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Weekly Water changes


Lawlboom

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On February 23, 2017 at 5:41 PM, brandon429 said:

I do the max, 100% water changes plus tap water rinsing of my whole sandbed all at once...then saltwater rinse, then reassemble all corals and rocks back on crystal white sand. it gets me the longest interval in between work to rip change it 100% or 200% back to back full flushing changes. that's about as mean as one can get, I agree no kid glove water changes for my reef its bulletproof due to fringe reef living.

Wow that sounds like a lot of work. How often do you do all that?

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Annually or biannually 

 

I spend much more time convincing others to do the same so their tank won't be wrecked look at Donald's post here for ex...the typical reefing mode would have had him buy something to put in the water and wait 

http://reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/page-6

 

look how many rinsers we have in that thread it's doser free

 

its vodka free 

 

vibrant free 

 

invader free :)

 

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39 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

Annually or biannually 

 

I spend much more time convincing others to do the same so their tank won't be wrecked look at Donald's post here for ex...the typical reefing mode would have had him buy something to put in the water and wait 

http://reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/page-6

 

look how many rinsers we have in that thread it's doser free

 

its vodka free 

 

vibrant free 

 

invader free :)

 

Interesting idea. My pico is having a GHA outbreak even though nitrate and phosphate tests always come back 0 and 0.02-0.04, respectively.

 

I'm about to transfer my hard corals to my new tank, which will run bare bottom. I'll repurpose the old tank into a zoa garden. Do you think if I can replace/remove the sandbed in the old tank AND scrub my live rocks AND deep clean the tank in the sink at the same time? It's a 5G water volume with one clownfish.

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I would truly savor those pics dandelion and link them to a few choice threads:   fully believe you can have GHA with low to no nutrients -before- the invasion

 

if we all went snorkeling in Fiji right now with our API phosphate checkers and API nitrate checkers we'd be swimming in totally clean waters, yet below us parrotfish and urchins and millions of tangs rip algae off the reef for aeons, all in those 'clean' waters

 

 

there are reserves of nutrients not in solution which thankfully we can see...they can be bioinsulated to some degree based on conditions such that a huge potential of waste in a sandbed packed and tamped into place never shows as a po4 spike until someone partially disturbs it for a cleaning for ex

 

in other cases algae are just simply able to catch their own food (detritus floats by, gets caught in algae strands the keeper has left in, particle degrades on site to base elements and nitrogen for plant feed, too miniscule to read on API) <----that really does occur

 

I claim you can beat your method without dosers and antibiotics by handling your live rock like a dentist handles our teeth, roughly and a bit of bleeding afterwards.  brushing off your algae is the dentist just brushing your teeth and leaving the plaque in place

 

 

but if you set that live rock out on the counter, and use a steak knife tip to score into the rock top layer where it grabs, then you are using the same technique a dentist does when they score plaque off teeth with a profiangle sharp tool

 

the scraped reef isn't a brushed reef, its damaged a bit so the plant is destroyed

 

brushing is mowing, leaves the holdfasts to regrow

 

the final nuke trick is to have 35% peroxide from the health food store ready (and then dump it out after use because its too dangerous w any kids around if applic I wont even store it) and apply it straight onto scraped area, to kill off leftovers.

 

that spot can then be planted with corals to work on future exclusion...I would enjoy pics of that so greatly before and afters

 

*wanted to list from prior threads how people have gone wrong in the approach you are planning. for sure it can work, but when it didn't, unaccounted for detritus was always the root:

 

-one poster didn't have enough saltwater on hand to rinse out his tap rinsed sandbed. he did blast clean it like above, but he left some in due to partial post rinsing and set his stuff back on top of chlorine water. no deaths, but cloudy mad tank for a couple days and we made him change water like CPR = tired of bucket patrol to save his tank

 

-one poster was retro cleaning from years of hands off state in a 280 gallon setup. the GHA had stopped the pore exchange in the live rocks, and live rocks generate actual waste (the animals encamped) so they were literally plugged up. Ammonia event due to rotting waste store liberation

The rocks were set uncleaned into a holding bucket w fish

 

all fish died due to the rocks likely having crud up on the bottom, and leaking out the pores now opened a little due to the relocation, so from now one we house fish separately not knowing each person's live rock plugging condition.

