Sadies Biocube 16

[sadie]

2 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Are you saying there’s still a rock flower nem in the empty tank? If it’s on the glass you may be able to just use something like a credit card to slide under and carefully remove it? 

we kinda liked where he stuck himself, it's kinda cool to see him, so I'm hoping he stays there.  I added enough water for a heater, but oh my, I cleaned out all three chambers.  My arm fits all the way down, I forgot about the false bottom on the right side, as I added some heated water, all this gross stuff came out!!

 

I feel like crying...I will most likely have to take out all the sand again and wash out the back chamber.

[sadie]

When I rinsed the sand, I did it outside by the hose.  Every time I dumped the bucket I picked up a stone form my garden and put it in a bowl.  I just counted the stones-229.  That's how many times I rinsed the sand and it still didn't come clear. 🤬

 

 

[sadie]

I think right now I am going to start picking the algae off the LR, hope that goes better then rinsing the sand.  Still not sure what I am going to do about the gross chamber of the false bottom.

[sadie]

Oh my goodness I am DONE!!  I started at 9:15 this morning.  Had one break for supper.  I am exhausted  will post everything tomorrow,

[sadie]

here is my rip clean journey.  I'll start by saying I will defiantly do things different if I ever have to do this again.  I underestimated a few things.

1. How many things were actually plugged in (heaters, pumps, chiller etc).  As I'm pulling wet things out, I had no place prepared for them so I stuck them in the trays my water buckets were in.

2. Removing my chiller was a PITA.  I should have done it the night before.

3.  I thought it would take about 2 hours to rasp the rocks...it took waaay longer.  I could have done this the day before I think and put them back in the tank.  Then did everything else the next day.

 

That being said I did make up the perfect amount of salt water.  I made up 15 gal in 3 5 gal buckets.  I also had the perfect amount of RODI water on hand with 1 gal to spare.  I would of had more, but there was a woops, more like a holy crap, what the heck, but oh well.

 

 

[sadie]

1. I drained my water from the tank into a bucket that would hold my live stock.  the rest of the water I drained into a 5 gal bucket to use as rinsing water.

 

2. I then moved everything over with heater and power head.

 

3. I wiped out the tank with vinegar and soaked the back wall with vinegar soaked paper towels.  I had to do this 3x for 20 min each to get the coraline algae off.  I scrubbed with a hard plastic scrubber and still couldn't get it all off.

 

 

[sadie]

4. I rinsed the sand in a 5 gal bucket.  At first I was filling the bucket half way, but we have well water and our neighbors ran dry one year so I thought I should use less.  I added enough water to cover the sand by 2-3" and then swirled and mixed the sand.  I had to go up stairs every 15-20 minutes to spray my little RFA that was stuck on the tank glass.  I did this for 4 hours and it still did not come clean. I rinsed it 229X.  No lie.  I put a pebble in a bowl every time I dumped it.

 

 

 

 

[sadie]

5. decided to put the sand back in the clean tank along with enough water to cover the sand and my RFA to add a heater and pump.  When I did this brown gunk spilled out of the bottom chamber.  I forgot about the false bottom.  I little arms so I can fit them all the way down the back chambers.  I wiped them clean with a wet face cloth, but forgot about that chamber.  I wanted to cry.  I didn't know what to do at this point so I left it and started working on the rocks.

 

6.  I took a steak knife (don't tell my husband...) and scraped the algae off the rocks.  I started with the biggest bottom rock it had no coral.  It took me 35min to scrape.  It is tricky, these roacks ahve more nooks and crannies then Thomas' English Muffins!!  I used a squirt bottle with salt water to wash the algae off the rock and down the sink.  It worked really well.

 

7.  I used a pipette to put peroxide on the places the algae was growing.  I let this sit for 5 minutes before rinsing it in salt water and putting it in the tank.

[sadie]

8. I rasped, rinsed, peroxide, rinsed all my rock.  The hardest and longest was the last rock I did.  I took me about an hour.  I have 5 RFA on it and a toad stool.  It was trickly to get close to the RFA, but not hurt the RFA with either the knife or the peroxide.

