Sadies Biocube 16

[sadie]

17 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

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

I can't thank you enough!!  It was worth all the work.  I have tried so many things with no results.  The algae would come back in a couple days with either dinos or cyano.  I LOVE to look at my tank again!

 

I did mean to ask you when I should do my next WC.  I was doing 20% every other week.  And what do I do for sand Maintenace going forward?  I usually vacuum the surface of my sand sucking up anything that settled on my sandbed.

 

THANKS AGAIN!!

[brandon429]

It’s your call any tuning you want to experiment with is now not destructive to the system. My rip clean is all of two weeks old and my glass is back to scummy again not because the job didn’t work but because I got busy and left food in the tank this whole time lol. I used the clean system to be lazy on it now I need to just take out corals, set aside, wipe off the walls inside while drained with a wet paper towel soaked in peroxide to burn scum off, set back corals and refill and it’ll be laser clear again. Sand won’t need touching for like ten more months. 
 

 

so if you choose to keep up or even increase water changes % and frequency then your laser clean glass holds longer, but this is always cyclic the dirty condition will always creep back up over time, at different times home to home. The key is all rip cleans are refreshing, regenerative, never harmful you’ll just need to cheat it clean again when the time is right.

 

be lifting out rocks and rasping touch up areas I don’t expect one pass to forever kill the gha but it’ll help big time this first pass. We expect touch up work on all rip cleans, few are a one pass fix. The key difference now is siphoning up an area of sand, or lifting out rocks to guide one even cleaner and setting it back, doesn’t stir up and mix waste around the system you can just work things as needed without a big outbreak from wastes being mixed around. It’s funny the first thing I did after my laser clear rip clean was neglect the system all over again but I’ve already got marked coral growth on all sps and lps by leaving food in at an elevated level

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sadie]

It's been a week since my rip clean and I am LOVING my tank.  It took my white toadstool a bit to open up and it's still not fully open. My green one keeps opening, but then the hermits walk all over him.  I couldn't scrape all the algae off the toadstools plug for fear I would slash my toadstool.  My hermit crabs are eating up the GHA.

 

My yellow mushroom on the left island hasn't been so big in FOREVER!!  Can't wait to get a few more coral.  I was gonna go crazy this summer, but I think I will keep it simple.

[DevilDuck]

Wow all the RFA's look super happy! I think you need a mini maxi carpet in there too or some porclein crabs.

[brandon429]

Don’t be despaired when some cyano comes back, insert siphon hose and take it right up / a prediction for next month 

 

it’ll be so simple to hand guide out any regrowths in the small setup and I just cleaned out mine too, to get caught up 

 

it’s still not as bright as yours is though!

[joshthebox]

1 hour ago, sadie said:

It's been a week since my rip clean and I am LOVING my tank.  It took my white toadstool a bit to open up and it's still not fully open. My green one keeps opening, but then the hermits walk all over him.  I couldn't scrape all the algae off the toadstools plug for fear I would slash my toadstool.  My hermit crabs are eating up the GHA.

 

My yellow mushroom on the left island hasn't been so big in FOREVER!!  Can't wait to get a few more coral.  I was gonna go crazy this summer, but I think I will keep it simple.

Love the RFAs! 

[sadie]

1 hour ago, DevilDuck said:

Wow all the RFA's look super happy! I think you need a mini maxi carpet in there too or some porclein crabs.

Thanks.  I was looking at a mini maxi, or a short tentacle plate coral.  

49 minutes ago, joshthebox said:

Love the RFAs! 

Thanks, I am loving them too!!

[brandon429]

Sadie I have very serious information for you to consider which impacts your enjoyment of the hobby after your manual cleaning.

 

 

In other recent rip cleans besides yours, everything went 180 degrees opposite of anything you and I have ever discussed about rip cleaning and I'm wanting to protect your enjoyment of the hobby by discussing opposing attitudes and the outcomes they convey into a reef tank in a home

 

You must develop will and resolve right now, before the regrowth test comes for your perfect system.  You're at sixteen gallons it'll be a cakewalk. For owners of large tanks who recently did rip cleans, it’s too much work to insert a siphon hose and take up a couple small mats of reformed cyano / a 6 minute effort when the strands were tiny 

 

 

it’s too hard to reach in and scrape off GHA that came back in a tiny patch. Try to imagine a lawncare approach where you agree to spend one weekend removing dandelions and weeds and then if any pop up again, ever, your next plan is to literally do nothing and think that allowing dandelions to wreck your yard again is going to somehow self cure. 
 

