Is chemi clean supposed to do this?

[jesseatam]

I followed the directions and dosed chemi clean in my system to solve a cyano issue I'm having. I dosed earlier today, now the water is tinted a red color like the cyano but what's worrying me is how everything in the tank is reacting. All the feathered sisters are retracted, anemones retracted, corals retracted, and my shrimp is kind of rocking back and forth. I'm very worried.

[jesseatam]

Could this be from a pH swing due to the lower oxygen levels caused by the chemiclean?

[brandon429]

that is likely invasive dinos, among the top invaders, and the medication used is contraindicated.

 

I recommend you proceed with surgical recovery of this system, and pretty darn fast. that will involve:

 

taking out fish holding in a bucket

 

taking our corals by themselves, no rocks, holding in sep bucket.

 

take rocks and wash them off manually using a brush and tons of clean saltwater, work them till clean, keep them in a bucket ready for re use.

 

take your entire sandbed out and rinse it under tap water, in buckets, till it runs totally clear. rinse it for half an hour if it takes, or two hours, clear is clear. uncloudable.

 

then rinse the sandbed a few times in saltwater, so the tap is gone.

 

wipe out the walls of that taken down tank with peroxide and paper towels, hit every glass surface w peroxide.

 

scrub that tank clean

 

put it back together only when clean

 

cloudless sand first

 

then rocks, which are clean.

 

refill with 100% new tank water.

 

add back corals when temps and salt are right

 

acclimate fish

 

never use that stuff again, even if it is cyano, do the above and you wont hardly ever see cyano.

 

*only 1% are serious about saving their tank and not under total doubt and would do any of that. The rest are going to do increments of that, your choice.

 

 

if my tank had the oxygen-sapping chemi clean added to a non receptive target, and any distress was noted, id not only take those steps above id follow up with another full water change about half a day after running the work above, because im a 1% reefer. my money worth too much to let a tank decide its own course.

[brandon429]

I want this tank challenge badly. I bragged earlier that dinos can be beaten in any reef by sheer will, and lots of people called me out for saying that.

 

if your other methods don't work, or if you start to experience loss or fish start to pant up top asking for a breath, lets save this tank.

 

You might need to do it twice, since we're retro acting a bit. this is all skip cycle work, documented if you want to see it ( large thread repeating this many tanks)

 

even the tap water part is practiced well. I use it, my reef is 12 yrs old. it got the tap and the hose in august, preventatively. there was no problem with it in august nor the prior ten augusts.

 

The number one thing above all is you should be taking entire tank actions, not just water actions. I am 100% certain of that, glad you posted before much more time passed. I don't think chemiclean is the right move here, a diagnostic test was required to differentiate spirulina (which it works on iirc) vs the other matted invaders.

 

I think this is true dinos, meaning serious time already passed and we should work it good.

[jesseatam]

You really think it's dinos? I have an airstone running currently to help with the oxygen issue. I'm not sure if I can or want to go through everything you said just yet, do you think throwing some carbon in would help with the situation?

[brandon429]

It might, and can't hurt to try. You can also do a basic WC of large volume, less work than total clean, if rescue is needed.

 

That deep work fixes the reason you added a medication though, but agreed it's large work rarely undertaken.

[MainelyReefer]

Following Brandon's instructions would definitely solve the issue, he lives for this.  Only things I'd change would be putting rocks down then sand incase livestock moves the sand and causes a rock tumble, and also would be hesitant to use tap unless you had a comprehensive test of its parameters as tap varies well to well and town to town.  He's literally offered to help so many people that he already knew you would respond asking if you could take less drastic measures and see similar results, IMO he knows his stuff, and while it may suck to carry out his plan it is as close to a definitive solution that I've seen/heard for most any nuisance in your tank and will likely yield the best long term results.  Good luck and steer clear of miracle additives like chemiclean... Atleast do a massive WC

[jesseatam]

Fire shrimp died and all the corals are on the edge, luckily no fish were in the tank. I'm throwing carbon back in and doing a 20% wc. I feel sick to my stomach, I can't believe that this happened. Would a reaction with dinos really cause this whole thing?

 

[MainelyReefer]

20% WC isn't that big, I'd go Atleast over 50% if you can.  Also an airstone would have helped before the shrimp died if it was low oxygen, sorry about the shrimp 

[xiaoxiy]

Honestly, given that things are going south, I'd personally do something similar to what Brandon posted as well. It will not only get rid of the chemiclean in your tank, but it should help with any toxins that are being released by the potential algae as well. 

