murphs_reef 92G - retired, thanks guys

[Murphs_Reef]

3 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Good on you, this is a massive undertaking but looking through the results definately looks like it is going to be worth it! Will be interesting to see the rip clean method taking place as well on this thread

Cheers.. I'm snapping pictures as I go and will do a proper write up when done.. to much going on atm.. I'll be making a proper start after 5 today... Oh that and the DIY project I have going on.. I must love stress! 

[ninjamyst]

I did a rip.clean on my 13g recently.  Easy cuz its a small tank.  But it made a huge difference.  Dino gone and tank looks soooo clean.  Good luck with yours!!  

[brandon429]

Ninja that’s great input 

 

notice how the going rule for dinos (made by large tankers as a blanket rule for all, which is how all rules are made heh) is don’t do water changes?

 

it’s amazing how breaking the rule 100% works great, but doing a 20% water change which only upwells the waste + invader mix around the tank really does flare things up. Smaller reefs deserve their own rule set in amazing ways, due to the differences of doing things 100% vs 20% in effort.

 

your dinos may not stay 110% gone for every cell for eternity, but frankly about 80% of the time a first pass rip clean does hold. And if some strands grow back, because that is the top scourge in reefing above all, well then it takes two minutes to siphon up any recurring strands with a one gallon water change and you just fight the remassing until their gain energy runs out. The dinos will be fighting back from a 2% mass phase vs a 99% mass phase and a rip cleaned tank doesn’t spew waste and cloud all around as you work to guide it. You will not get tradeoff invasions/ 6 mos of gha battles using rip clean methods and we see this commonly in the hands off battle mode.

[Murphs_Reef]

Rock cleaning 

 

Just been in store for another few buckets of premix salt water.. tired yet? A little 🤣

rock tray in place and water is being heated in buckets. That final chromis thinks it's safe.. nets at the ready!

[Murphs_Reef]

Glass test. 

[kimdawg]

I did a major overhaul on my 75 yesterday.  I washed the new sand for about 3 hours before.  I took pictures of all of the stages and will post on my wild child tank thread later tonight.  I was going to wash and keep the old sand, but when I removed all of the GSP the sand bed was very hard under it.  Good luck with your rip clean.

 

 

[brandon429]

Murphy that glass test is so good. It prevents accidental cloudy install, it's a skip cycle guarantee. Thank you for the work so far on file

[brandon429]

The whole point of a work thread is to test a predicted work outcome. Once your entire reef goes through surgery readers will see how they can always move the reef without loss, or upgrade to a new one, or move towns, or swap sandbeds or get uninvaded. Your will to do it right is total command the masses will benefit seeing. 

 

The unique part here is your reef was shocking nice before we shredded it to further nice heh. The surgery is what we're studying, the reason why isn't important. Rip cleans are flushing, oxygenating actionable events and are the opposite of a sedentary condition usually just once or twice in the tanks life

 

You can feed your tank really well and corals add mass because of the rip clean clearing out waste from the tiny spaces on rocks and sand

 

What reef wouldn't like that 🙂

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

 Rip Clean Index of Posts  

• Check lists and trapping fish 
• Water removal and sand cleaning 
• Rock cleaning
• Fish hospital tank
• Rescape and sand drop back in

[Ratvan]

14 hours ago, Murphych said:

Glass test. 

So what is the idea behind the glass test out of interest? Just to prove that there is no clouding after rinsing? 

[Murphs_Reef]

14 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

So what is the idea behind the glass test out of interest? Just to prove that there is no clouding after rinsing? 

I did some pre reading from some of @brandon429 s articles, suggesting that after you've washed the sand, to take some and put it in a glass, blast that with tap water and see if it clouds up. If the glass is crystal clear then your done and can move on to the next batch of sand. 

 

My tank is pretty clean anyway and the sand is in good order, but man you should see the colour of the water that comes out of the sand... I couldn't imagine a dirty sandbed.. that would stink the house out!! 👍🏻

[Murphs_Reef]

Still looking for a reef Scape.  Ideas welcome. I'm leaning towards some sort of Island, was thinking pillar or 3 but not found anything that has really made me want to get the epoxy out. 