 

people will fight tooth and nail to pin responsibility of their lawn on other conditions but it’s really just up to the owner, same for a reef tank.  If a guy down the block has perfect fescue and does no work, does that mean everyone on the block can simply cease all efforts and get the same results? What if someone might actually have to work to maintain a perfect Bermuda lawn? Both can have a beautiful yard if they simply will it even if luck isn’t doing the work for them.

 

You have a choice right now to be re invaded by July, or to be this clean as you post now by July and for every coming month--- its a choice you make now. A reef tank cannot overpower human will,  human will folds to a reef tank, that's how invasion biology works. For any large tank owners currently refusing to garden their reefs, the responsibility lies solely with the tank owner. If their yards are filthy just the same while the neighbors shine, same locus of responsibility is in play. 

 

If your home setting Sadie didn't foster algae and cyano you'd never need a rip clean. What we did was internal to your tank; we didn't change one iota the external supports that will slowly direct your tank back to invaded, though it shines now in April. You get to figure that out, it's your prevention challenge and since I only live in my home I'm not able to determine the myriad causes people have for their algae. We instate the clean condition; the keeper keeps it by force until they find the lucky prevention combo and no work follow up is needed. 

 

You don't strike me as someone who would go through this effort only to sit back and refuse to clean your system as needed- while the external causes remain uninspected, unchanged. With a nano this small it'd be a crime to do so.

 

We're depending on you in our big work thread shown here, last page, to show readers how resolve alone will never have your tank wrecked again. I'm hoping you're that ready and willing to resist temptation to ever let it go again. Your tank is shown on post #922 on this page. 

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/

 

Having an invaded reef tank is a choice, it's not biology or chemistry. Biology and chemistry and luck and intuition are involved in prevention where no manual cleaning is required; but they have no bearing on whether or not a tank is invaded. You can simply will a wrecked tank into a fixed tank in one day, we saw you do this last week. You can be removing ANY growback strands weekly with a mere 2 minute effort, or you can dig in heels and let the tank wreck all over again back to square one- readers need to see this is a simple *choice* and we need someone determined to not let a box of water get the best of them. I'm really really hoping you like this clean condition so much that you simply couldn't stand to undo it with passivity, if I'm right and you're this ready to maintain control over your scape then you'll have the prime winning example for our rip clean article coming soon. Before I write it, I'm needing to establish a pattern of will, command and control. I'll need to get one or two more nano-reef.com specific rip cleans showing post- work resolve before I write it because readers benefit most from seeing patterns like the massive reef2reef rip clean thread, single examples aren't where the proof is found. 

 

After all we've discussed and imparted to your reef investment I hope it's clear all we've really done is shift the locus of responsibility directly to you and away from any external causes that formerly had you liking your reef less than you do now.  Internal vs external locus of control is a responsibility shift before its a matter of chemistry and biology, that's the hidden secret to being uninvaded and its the #1 reason my pico has ran seventeen years without being lost to an invasion. I don't bother to verify my source water is perfect 0/0 tds; that's external. I don't care if my kessils are running too white vs all blue and that causes my growback: that's external. If my manual control intervals were too often then I'd inspect and correct those external causes but once a year rip cleans aren't too much work at all, and I'm simply willing to do incremental guiding once a week as so many reefers agree to do- and it works as a perfect pattern for me and hundreds of others you can directly read it above. 

 

 

If anything I've typed just now does not make sense let me know which portion was confusing

 

If what I wrote and linked was as clear as day then you'll never have a wrecked reef tank ever again.  Some people are offended to be told they’re fundamentally responsible for how their reef tank looks; some are thankful. Me personally I’m just happy to know there’s a guaranteed way to never lose my pico that is until an errant nerf ball pass takes it out one day or a bad crash from indoor drone racing lol. And when it happens, I’ll be blaming nobody but the dude who allows the nerfing or the dude at the commands of the air toy. I readily accept before all my peers the sole responsibility of my vase to be shiny happy at all inspection intervals.

 

how anyone could reef any other way than that I find shocking and offensive lol.

[sadie]

Brandon429 thanks for the post.  In no way did I think the rip clean was a magic cure or a fix all.  I have a vegetable garden.  When I first started gardening, I weeded with a hoe.  It worked and my garden looked nice. but I had to weed like every other day.  My husband (then boyfriend) gave this weird looking hoe and said it worked better, but I didn't listen.  One day my husband helped me in the garden and he used his weird "hoe".  His weeds did not come back for a whole week!!  My hoe just cut the heads off the weeds while his hoe actually went under the dirt and up rooted the weed causing it to dry out and die in the sun.  I now use the weird hoe.