 

Also, I was reading through your build thread and you have a QT tank set up don't you? I might even recommend rinsing the corals in fresh saltwater and moving them over to your QT as well unless you have copper or something in the QT tank.

 

Just FYI: I just finished a course of chemiclean today for my Cyano, and my water never turned red during the entire process. I did, however, siphon as much cyano as I could out of my tank before dosing the chemiclean.

 

[jesseatam]

The qt has not been touched by copper yet, I'm just worried about bringing the cyano/dinos into the qt if I transfer anything in there.

[markalot]

You needed to manually remove most of the cyano.  When you dosed, O2 levels drop dramatically which is why it's recommended to either run an airstone or keep the skimmer on but with the cup raised or removed. You mentioned in your build thread that your skimmer was broken, is this still the case? 

 

I don't know anything about dinos because I have never had them. I run algae infested tanks, which tends to keep dinos away.  Did you add anything that made the water too clean, like GFO or Phosguard?   Were you trying to hard to prevent the new tank uglies, which created this issue?  We all do, this isn't an insult. 

 

I would add carbon to remove the chemiclean and start doing back to back water changes to try and restore the quality of the water.  After that other can help diagnose if this is dinos and what to do about it.   

 

One very important lesson here is that it only takes a few minutes to wipe out a tank.  Your issue with cyano or dinos indicates some kind of imbalance and it's always best to first figure out why, or what you have, and then use treatments once everything is understood.  I've used chemiclean at almost full dose a few times, skimmer on, 50% water change ready to go if something went wrong.  It cleaned up my 40 for a few weeks, then cyano returned.  I just made sure my flow was good, increased it a bit with a gyre pump, and waited it out.  Took a few months but it finally faded and never returned. 

 

 

[jesseatam]

22 minutes ago, markalot said:

You needed to manually remove most of the cyano.  When you dosed, O2 levels drop dramatically which is why it's recommended to either run an airstone or keep the skimmer on but with the cup raised or removed. You mentioned in your build thread that your skimmer was broken, is this still the case? 

 

I don't know anything about dinos because I have never had them. I run algae infested tanks, which tends to keep dinos away.  Did you add anything that made the water too clean, like GFO or Phosguard?   Were you trying to hard to prevent the new tank uglies, which created this issue?  We all do, this isn't an insult. 

 

I would add carbon to remove the chemiclean and start doing back to back water changes to try and restore the quality of the water.  After that other can help diagnose if this is dinos and what to do about it.   

 

One very important lesson here is that it only takes a few minutes to wipe out a tank.  Your issue with cyano or dinos indicates some kind of imbalance and it's always best to first figure out why, or what you have, and then use treatments once everything is understood.  I've used chemiclean at almost full dose a few times, skimmer on, 50% water change ready to go if something went wrong.  It cleaned up my 40 for a few weeks, then cyano returned.  I just made sure my flow was good, increased it a bit with a gyre pump, and waited it out.  Took a few months but it finally faded and never returned. 

 

 

 The tank is almost a year old and I've never really tried to get the tank over it's ugly phases besides doing basic water changes and increasing flow.I had terrible algae outbreaks multiple times and cyano once before and waited them all out but the cyano never took over the rocks like it did this time. I don't understand why the outbreak was worse this time either as my nutrients were the lowest they've been, my stocking was the lightest it's been, and I've always been careful not to overfeed.

 

I was going to wait it out again but I've heard nothing but good things about chemiclean so I figured I might as well try it, I never thought it would cause something like this to happen.

 

I used up all the distilled water I had on hand and ending up changing out 7 gallons, the water I siphoned out looked bright pink in the bucket. I'm going to see how everything goes and if I need to I'll start doing waterchanges with tap.

[markalot]

It could be because it was dinos and not cyano, or mostly dinos with a little bit of cyano.  One day maybe we can understand why some tanks seem susceptible to these kinds of outbreaks.  You even started with live rock so the theory that dry rock and lack of microfauna can cause dinos doesn't apply here either IMO.

 

Here's an article on how one person beat them.  

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/how-i-beat-dinoflagellates-and-the-lessons-i-learned

 

 

[brandon429]

The tank is almost a year old and I've never really tried to get the tank over it's ugly phases

 

 

 

I want you to know that drives all the craziness ive ever put on the web.