[brandon429]

You never seemed to have any algae issues with your rock so any locked or arch probably w be just fine. for the average Joe I like to recommend leaving it modular/removable for quick hand guiding as murphy's law puts bryopsis in those tanks right at the lower portion of live rock locked-in stacks, unremovable, and this sets off a chain of destruction/param alteration/tradeoff invasions/dosers added to soup up the place all because they cannot lift out the rock and scrape off the whiskers area with a knife before it takes over to the entire scape. Yours really seemed in control, the surrounding environment for the tank and the totality of feeding/export/hitchhiking of bad organisms all played out to look great before the rip was began. You're probably ok locking it in however you'd like

[Murphs_Reef]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

You never seemed to have any algae issues with your rock so any locked or arch probably w be just fine. for the average Joe I like to recommend leaving it modular/removable for quick hand guiding as murphy's law puts bryopsis in those tanks right at the lower portion of live rock locked-in stacks, unremovable, and this sets off a chain of destruction/param alteration/tradeoff invasions/dosers added to soup up the place all because they cannot lift out the rock and scrape off the whiskers area with a knife before it takes over to the entire scape. Yours really seemed in control, the surrounding environment for the tank and the totality of feeding/export/hitchhiking of bad organisms all played out to look great before the rip was began. You're probably ok locking it in however you'd like

My Scopas tang (which I desperately trying to save from ich) is a big reason for the lack of algae. 

Thanks I would love something where flow could get right around.. I do love my rock wall but understand that it's a bit if a timebomb, where detritus will eventually build up past a threshold even my tank will manage! 👍🏻

[brandon429]

It dawned on me just now your fish/ bioload isn’t going back in immediately upon rebuild, they’re going into quarantine and only corals are going back for a while 

 

we can still make use of updated cycling science specifically in this mode: wet bacteria cannot starve in an open topped post-cycle reef. They will not reduce in numbers as your fish are removed and then rebound back up to large numbers when fish are reintroduced. That’s false, it’s been a false made up premise on web forums for twenty years. You won’t need to add bottle bac to the display at any stage of this rip surgery, even if you wait to add fish for eight months when you add them things just proceed as normal. 
 

   I have seen plenty of seneye-measured bioload experiments on reef2reef. There has never been a documented loss of bioload carry from any action done in reefing along the lines of fallow, it’s that simple. The way the rumor started was twofold: 1. The assumption that water bac aren’t adapted to get feed without the mighty hand offerings of the aquarist, they haven’t been honing this skill for a bazillion years lol and 2. Absolute inability to measure any aspect of starvation before seneye came along. You can make an api kit say anything you want it to say if you just alter the lighting a bit, or hold the tube back from the card, or fail to fill to 5 mls correctly, or fail to shake the reagent, or fail to hold the dropper perfectly verticals causing 2x size drops the confounds never end. 
 

 

of course you feeding corals is still going to boost bac anyway as if fish were there but even if you didn’t, and there were no corals, the rock that gets sat back onto clean sand simply keeps it’s bacteria in place as long as you want to wait. Page sixteen of my thread on reef2reef: microbiology of reef tank cycling has DJCity’s *3* year fallow rock experiment. Unfed rocks simply sitting in a taken down aquarium in his garage for three years instantly passed full ammonia oxidation testing and he took pics of it all, and I scooped up his proof for my thread. In addition, poster Dandelion on this site had a two year fallow starve test that passed just the same, and for a third proof MSteven1’s posts on reef2reef can be looked up and he upcycled a vat of pure dry rocks to complete ready (tested with pics for ammonia control as any cycled reef) by solely submerging them in circulated non heated saltwater for four months. Merely wait, zero feed zero bottle bac, you cannot starve a cycle it doesn’t occur in open topped systems.

 

 

Conversely, myth busters style Dr. Reef and I did manage to starve a cycle in testing he can me messaged to verify this is what it took: cycled media was placed in a vase with a tight fitting sealed lid and sat on his mantle for fourteen months. It was dead as a doornail when we tested; environmental exchange is what keeps normal tanks from never starving.

 

*I had predicted to him they would -not- starve, that water alone would be enough but that wasn’t the case. Learned biolfilter limits that day.

[Murphs_Reef]

Thats absolutely fine by the way. I feed my coral very very heavy so not too concerned..I actually think I feed my coral more than the fish.. it's a reef tank nota fish tank after all. The ammonia aspect has never concerned me and to be blunt I don't use API it's just not worth it as if my rock is good and i have plenty of it.. ammonia won't be my problem. 

[Murphs_Reef]

The rebuild starts tomorrow.. all the rock is happy in buckets and the fish not so happy in copper.