 

When people tell me how nice my garden looks and ask me why- I tell them I weed it.  They kinda get disappointed and say- oh.  😅  Like I had a magic trick- nope, just weekly weeding (and feeding)

 

What you did for me was give a better tool.  Everything I did only worked for a day or two.  I know I need to keep up maintenance, I know I need to keep "weeding", but now it's just maintaining and I'm not overwhelmed by HOW MUCH or HOW OFTEN.

 

I can see a little GHA growing in where I didn't scrape it well enough with the knife.  Honestly I'm surprised at how little was left behind.  I will tweeze what I don't want, leave some for my CUC so they don't starve.  If dinos or cyano come back I think it will be an easier, quicker fix because my tank is clean and not overwhelmed, but maybe not.   I guess we will see.

 

 

 

 

 

[brandon429]

I am looking one of those up 

 

because I only know the standard flat edge one for all my life, and I’m a repeat front yard dandelioner slightly ready to work less this year if possible

 

he educated me on better gardening via your relay/ awesome trip to home depot coming 

 

I had the concern you’d soon see a wrecked tank and lose the fun of reefing… it’s much more fun when everyone gets the tank they want.

 

 

I know it sounds crazy especially to large tank owners but hand removing masses IS a form of handling the cause and the expression at the same time.
 

It’s still internal vs external locus of control habit issues when the masses tell each other that repeatedly removing cyano or any other invader has nothing to do with fixing the cause, it does.

 

we place feed into systems of water with bright light and so many crevices algae can never truly be eradicated. That’s why 99% eventually gets growback 

 

what we all do is barter for best practices that stave off the circle of eutrophication 

 

 Being willing to remove a reef invasion several times if needed, if they’re that well adapted to current home conditions, can serve as a valid kill method (especially when sand isn’t also contributing waste) these are all communal organisms is why; they share resources 

 

 

it’s how they adapted 

 

perhaps a single moneran cell of cyanobacteria isn’t as genetically gifted at converting nitrogen gas into metabolic fuel. Left on his own, natural selection will kill that cell. But in a mass? A big sticky mass resists current distribution; keeps all cells right in the best place to receive nitrogen gas to convert into primary metabolic fuel and they share captured resources via direct transfer and overall mat surface area; the mat will live longer than the lone wolf

 

green hair algae as one single strand?

 

nope, we get tufts that catch and hold waste for breakdown on site enmeshed into tangles of algae strands - even if we are dosing carbon to affect nitrate and adsorbing phosphate from the water column, if fertilizer is directly leaking on a series of high surface area plant communities will that not perpetuate more algae? Rob the physical group of algae = begin to rob the food catch and hold ability, begin to rob communal benefits that make more algae. That’s not even counting fragmentation in the matter of purposeful gha gardening 
 

 

the knowledge a better hoe exists couldn’t be a better lesson for me and for the procedure 

 

 

rip cleans aren’t the most efficient and are indeed the most brutish and crass treatment but they at least provide control by force until better ways are learned by peer groups we can utilize 

 

 

it’s clear to me anyone that wants a non-invaded reef tank can have one, anyone who is typing in a thread owning a nano that their invasion has been some sort of extended headache needs to consider just going well over the line to retake ground, they don’t know it works as well as it does because we have all been taught our bacteria are far more weaker than they really are. The toughness of bacteria stuck to rocks and no inherent weakness is why the initial rip clean after pics always shine. As soon as someone develops a way to make a clean reef out of a dirty one for sixty pages all the rip clean threads will die out, naturally selected gone. Nobody begins reefing with this as an option 🙂 they arrive here by the same pressure that forms diamond out of carbon 

 

[banasophia]

@sadie your tank looks so awesome, your RFAs are so opened up and your corals are gorgeous and the sandbed looks so nice and clean! 

 

@brandon429 I think it’s really great to see different methods of having a successful reef, so I’ve been interested to see how this has worked so well for Sadie’s tank.

 

I’m curious to hear the rationale for someone to choose the rip clean method as opposed to other methods for example using chemiclean for the cyano and then reef flux for the gha/bryopsis, which I have done successfully in the past and seems like less work and less disruption to the system, less risk of damaging the tank/equipment/scape.
 

Sadie’s tank looks absolutely amazing right now, to be sure, but as you yourself have mentioned it seems like the problems may just come back again.
 