Everything I type is anti farming, anti seeding, anti fragmenting, anti nice to anything but coralline and coral.

 

The fact your algae and bacterial mats came and went, to some degree, is exactly how every reefer on this planet was trained by reefers before them. To allow, and to take partial action, then to hope, with our investment that things balance.

 

And in 2001, those reefers were also saying small cannot work. That inconsistency, that luck, that external hoping locus of control over a tank also killed my reefbowl one, and I became manic against algae at that point.

I farmed my own red gelidium. I did not know I had permission to stab it out of my reef with a giant kitchen knife< not hyperbole, the rasping method.

 

Its abnormal to be algae free. the invaders on your tank belong on a reef, and an animal exists to take care of it. Us using purely nutrient modulation isn't only unnatural, doing the polar opposite of that is how I made a lifespan-less reef aquarium. Biological indefinite lifespan, uninvaded, is attainable and its the only way Ill ever, ever reef again having been burned in like 03 or something I cannot remember. Im willing to trade off barbarism for a reef that does what I tell it to do. If someone throws a nerf ball in the house without permission, that indeed could kill it.

[brandon429]

also, I think this is not cyano at all, I think this is dinos.

[xthunt]

It's cyano or spirulina. Same thing happened to me when I used erythromycin. Not as bad, but water def had a red/pink tint to it the day after. A few of my soft corals were upset, but nothing died, even my ceriths were acting like business as usual. When the cyano dies, it bleeds out the red color. After the red cleared, what was left of the cyano was just grayish green dead clumps. 

 

Not sure why anyone would assume this is dinos. I even put this stuff under a microscope  Put it in some rodi and it will bleed pink. 

 

Google search: Positive identification of cyanobacteria

[brandon429]

not a problem, but mine didn't turn red whatsoever and neither did the other chemiclean posts I saw, this one is still atypical even if it is cyano. The way it was expressing in stranded wavy lines with bubbles looked like dino threads...if not, this tank is still in cardiac arrest regardless, losses are being reported, and its decision time.

 

To simply have waited this long, for this much biomass to build, and then expect that to both degrade in the tank safely during treatment and be prevented from recurrence by that single move, its playing chess with the biology here.

Its fair to state that in our sand rinse threads, nothing dies and all invaders cease.

My reco about cleaning this entire system yesterday holds, ID off pics does vary fully agreed

 

I guess if this is the correct target, all that stuff w be dead and floating around no longer massed by today, ish.

[Clown79]

In the situation the tank is in and the amount of algae in there, a complete clean out is the cure to the problem.

 

I'd follow @brandon429 instructions, the only change I might add is placing rocks before the sand for stability and possibly doing  peroxide dip on the rocks.

 

It's a days work but it's worth it.

You'll save the tank and start fresh

[jesseatam]

48 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

The tank is almost a year old and I've never really tried to get the tank over it's ugly phases

 

 

 

I want you to know that drives all the craziness ive ever put on the web.

Everything I type is anti farming, anti seeding, anti fragmenting, anti nice to anything but coralline and coral.

 

The fact your algae and bacterial mats came and went, to some degree, is exactly how every reefer on this planet was trained by reefers before them. To allow, and to take partial action, then to hope, with our investment that things balance.

 

And in 2001, those reefers were also saying small cannot work. That inconsistency, that luck, that external hoping locus of control over a tank also killed my reefbowl one, and I became manic against algae at that point.

I farmed my own red gelidium. I did not know I had permission to stab it out of my reef with a giant kitchen knife< not hyperbole, the rasping method.

 

Its abnormal to be algae free. the invaders on your tank belong on a reef, and an animal exists to take care of it. Us using purely nutrient modulation isn't only unnatural, doing the polar opposite of that is how I made a lifespan-less reef aquarium. Biological indefinite lifespan, uninvaded, is attainable and its the only way Ill ever, ever reef again having been burned in like 03 or something I cannot remember. Im willing to trade off barbarism for a reef that does what I tell it to do. If someone throws a nerf ball in the house without permission, that indeed could kill it.

This is all very interesting, I would very much like to learn how you kept and maintained that tank.

44 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

also, I think this is not cyano at all, I think this is dinos.

It very well could be dinos, I just assumed cyano due to my own ignorance.

37 minutes ago, xthunt said:

It's cyano or spirulina. Same thing happened to me when I used erythromycin. Not as bad, but water def had a red/pink tint to it the day after. A few of my soft corals were upset, but nothing died, even my ceriths were acting like business as usual. When the cyano dies, it bleeds out the red color. After the red cleared, what was left of the cyano was just grayish green dead clumps. 