 

one poster here missed a huge amnt of detritus stored in their sump, an amount so massive when the rinsed bed was reinstalled and pumps + on a blizzard of rotting plant bits and meat was cast about the tank like spaghetti was dumped in the display. such a huge store of waste I now retro think the sandbed wasn't a big risk for the tank :) but nonetheless that was a recycle and loss event. you can skip cycle clean and tool the rocks clean if youll make sure to house all holding animals away from detritus, and put no detritus back into the new DT

 

 

 

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Regarding the sandbed rinsing: when I do water change on my larger system I always suck up a portion of the sand bed, pour out the water (and some dust), and rinse the sand in the bucket under hot tap water. I try to rinse them off with RO/DI water afterwards, but sometimes when I'm lazy I just try to strain out as much tap water from the sand as I can. Never had any problems. So I agree with your sand blasting as long as you blast it up real good and not leave any detritus.

 

But for the rock cleaning part, shen you do it do you do it on all rocks in the system? I'm afraid the cleaning + peroxide treatment will kill enough beneficial bacteria that it causes a mini cycle.

 

i suppose I can always put some ceramic rings into the filtration chamber temporarily for a couple of weeks before the deep cleaning and hope there're enough bacterial colonization I'm there in case the live rocks are nuked.

 

 

10 hours ago, brandon429 said:

I would truly savor those pics dandelion and link them to a few choice threads:   fully believe you can have GHA with low to no nutrients -before- the invasion

 

if we all went snorkeling in Fiji right now with our API phosphate checkers and API nitrate checkers we'd be swimming in totally clean waters, yet below us parrotfish and urchins and millions of tangs rip algae off the reef for aeons, all in those 'clean' waters

 

 

there are reserves of nutrients not in solution which thankfully we can see...they can be bioinsulated to some degree based on conditions such that a huge potential of waste in a sandbed packed and tamped into place never shows as a po4 spike until someone partially disturbs it for a cleaning for ex

 

in other cases algae are just simply able to catch their own food (detritus floats by, gets caught in algae strands the keeper has left in, particle degrades on site to base elements and nitrogen for plant feed, too miniscule to read on API) <----that really does occur

 

I claim you can beat your method without dosers and antibiotics by handling your live rock like a dentist handles our teeth, roughly and a bit of bleeding afterwards.  brushing off your algae is the dentist just brushing your teeth and leaving the plaque in place

 

 

but if you set that live rock out on the counter, and use a steak knife tip to score into the rock top layer where it grabs, then you are using the same technique a dentist does when they score plaque off teeth with a profiangle sharp tool

 

the scraped reef isn't a brushed reef, its damaged a bit so the plant is destroyed

 

brushing is mowing, leaves the holdfasts to regrow

 

the final nuke trick is to have 35% peroxide from the health food store ready (and then dump it out after use because its too dangerous w any kids around if applic I wont even store it) and apply it straight onto scraped area, to kill off leftovers.

 

that spot can then be planted with corals to work on future exclusion...I would enjoy pics of that so greatly before and afters

 

*wanted to list from prior threads how people have gone wrong in the approach you are planning. for sure it can work, but when it didn't, unaccounted for detritus was always the root:

 

-one poster didn't have enough saltwater on hand to rinse out his tap rinsed sandbed. he did blast clean it like above, but he left some in due to partial post rinsing and set his stuff back on top of chlorine water. no deaths, but cloudy mad tank for a couple days and we made him change water like CPR = tired of bucket patrol to save his tank

 

-one poster was retro cleaning from years of hands off state in a 280 gallon setup. the GHA had stopped the pore exchange in the live rocks, and live rocks generate actual waste (the animals encamped) so they were literally plugged up. Ammonia event due to rotting waste store liberation

The rocks were set uncleaned into a holding bucket w fish

 

all fish died due to the rocks likely having crud up on the bottom, and leaking out the pores now opened a little due to the relocation, so from now one we house fish separately not knowing each person's live rock plugging condition.

 

one poster here missed a huge amnt of detritus stored in their sump, an amount so massive when the rinsed bed was reinstalled and pumps + on a blizzard of rotting plant bits and meat was cast about the tank like spaghetti was dumped in the display. such a huge store of waste I now retro think the sandbed wasn't a big risk for the tank :) but nonetheless that was a recycle and loss event. you can skip cycle clean and tool the rocks clean if youll make sure to house all holding animals away from detritus, and put no detritus back into the new DT

 

 

 

 

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That's a valid concern, it's safe prep to reference the peroxide thread here in the disease forum or if anyone googles pest algae challenge thread another sixty pages comes up to show there has never been a cycle event from any form of peroxide use at 3℅ in its history

 

In fact the only documented cycle event comes from a time a person accidentally dumped three quarts of 35 from a drip doser setup all into their tank. In our bacteria thread we list only meds, drying and massive temp extremes sustained as actions that can cause loss of systemic bacteria to the point we can measure a cycle. I wouldn't place any form of peroxide use on that list, the rock simply has too many layers of life for the brief rinse to sterilize it.

 

 

Rinsing it all off before put back seals the deal nicely whether 3 or 35%

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