I’d be worried that taking everything apart and scrubbing it to do a reset could really upset the balance of a tank’s ecosystem and add to a lot of different issues. After a rip clean, are additional beneficial bacteria typically added to the system? Extra clean up crew? Are there any concerns about developing new tank syndrome or an ammonia spike after a rip clean? 

[sadie]

Thanks Banasohphia.  I too had all those concerns you mentioned.  I tried so many things in the past (you actually gave me some advice on adding the pods and making the pod hotel I believe).

 

I read so many threads on the rip clean and decided that if nothing else it would help me start all over again.  I'm not sure where this journey will lead me, but for now I am enjoying my tank more then I have in a LONG time.  for me (so far) it was all worth it and my corals agree.  😁

 

 

 

 

 

[kimdawg]

Sadie, I don't know if my wild child tank would be a rip clean or not, but I put in two days work.  You can keep the tank up.  In my 75 gallon I clean the sand bed with every small water change and make sure I blow off the rocks also.  I do not want to do a major clean again for years, so we got to do a little weekly cleaning.  Your tank is beautiful.

[sadie]

8 hours ago, kimdawg said:

Sadie, I don't know if my wild child tank would be a rip clean or not, but I put in two days work.  You can keep the tank up.  In my 75 gallon I clean the sand bed with every small water change and make sure I blow off the rocks also.  I do not want to do a major clean again for years, so we got to do a little weekly cleaning.  Your tank is beautiful.

thanks, I saw the work you did on your tank.  It looks great now!  I don't mind weekly cleaning.  I was doing DAILY cleaning and still couldn't catch up.  

[sadie]

The algae I couldn't scrape off that was next to my RFAs is getting long enough to tweeze.  It took me about 5 min to get what I could get.  I'm not going to go crazy removing it, I know tanks get algae and it's all part of the whole picture.  I am going to TRY not to tweeze anymore until next week.  I will post a picture before and after next week.  I wish I had done that today, but here is the little that I had to tweeze.

 

I am going to do WC every other week, so next Friday I will do my first WC since the rip clean.  I will vacuum the top of my sand.  I am blowing my rocks off every day with a baster.  I also had to put some PhosBan in because my phos got up to .48 (before the rip clean).  They were .12 this morning.  I will take the PhosBan out when they get to .05.  I don't want them to go lower then .03.  My NO3 is between 5-10.  

 

I was dosing Nano A&B befoe the rip clean to keep my KH around 9.6 (I read keeping it at 10 can help fight cyano).  Since the rip clean it has stayed at 8.3 WITHOUT dosing.  I would rather have it stable and NOT dose so I have stopped using the Nano A&B, but if it goes any lower then that I will start dosing again.

[brandon429]

Sophia, 

 

try and find the dosers mentioned applied to the invaded condition clearing up tanks to this degree of safety and link back 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/

 

what you find in using those dosers on other's tanks vs just one tank is they get massive tradeoff invasions.  Dead mass is killed by the doser sometimes, it rots in the system and reduces surface area by plugging micro channels in the core surfaces we use for nitrification

 

Those two dosers you mentioned for algae kill have their own 300+ pages of inspectable work threads/ rtr has a massive fluconazole thread for example with many positive reports on the doses

 

Reading of the large fluconazole and chemi clean threads show a standout tradeoff risk is getting cyano and dinos shortly after the primary target kill.  I would never ever use chemi clean, several threads exist: "chemi clean killed my tank/fish/corals/whole reef" and agreed there are thousands of success stories. I can’t run threads where one or two tanks die, we can only deal in 100% safety and the deeper the rinse, the safer the job.

 

The opposite of common thought remains in play 

 

and there are no "rip clean killed my fish/corals/whole reef" threads that I’ve seen or come up in searches 

 

so it makes one wonder: where's the real insult? The dosers carry the insult, the rip clean carries safety, we arrive there by inspecting the works above which is solely in other people's reefs. 

 

 

 

*your idea for treating the invaded tank may very well work if crafted uniquely by a skilled person into other's tanks, but you’ll find that adding things to peoples reef tanks is dangerous…taking away things isn’t as dangerous. If we advise use of a doser and someone’s tank dies it will feel horrible, if people start having lost tanks we would immediately stop rip cleaning 

[brandon429]

The masses will advise Sadie to leave her tank wrecked and guess at dosers to apply, which isn't addressing the cause anymore than a rip clean does. We want to avoid chemically souping any nano; removing the offending mass before treatment is simply safer than not 

 

it also doesn’t benefit the reef to internally degrade plant material back into the system; this seems to be where many of the tradeoff invasions on file with the dosers find sustenance support using the common method 

 

Sadie being able to find the cause of her original invasion here will cease her need for future rip cleans AND for adding poisonous dosers to her system. I don't deal much in causative findings because folks leave out critical details too often; they have to find it themselves.
 