 

9. I did the rest of my little rock with coral on them.  My duncan with RFA, my GSP and the 2 islands on the back wall with mushrooms.  

 

I forgot to mention at some point before add the LR back in the tank I added enough water to run my heater and wave maker.

 

 

 

 

[sadie]

10.  Once all my rock and coral were back in my tank I turned it on and filled it.  I did one more test for salinity and temp and everything matched perfect so I put my CUC and fish in the tank.

 

I started this at 9:15 AM.  I took an hour off for supper.  I finished at 9:40 PM.  EVERY muscle in my body hurts this morning.  There were times I looked at the mess all around me and thought "What did I do".  There was one time I felt like crying and just walking away.  BUT now I am sitting here in front of my BEAUTIFUL tank and I am soooo glad I did it.  

 

I couldn't get the water as clear as I wanted so I think the water will be a little cloudy when the lights go on.  I might run some Purigen or carbon to clear that up.

 

I couldn't get all the algae off the rocks, now that they are in the water I can see strands of algae.  I will tweeze those off.  I have the white light schedule shortened till tomorrow.  When the white lights come on I will post another picture of before and after.

[sadie]

OH... I never did say what I did about the brown goo that came out of that chamber.  I wanted to just siphon it up and go on, but I rinsed that sand for FOUR HOURS and I didn't want it to be for nothing.  I siphoned what little water was in the tank out, I pulled out all the sand ( At this point my little RFA jumped off the glass.)  I took off the hood of the tank and brought the whole tank down to my hose. I sprayed every which way I could into that chamber till the water ran clear. 

 

I dried the whole inside and wiped it down with vinegar AGAIN and rinsed the sand in the bucket 10 more time.  I almost forgot to rinse the tap water out of the sand, but luckily did remember.  I used 2 gallons of Distilled water.  I got about 4 rinsing's out of a gallon, so I rinsed the sand 8 more times with the distilled water.  Put the sand back in the tank and that's when I added a bunch of water.

[sadie]

Here is a picture a couple days before the rip clean and a picture from today.  The water is a little cloudy as I thought it would be.  It should clear up in a day or two.  I was having problems with GHA and I can't find the picture where it was crazy out of control.  You couldn't see the rock or very many coral it was so bad.  The first picture is actually after I scrubbed it all off the rocks out of desperation, then I was manually removing it daily so it didn't look so bad.  But when I was sick and couldn't remove it for a week, that's the first picture.

 

 

[Deputy_Pooh]

2 hours ago, sadie said:

Here is a picture a couple days before the rip clean and a picture from today.  The water is a little cloudy as I thought it would be.  It should clear up in a day or two.  I was having problems with GHA and I can't find the picture where it was crazy out of control.  You couldn't see the rock or very many coral it was so bad.  The first picture is actually after I scrubbed it all off the rocks out of desperation, then I was manually removing it daily so it didn't look so bad.  But when I was sick and couldn't remove it for a week, that's the first picture.

 

 

Nice. 

[brandon429]

Sadie I’m so happy to see your command over the tank you fought through the doldrums portion of a rip clean and really hammered back the tank into control everything is wonderful 

 

 

a Duncan coral being willing to open up that fast means he’s happy along with the others, it’s a remark on good water params and safe conditions 

 

it’s really great and now if you were to use that pipette to direct a little thawed high quality frozen coral food mix right into each coral, they’ll begin a new mass phase and you’re making use of the very waste-free system ideally 

 

you’ve done a great job and when I get a chance to make an article about rip cleaning your tank pic succession shown above will be included in post #1 along with Murph’s. His and your tanks are the first rip cleans in a long time on the site and you both featured ordered step pictures others can use to copy 

[sadie]

29 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

Sadie I’m so happy to see your command over the tank you fought through the doldrums portion of a rip clean and really hammered back the tank into control everything is wonderful 

 

 

a Duncan coral being willing to open up that fast means he’s happy along with the others, it’s a remark on good water params and safe conditions 

 

it’s really great and now if you were to use that pipette to direct a little thawed high quality frozen coral food mix right into each coral, they’ll begin a new mass phase and you’re making use of the very waste-free system ideally 

 

you’ve done a great job and when I get a chance to make an article about rip cleaning your tank pic succession shown above will be included in post #1 along with Murph’s. His and your tanks are the first rip cleans in a long time on the site and you both featured ordered step pictures others can use to copy 

Thanks Brandon429 for all your help.  It took way longer then I thought and I knew it was going to take a while.  I skipped feeding today.  I will feed everyone and all the coral tomorrow.  I still have some algae removal to do manually that I couldn't get because it was so close to the coral and RFA.  The rest my CUC should be able to take care of now.