 

Not sure why anyone would assume this is dinos. I even put this stuff under a microscope  Put it in some rodi and it will bleed pink. 

 

Google search: Positive identification of cyanobacteria

Whatever it was is now reduced to the grayish green clumps like you said, I do see some ceriths moving and my hermit is responsive as well, brittle stars are out in the open though which is bad. My candy canes skeleton is showing and I'm assuming this is what people are referring to when they say their corals melt away, the euphyllia are also very retracted and I can see skeleton. The zoas, gsp, gorgonian, and RFA and all closed up. A couple feather dusters opened up again though which could be a sign of hope.

 

32 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

not a problem, but mine didn't turn red whatsoever and neither did the other chemiclean posts I saw, this one is still atypical even if it is cyano. The way it was expressing in stranded wavy lines with bubbles looked like dino threads...if not, this tank is still in cardiac arrest regardless, losses are being reported, and its decision time.

 

To simply have waited this long, for this much biomass to build, and then expect that to both degrade in the tank safely during treatment and be prevented from recurrence by that single move, its playing chess with the biology here.

Its fair to state that in our sand rinse threads, nothing dies and all invaders cease.

My reco about cleaning this entire system yesterday holds, ID off pics does vary fully agreed

 

I guess if this is the correct target, all that stuff w be dead and floating around no longer massed by today, ish.

 

22 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

In the situation the tank is in and the amount of algae in there, a complete clean out is the cure to the problem.

 

I'd follow @brandon429 instructions, the only change I might add is placing rocks before the sand for stability and possibly doing  peroxide dip on the rocks.

 

It's a days work but it's worth it.

You'll save the tank and start fresh

I very well might pull everything out but at that point I feel like I might as well scrap everything and start from scratch but with dry rock instead of live. As nice liverock is with the large biodiveristy of micro fauna it brings in I just don't know if its worth all the pests that come with it as well, there's also the fact that I actually hate sticking my hand in the tank due to not knowing what could be in there that I don't know about.

[xthunt]

Probably from massive die off. I think it's best to remove as much as possible before treating, to avoid this. 

 

I got this stuff in a few weeks after setting up a new tank (because of this stuff) with new sand and dry rock (after hitchhiking on coral frags from the old tank). I wouldn't scrap the tank just yet. TBH, when I treated with api erythromycin, I didn't change water for a week while I half dosed it every other day. I wanted every cell of this stuff dead. The pink water tint went away on it's own. I did get a very minor diatom and algae bloom afterwards. But my tank hadn't looked so good in a long time. Sand looked brand new. I started heavy water changes and running carbon after the week long treatment. I knew when I got it all out when my skimmer settled down. I haven't seen it back in about a month, and I truly believe I won't see it again, just seeing the carnage the chemical did to the cyano. Fwiw, chemiclean didn't work for me when I tried it a few months ago, which is why I used api's erythromycin. I don't have lps or sps, just soft coral. Some of mine looked horrible after treatment, but didn't die. After a month, my corals are good as before, and not a spec of the red stuff. 

 

 

[brandon429]

hey can we experiment with a restore though before you change it. I truly would choose what you have as a challenge over red gelidium that beat my tank once. or a worse strain of dinos

 

 

I only take a good stab at visual id guessing could easily be off, but the truth is this approach, of detailed parting and cleaning that I always try and get other distressed tanks to do, can be ran on my own system whether its under challenge or not.

so its a safe zone action, and a deliberate one too. not bad characteristics for a tanking scheme.

 

what I listed as action sets is a normal Tuesday for my reef

 

it only seems harsh, its not. it makes a reef live forever as a side effect but its high work loading as the tradeoff...always a tradeoff.  what is never a tradeoff is the amount of corals and years running these hand guided nano reefs produce, they'll outlive anything because we use work to force out some form of unluck that happened to us. internal, vs external locus of control is the most important trait an aquarist can have, in my opinion. if you make your tank do your bidding, and not accept its bidding, you've won.

 

 

 

the neat part is, our restore isn't a loss or a challenge to the system, its cleaning off live rocks so their porosity is reset; in articles on google scholar that specifically says increases nitrification and oxygenation of the system.

 

our system is making your invader numbers decrease to a few, not by slow timing but by force, then all prevention actions you install are automatically boosted in affect.