For example: someone may say their topoff water is perfect 0/0 tds and then a recalibration of the meter one month shows it had been off the whole time we were assessing, its a waste of time for me to spend days and hours trying to find preventions for folks/that's what they use their newly cleaned tanks to discover.  If you want to avoid your next rip clean, learn a way to reef without one. See how that instantly shifts responsibility of the clean condition to the owner of the nano? Just prior to rip cleaning, they had to wait to become uninvaded until the cure was found…losing corals along the way to chemical soup and feed withholding training.

 

 

[sadie]

Can't help it...another FTS 

 

[banasophia]

17 minutes ago, sadie said:

Can't help it...another FTS 

 

Looks so beautiful! 
 

If it was me, I’d do weekly water changes, siphon/stir the sandbed with each water change, and add an ammonia badge to keep an eye on the ammonia level after the rip clean just to be sure your fishies are staying safe. 

[brandon429]

That implies danger though- to add anything other than resolve and reliability into the action set is to invite loss. 

 

 you can see consistent safety in the link provided for years of testing across reefs and across invasions, we get complete sandbed rinses because aquarists trust the patterns they read on file that the more you rinse sand, the safer the outcome is for the greater system. If they under rinse due to false fear, they risk killing their system with rotting compounds not fully removed

 

There isn’t a risk of harming your filtration bac on the rocks by rinsing the sand separately; only how one treats the rocks affects the rock bacteria.
 

the paradox being overlooked is that the invaded condition is matting and plugging up the micro channels on rocks and pitted in sandbed grains…surface area is dropped substantially when cyano blankets a system left to rot.

 

Removing the covering by saltwater rinse of rocks means we instantly reinstate surface area without delay, and nitrification rates increase in a paradoxical effect because the masses won’t account for biofilm that already lines the micro pores and insulates the filter bac from all the rinsing. A rip clean is good for a tank, a waste-filled tank is worse off than a clean and breathing tank, after pics show.
 

 

[banasophia]

6 hours ago, brandon429 said:

That implies danger though- to add anything other than resolve and reliability into the action set is to invite loss. 

Are you saying that monitoring for an ammonia spike invites an ammonia spike and livestock loss? Sounds like some interesting new age reefing philosophy. Do smoke detectors in a persons home invite a fire? 
 

6 hours ago, brandon429 said:

A rip clean is good for a tank, a waste-filled tank is worse off than a clean and breathing tank, after pics show.

I agree the tank looks great now, it’s like a new tank with totally clean water and sand, I’m not surprised the nems and corals look happy in the nice clean water.
 

However, I am concerned that all the things done to clean the rock may have impacted the beneficial bacteria population, so I’m worried that as food and fish waste build up there’s a chance that the beneficial bacteria may not be able to bounce back fast enough. I would monitor for increased ammonia to be sure the nitrifying bacteria are able to keep up with the bioload. Hopefully they can, but if it was my tank, I’d rather keep an eye out than risk harming my fish. 
 

I’m not sure who you are Brandon… I am still a fairly new reefer and new to your method… you could be a marine biologist with extensive research backing your method… but common sense tells me to monitor for an ammonia spike here just to be sure… if the beneficial bacteria can handle the bioload, no harm done, but if they cannot then one could take action to protect the fish.

[banasophia]

double post, sorry 

[brandon429]

I'm amazed we aren't discussing a specific work thread outcome from the rip clean logs. We're discussing risks that haven't occurred

 

 

We should be speaking about patterns you've noticed from the method as people posted their follow ups. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadie's after pics haven't posted any concerns yet. 

 

 

I'm sure Murph will be glad to tell you of his bad cyano outbreak he is watching take over his reef after his rip clean- while at the same time his corals look and act better than they ever did...imperfect outcomes one of every 300 jobs keeps us on our toes while dealing strictly in other people's reef investments.

 

There are less than perfect rip clean results to be found.

 

Ask him if he thinks ammonia recycling happened in his 90 gallon reef after that perfect sand rinse he did. We think that a bright shiny reef can't be a reef in ammonia distress... we don't spend time testing for ammonia in symptomless tanks. 