 

It was well worth all the work, or at least I hope it is.  If the algae comes back in a week I'm gonna cry.😅  But I don't think it will. 

 

thanks again!!

[DevilDuck]

 Looks fantastic! Are you going to keep the back clean? I think the coralline will come back fairly quickly. That stuff just seems to love growing on plastic. Hopefully it will out compete the gha.

 

 

[kimdawg]

Tank looks great.  I feel your pain, I did this whole process with my 75 gallon about a month ago.  It took the better part of two days to get it done.  I am so happy with the results and I am sure you will be too.

[sadie]

9 hours ago, DevilDuck said:

 Looks fantastic! Are you going to keep the back clean? I think the coralline will come back fairly quickly. That stuff just seems to love growing on plastic. Hopefully it will out compete the gha.

 

 

thanks, I do love it with the black, looks so clean and the coral just pop, but coraline does grow like crazy in my tank.  It would drive me crazy trying to keep it clean.  I do like the look of the croaline too.  there are so many different colors.

[sadie]

9 hours ago, kimdawg said:

Tank looks great.  I feel your pain, I did this whole process with my 75 gallon about a month ago.  It took the better part of two days to get it done.  I am so happy with the results and I am sure you will be too.

I don't think I have finger prints anymore, next time I will stir the sand with something or wear gloves!

I can't imagine doing a 75 gal. 😵  I did not want to keep going after I took the break for supper, but we take care of special needs adults.  I had buckets with wires, pumps all over the place. In the kitchen, in the bath room and one of them is physically handicapped and would not be able to get around with the buckets where they were.  So I HAD to finish in one day.  I am SOOOOO happy with the results.  I can't stop staring at it.  It's so nice to look at it and smile instead of think oh crap I have to tweeze again!

[sadie]

I put 2 carbon filter floss in my tower and my tank is just about crystal clear this morning.  ☺️  I fed everyone (went a little crazy with it being Easter and all).  Everyoneis happy.

 

 

[sadie]

I've changed my lighting schedule so much lately dealing with all the algae, I forgot what my original schedule was.  So I typed it in my search engine and my own post from Jan 22, 2019 came up!😅

[sadie]

My tank is soooo happy!!  My water is crystal clear.  My RFAs are so big now!  They will move if they start to get crowded, right?  I spot feed them 2-3x a week, but my little green one looks smaller.  Maybe it's just that the others are looking so big?

[banasophia]

1 minute ago, sadie said:

My tank is soooo happy!!  My water is crystal clear.  My RFAs are so big now!  They will move if they start to get crowded, right?  I spot feed them 2-3x a week, but my little green one looks smaller.  Maybe it's just that the others are looking so big?

Yes, they’ll move if they’re not happy. They look great right now! 

[sadie]

Just now, banasophia said:

Yes, they’ll move if they’re not happy. They look great right now! 

Thanks, I have never seen them so big.  I can't stop staring at my tank. 😁  I want to get more coral.  I couldn't add any for a while cause m y tank was so bad. I might go to the store that's an hour drive this weekend.  They have a good variety and nice looking coral.  I would like to get a frogspawn or candy cane.  I miss my daisy coral, I really liked that one. 

[brandon429]

You had to truly press through the doldrums of disassembly to earn those results Sadie I agree that’s shocking coral extension and clarity you directly earned 

 

 

any form of failure to press through that rinse would be a recycle, and pressing through it as you did gets the polar opposite effect, the reef fountain of youth. Can’t wait to feature your details when I get a chance to make some rip clean workups for the site many hundreds of tanks will be saved seeing your work