 

Lots of 2 part epoxy, plastic rods and clamps for temporary holding... 

 

I'll have loads of images up tomorrow to backfill my progress for the last 24hrs.. sand looks sharp as glass!! 

[Murphs_Reef]

Here goes 

[brandon429]

The corals and rocks in the holding vat were heated and circulated these few days is that correct / like a normal reef but just in the container?

[Murphs_Reef]

1 hour ago, brandon429 said:

The corals and rocks in the holding vat were heated and circulated these few days is that correct / like a normal reef but just in the container?

Correct 👍🏻

Just a little mess left over 😂

[brandon429]

Perfect, no detail has been missed here whatsoever 

 

look how a vat of pristine rocks (full of micro bugs still, holed up) still produces detritus and some also physically sticks the rocks for casting. It shows how everything in the system is a whole pellet waste producer and we are getting a chance just to be free of that while keeping 99% of the bugs. 
 

That detritus there isn’t bad it’s been aerated unlike some systems that stratify the waste down low in layers of uncirculated sand pockets. It’s neat to actually see the waste that live rock itself produces and vectors aside from the fish waste input for systems. As soon as a system is rip cleaned and is free of that, it starts compounding up again cyclically 

 

we are about to see how removal of that loading isn’t bad for a system, it’s refreshing. In no way is a rip clean harmful it’s simply pore-opening and oxygenating. You are increasing surface area contact for active zones to the wastewater in your setup by removing the covering that plugs channels in live rock.

 

nitrification rates are going to be the strongest they’ve ever been upon setup.

 

Once your photoperiod for the new setup is ramped up, and very short for the first couple days the system will simply spring back into action and your hammer coral will be brightly open and hungry for business. The toadstool may act mad for a week, feelings hurt lol but overall the system will be brighter and more open than ever, they want you to feed them pizza and snacks more than ever since there’s no waste pocketing you’ll be able to feed them well and without any consequence 

[Murphs_Reef]

Yes it's amazing how much gunk came out if the system.. I feel that the cyano is absolutely a thing of the past.. better I know that the rocks need a lot more flow.. so I will take that as a lesson learned as a bonus prize! 

[brandon429]

You know this is personally relaxing for me observe from afar because you’re so resolved and self read on the steps that absolutely command success. You’ve seen me in rip clean posts, or preps for rip clean posts, be totally nervous the individual wasn’t going to be thorough and was going to fear loss of bacteria at every phase and darn sure was not going to rinse sand correctly. Doom was coming and it would be blamed on the procedure not the constant hesitation of the surgeon heh. Every small detail you’ve anticipated plus I know you’ve done this eight times already it’s just nice to see it detailed out 

 

it is SO calming to be part of a work thread, a forum, where sixteen trolls are not banned together to loot and pillage the process solely to post jabs and snarks etc for pages, asking sarcastically: “what’s a work thread” over and over where even if we listed one for them they’ll still act confused at the read only to play up for the swirling shark fest. 
 

what we get to see here is calm simple science reef tank surgery and your autopilot mode beats any Tesla any day of the year. Thank you for such dang good science and friendliness man.

 

adobo from humble fish forum 

 

This work thread’s for you. See how kindness and resolve simply plays out beneficial and positive, we need more of that in forums.

[brandon429]

Murphych I was wondering what was your final motivation to do the rip clean on such a fine system. How did u arrive at that action during your planning phase 

[Murphs_Reef]

2 hours ago, brandon429 said:

Murphych I was wondering what was your final motivation to do the rip clean on such a fine system. How did u arrive at that action during your planning phase 

Well I needed to fallow the tank due to ich. The floating trap worked well for all fish but one final chromis. I tried to get it with the net, trap it, corner it but it was just too fast.. 

Also I have been dealing with some minor cyano for a few months and it just wasn't shifting...  Also the rock wall although looking good, I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen as there was a large chunk of tank behind the wall I could never clean.. so I needed to rescape!!! 

 

Reading your rip clean thread on reef2reef, I decided that was the route for me... Big effort, big reward, total clean... In a couple of days of planning buying some supplies and the doing the work.. I have a new tank!

 

Tomorrow when the final corals are glued up I will post the results... You won't be disappointed! Its a crystal clear tank... You would be forgiven for thinking there is no water in it!! 

 

Very please with the results and I will be an big advocate for rip clean...