 

Too-quick growback of the invasion is the way our method can fail once we click and read the years logged... there isn't a recycle risk. 

 

 

we don't do testing in my cycling threads for two reasons: few people have seneye and when they do, we want the tests, and because all cycling charts ever written going back eighty years all show ammonia control by day ten. Ammonia doesn't become uncontrollable after a tank cleaning, especially when tracked on a seneye. 

 

 

 

marine biologist or an ice cream server, the results on file take precedent. I'm trying to shift the focus, analysis and discussion to patterns already logged so we don't spend time discussing hypotheticals

 

 

 

I would claim it's not possible to assemble large patterns of outcomes in other people's reefs using bad science

[sadie]

My phos was down to .07.  I am going to take out the phos Ban today.  Tank is looking great, everything is happy.

[brandon429]

Hey I noticed you mentioned some algae coming back in your snail feeding post, time to clean off the glass again. Removing the po4 controls, adding new clean up crew + new feeding for them within the last two weeks counts as algae fuel and has nothing to do with the recent rip clean (which reduced the rate at which the algae would be growing)

 

 

once you scrape off the algae if it casts around the tank then it will just re seed everywhere so try and be actually exporting it…creative means such as drawing off 80% of your water leaving all the structure in place and holding that water for quick re use is easy, your fish and animals swim in the leftover 20% in the tank, and now your algae walls are exposed vs submerged. You can scrape up with a razor blade, and when it’s curled up mass of scraped algae is at the top you can wipe it out vs cast it around the tank. Then you can refill will that same water. 
 

 

when you pour back water if a big cloud kicks up then the sand rinse was not thorough enough or it means you’ve added enough new waste producers + new feed to the system to necessitate routine sandbed vacuuming weekly with a common siphon + barrel connector. How much cloud kicks up after your water add back tells you of changes that need to be made.
 

 

the % power your lights run at should be markedly reduced and kept that way for six weeks to see if your growback is less during that time; you are most likely at the same power levels now as before the rip clean and your anemones do not need as much power. The variables that brought on the original invasion are in place and possibly even amplified if phosphate remover is removed, we need to anticipate strong regrowth and act now because having an invaded tank has nothing to do with discovering what will stop your growback, they’re independent variables. You’re seeking growback controls independently of keeping all the invasion out of your tank for the win. You have a new cleaning run coming up before it’s a large invasion.

 

 

adding a clean up crew is opposite of what I would do, I’m algae free without them, they add waste pellets and new respiration mass and they command additional feed your corals and fish and shrimp won’t require; this is specifically algae fuel so nothing is a surprise that you’re getting some algae to clean right now. If your tank was mine it would have zero clean up crew and simple manual controls in place to solve algae but I’m aware folks won’t do that, they’ve read to always add more and more cuc in reaction to algae and that’s the training we are up against. Lastly, found in the article “Biosecurity” online by Jay H / fish disease master, he states that reactively adding cuc vectors in new fish disease risk  with each new wet addition that comes into our display without being fallow prepped. It’s a direct loss risk to your fish to have added the cuc but too late now to fix, we are focusing on your algae before it gets strong and before the masses convince you the rip clean is causing it (the tank was fully invaded before we rip cleaned it to gemlike shine)

 

your system needs to be immediately set back to completely not invaded, nothing on the rocks left to re seed the back walls of the tank because you hand removed it all, the power levels cut back on lighting and sustained six weeks, then in the clean condition you’d search for ways to lower your growback. You can see by the new need to clean that adding the new cuc may be eating algae off the rocks but if it’s just landing on the back wall they’re not truly helping. In no possible way would I have advised to add new cuc to such a small tank, I’m aware the masses would directly advise that. We are constantly at odds with the masses, since their advice wrecks peoples tanks with invasion and disease risks. 
 

 

your money is better spent on a turbo twist uv sterilizer, added in the completely clean condition,   and not any clean up crew. If your tank was mine all the cuc would be removed, you need the most waste reduction you can in such a small tank and the fish + shrimp are maximum load. The cuc is increasing your waste loading with the new feed being added for them, they’re not helping unless you see them eating algae that does not come back elsewhere. Clean up crews rarely if ever help on algae matters we can see in invasion threads. Of course someone at home once will have had them work and may recommend it to everyone, but you can also clearly see in invasion threads most invaded tank owners already have a non working cuc.

 

 

the new increase CUC + feed experiments added for them plus the lights being too bright is the top two causes of your regrowth so far, and that’s not even verifying your topoff water is perfect zero tds which may not be the case.