 

practicing skip cycle arrest cleaning is weight lifting, cardio and cross training for all upcoming reefing, even if we get lucky with future ones and they behave normal.

 

Either way, lets set a very high bar for what you want here, before you attempt a reset.

 

If you want to know what I think regarding delay action/catchup and # of full tank cleanings to earn restore, I predict maybe 4

 

So a few times you'll need to deep access, and guide, for having waited. 4 times perhaps, to 85% likely save this tank is what I truly think. you have test gold either way for us no matter if you do wind up w all new rocks. right now is where reefing muscles get flexed and tested and reinforced and sinewy

 

 

I use every feedback ever given to me in pics and long term control as a direct carryover to actions in my own tank. I use adaptive reefing, taken from the web not books, and the collective efforts from a thousand invaded tanks, as a direct means of attaining lifespan in my own tank. I try to simply do opposite of what they're all doing to attain a shorter, more invaded lifespan. I cannot think of any other way to trudge forward. when people figure out nutrient tuning, boosting, balancing as a means for invader control, I wont have to use this way.  good nuff till then heh. that is my complete reefing philosophy.  I would feel rather distraught internally if we could not save your tank through hand guiding, it means my core method is in challenge and my tank is at risk.

[jesseatam]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

hey can we experiment with a restore though before you change it. I truly would choose what you have as a challenge over red gelidium that beat my tank once. or a worse strain of dinos

 

 

I only take a good stab at visual id guessing could easily be off, but the truth is this approach, of detailed parting and cleaning that I always try and get other distressed tanks to do, can be ran on my own system whether its under challenge or not.

so its a safe zone action, and a deliberate one too. not bad characteristics for a tanking scheme.

 

what I listed as action sets is a normal Tuesday for my reef

 

it only seems harsh, its not. it makes a reef live forever as a side effect but its high work loading as the tradeoff...always a tradeoff.  what is never a tradeoff is the amount of corals and years running these hand guided nano reefs produce, they'll outlive anything because we use work to force out some form of unluck that happened to us. internal, vs external locus of control is the most important trait an aquarist can have, in my opinion. if you make your tank do your bidding, and not accept its bidding, you've won.

 

 

 

the neat part is, our restore isn't a loss or a challenge to the system, its cleaning off live rocks so their porosity is reset; in articles on google scholar that specifically says increases nitrification and oxygenation of the system.

 

our system is making your invader numbers decrease to a few, not by slow timing but by force, then all prevention actions you install are automatically boosted in affect.

 

practicing skip cycle arrest cleaning is weight lifting, cardio and cross training for all upcoming reefing, even if we get lucky with future ones and they behave normal.

 

Either way, lets set a very high bar for what you want here, before you attempt a reset.

 

If you want to know what I think regarding delay action/catchup and # of full tank cleanings to earn restore, I predict maybe 4

 

So a few times you'll need to deep access, and guide, for having waited. 4 times perhaps, to 85% likely save this tank is what I truly think. you have test gold either way for us no matter if you do wind up w all new rocks. right now is where reefing muscles get flexed and tested and reinforced and sinewy

 

 

I use every feedback ever given to me in pics and long term control as a direct carryover to actions in my own tank. I use adaptive reefing, taken from the web not books, and the collective efforts from a thousand invaded tanks, as a direct means of attaining lifespan in my own tank. I try to simply do opposite of what they're all doing to attain a shorter, more invaded lifespan. I cannot think of any other way to trudge forward. when people figure out nutrient tuning, boosting, balancing as a means for invader control, I wont have to use this way.  good nuff till then heh. that is my complete reefing philosophy.  I would feel rather distraught internally if we could not save your tank through hand guiding, it means my core method is in challenge and my tank is at risk.

So all of that is regular maintenance on your tank? That's incredible. I would honestly be all for the rinsing and scrubbing everything it's just the size of my tank makes it more daunting. I'm not saying my tank it's big but hand scrubbing and rinsing 30lbs of rock and sand each sounds like a lot. If the system was smaller like a 10 gallon I would do that in a heartbeat but something 3 times the size is quite a bit more daunting to me. Also getting my hands on that amount of water, I guess I could just refill my bucket over and over from the shower though.

[jesseatam]

Also on a positive note, a couple zoas opened up a bit so there's some hope.

[brandon429]

When the new tank is set up, if some of this shows up say on the bed or rock area, what’s the plan