to transform uneaten food into food for NPS corals and other filter feeders in a similar way to biofloc, I just thought that the basic functions could be helpful for others that have poor filtration, it’s fairly complicated to keep nutrients in suspense in soft corals systems for example as they require less flow. But yes it’s not a full replacement for maintenance it’s just another tool in the belt just like normal carbon dosing is a tool to keep nitrates and some phosphates in check. Biofloc uses molasses, tapioca and sucrose as source of carbohydrates that I find difficult to use in our reef system although with some work a diy could be developed from the basic function.

 

[MBruun]

Could I ask, why you chose that approach? What’s the difference between doing glass maintenance between now and before?

I've been dosing phyto (tetraselmis) for long time, both to support the microfauna, bringing fatty acids to the system, as a carbon source and for nutrint control.
Dosing carbohydrates in form of Reef Actif sounded like a super approach in order to convert "free nutrients" ,if you can call it that, into usefull nutrients. As I was already carbon dosing it seems to go hand-in-hand with that approach.
It was really nice to read this tread as it hit spot on the plan I have.
I have read several treads , also from you, about the subject as my tank have NOT been running as I had planned/hoped for. Now I'm even more convienced this is the way to go with my tank.

 

[MBruun]

About the glass cleaning. For the last two weeks or so, I don't have to clean the glass as often as before

 

[Garf]

About the glass cleaning. For the last two weeks or so, I don't have to clean the glass as often as before

That happens with algae scrubbers and dosing vinegar. Scrubber salesmen attribute this to lower nutrients, where in actual fact it’s more likely to be a thin bacterial film on the glass, preventing/slowing attachment.

 

[Timfish]

. . . there is many systems thriving in zero or near zero phosphates and nitrates, although no one explains in detail why that happens. . . .

"When I see the colors of some of these low nutrient tanks, I can't help but be reminded of bleached coral reefs. It should therefore not come as a surprise that feeding corals in such systems becomes a very important component in these systems. Though reefs are often catagorized as nutrient "deserts" the influx of nutrients in the form of particulates and plankton is quite high when the total volume of water passing over a reef is taken into consideration.

Our crystal-clear aquaria do not come close to the nutrient loads that swirl around natural reefs. And so when we create low-nutrient water conditions, we still have to deal with the rest of a much more complex puzzle. Much like those who run their aquarium water temperature close to the thermal maximums of corals walk a narrow tight rope, I can't help but think that low-nutrient aquariums may be headed down a similar path." Charles Delbeck, Coral Nov/Dec 2010, pg 127


If you look at what's posted by aquarists it seems most aquarists rarely think beyond the dissolved inorganic forms of nitrogen (DIN - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) and dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP - aka orthophsohtate, PO4). Nutrients processed in reef systems in reality include Particulate Organic Carbon (POC), Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC), Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC), Particulate Organic Nitrogen (PON), Dissolved organic Nitrogen (DON) Dissloved Inorganic Nitrogen (DIN) Particulate Organic Phosphate (POP) Dissolved Organic Phosphorus (DOP) and Dissolved Inorganic Phosphorus (DIP).

Here's fig 4 from this paper on phosphorus cycling in animals with simbionts:

 

[Nano sapiens]

I understand your view, although I am in a different view as I use it to transform uneaten food into food for NPS corals and other filter feeders in a similar way to biofloc, I just thought that the basic functions could be helpful for others that have poor filtration, it’s fairly complicated to keep nutrients in suspense in soft corals systems for example as they require less flow.

My take is that in a mature and properly cared for reef aquarium, the hobbyist added nutrients ('food stuffs') are ultimately utilized by resident bacteria which are then dispersed throughout the system with any type of flow (especially so in the case of water column living bacteria such as Pelagibacterales, and others). Since corals are adaptable mixotrophs (can utilize multiple food sources based on what is currently available), when given an abundance of suitable bacteria in their environment the bacteria can become a sizeable component of their nutritional profile.

And that's why I do not use or advocate using products that alter or destroy any part of a functioning resident microbiome.

 

[Nano sapiens]

"When I see the colors of some of these low nutrient tanks, I can't help but be reminded of bleached coral reefs. It should therefore not come as a surprise that feeding corals in such systems becomes a very important component in these systems. Though reefs are often catagorized as nutrient "deserts" the influx of nutrients in the form of particulates and plankton is quite high when the total volume of water passing over a reef is taken into consideration.

This is indeed true for newer set up reef aquaria, but often not for mature ones. And this is at the heart of Sixty_reefer's comment:

. . . there is many systems thriving in zero or near zero phosphates and nitrates, although no one explains in detail why that happens. . . .

I think the issue here is in considering just N, when all the products of the nitrogen cycle need to be considered. As has been stated in other threads, we tend to myopically overlook ammonia utilization since it isn't easily/reliably tested for in lower amounts when it is actually very important in completely understanding a system's nitrogen utilization.

If a source of ammonia is regularly available (and within appropriate levels) a mature reef system is capable of efficiently utilizing it 'upfront' and leaving little nitrite/nitrate in the water column. As long as the ammonia keeps on coming, there is no issue. But if it stops (lack of external food then lack of nutrients when all the most susceptable to starvation organisms have perished), and nitrate is also very low, then the corals will have to rely on their own stores (lipids, mostly) in order to get past the 'dry spell'. How long they can operate in starvation mode until they perish is perhaps a few weeks at most (species dependent).

I think of P (which has it's own cycle) at it's lower levels as the volume button on a radio (turn it up, and it gets louder...up to a certain limit). Corals are very efficient scavengers of P and they need very little to function normally.