Dino's "trying" to bloom

[W1ll]

Hey all, 

 

Fairly recently I have arrived home from a 9 day trip. During that time, I had my friend who has minimal aquarium knowledge supervise my tank and feed the fish. Long story short, I came home to find that my phosphate had completely hit 0, and nitrate wasn't far behind. My salinity had also dropped slightly, down to about 1.021. The worst part though, was that I spotted a very small amount of dino strings on the tips of some sps as well as the sand bed. I suspected that this was only the beginning of what I thought was going be a major bloom. I immediately took all the steps I took last time I fought dinos. Phosphate was gradually dosed up to 0.1, and the small amount of strings in the DT were siphoned out and passed through floss and a small micron sock. Within 24hrs I noticed a difference in the amount of dinos in the DT, to this day I have to look quite hard to spot a string or two in the DT. It has been this way for roughly 2 weeks, and my fear of them suddenly exploding in numbers has somewhat subsided. However, what concerns me through, is the large amount of Dino mucus I am discovering caught in the floss each morning. I am having to replace this daily. Would someone have an explanation for this? It appears that there is a large population of dino cells in my tank, however something seems to be hindering them from forming into strands until they hit the filter floss. Any input would be appreciated. 

 

Cheers, 

W1ll

[mcarroll]

A similar thing just happened to @RyanReef's tank.  Dang.   At least he got no dino's so far...

 

Can you look at some of the stuff in your filter pad under a scope?   Can you at least get a decent closeup/macro shot of it?

 

 

I'd consider not using the filter pads, btw.   What else are you doing for filtering/cleaning?

[W1ll]

1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

A similar thing just happened to @RyanReef's tank.  Dang.   At least he got no dino's so far...

 

Can you look at some of the stuff in your filter pad under a scope?   Can you at least get a decent closeup/macro shot of it?

 

 

I'd consider not using the filter pads, btw.   What else are you doing for filtering/cleaning?

I will try and get a macro shot of the stuff in the pad a little later. I am almost certain it is some sort of large cell dinos, I can see the individual cells with my naked eye if I look closely. For filtration I am just running floss, 2 tsp of carbon and a small amount of bio media. What makes you think floss wouldn't be a good idea? I am letting glass get nice and dirty and holding off on water changes/gravel vacuuming. The image attached below isn't mine but looks absolutely identical to what I have extracted from the filter pad. Can be seen with my naked eye.   

[mcarroll]

1 hour ago, W1ll said:

I can see the individual cells with my naked eye if I look closely.

Are you Steve Austin??

😉 

 

A microscope image would be required for any degree of identification beyond "dino".

 

But if you just want to confirm if it's dino's, take a sample from your filter mat and put it in a vial of tank water.  Shake the vial until the sample is completely pulverized, then leave it under tank lights for an hour and see what happens.  If the sample re-coagulates into a mass, then it's dino's of some sort.  Other algae won't move like that.

 

3 hours ago, W1ll said:

...something seems to be hindering them from forming into strands until they hit the filter floss.

I think you're just seeing the floss do its job, catching globs that flow in from the tank – the globs are just too small to notice until they're on the nice white background of the filter pad....and perhaps they are even growing some while stuck on the pad since their visible population tends to surge during daylight hours.  Dino's seem to "snot up" as a defensive tactic, BTW....to avoid being eaten (mucus carries toxins), to avoid being washed out to the open ocean (mucus helps them to sink and to be sticky) and to avoid bright sunlight (mucus gives some shade).  So those are the kinds of things that make them seem to come out of nowhere.  Until this happens, they are just operating as single-celled flagellates, or even as epiphytes....minimal or no mucus.

 

3 hours ago, W1ll said:

My salinity had also dropped slightly, down to about 1.021.

I accidentally skipped over this before....1.021 isn't exactly "slightly". 😉  Did you figure out what happened to drop it that low?

 

 

[W1ll]

3 hours ago, mcarroll said:

But if you just want to confirm if it's dino's, take a sample from your filter mat and put it in a vial of tank water.  Shake the vial until the sample is completely pulverized, then leave it under tank lights for an hour and see what happens.  If the sample re-coagulates into a mass, then it's dino's of some sort.  Other algae won't move like that.

 

I conducted this test using sample collected the first and only time siphoned some dino out of the DT, unfortunately within 30 min it had formed a large stringy web, its certainly dinos of some sort. 

 

3 hours ago, mcarroll said:

 

A microscope image would be required for any degree of identification beyond "dino".

Oh of course🤣

 

, I think I have a cheap microscope lying around somewhere, might have to dig it out to get an ID. I have a suspicion it may be Ostreopsis, based on their tendency to completely fill the filter floss up overnight as they enter the water column, whereas the floss stays completely clean during the day. Ostreopsis was also my opponent last time I fought this battle😞. I think a small UV might be in check. 

 

3 hours ago, mcarroll said:

I accidentally skipped over this before....1.021 isn't exactly "slightly". 😉  Did you figure out what happened to drop it that low?

I believe the filter floss in chamber 1 became slightly clogged, slowing the amount of water passing into the other chambers and subsequently lowering the water level, making the ATO dump in more RO.  

[W1ll]

Update: Just ordered a small 12W UV sterilizer for the tank, I have an old 100W in the garage but I think a tad too big for my small tank 😆 

[skippylou]

11 hours ago, W1ll said:

What makes you think floss wouldn't be a good idea? 

@mcarroll I was curious too why you mentioned pulling the filter pad might not be a bad idea?

[Jakesaw]

8 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Are you Steve Austin??

 

 

[Jakesaw]

1 hour ago, skippylou said:

@mcarroll I was curious too why you mentioned pulling the filter pad might not be a bad idea?

Filter pad will filter out some of your food from column, exporting nutrients that raise nitrate / phosphate. 

 

As a fellow DINO fighter, I'm split on the issue.  Filter pad definitely removes some of the actual dino from water, but the root of the problem starts with low nutrients, If the pad is keeping your nutrients low from exporting dead food parts, may be worthwhile removing it ( in theory ). 

 

I'm in a reduced dino stage and encouraging healthy algae growth and keeping my nutrients up as my main strategy.  It's a slow process, but I'm feeling good about my current path.  My only current filter media is carbon which I started using last week.  

 

Mentally, I do feel like putting the filter floss back in HOB filter to remove the Dino from water when I "Turkey baste" it off the rock, but I've resisted the urge so far.  I'm slowly working algae over my rock and hope that will ultimately win out.

[skippylou]

30 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

Filter pad will filter out some of your food from column, exporting nutrients that raise nitrate / phosphate. 

 

As a fellow DINO fighter, I'm split on the issue.  Filter pad definitely removes some of the actual dino from water, but the root of the problem starts with low nutrients, If the pad is keeping your nutrients low from exporting dead food parts, may be worthwhile removing it ( in theory ). 

 

I'm in a reduced dino stage and encouraging healthy algae growth and keeping my nutrients up as my main strategy.  It's a slow process, but I'm feeling good about my current path.  My only current filter media is carbon which I started using last week.  

 

Mentally, I do feel like putting the filter floss back in HOB filter to remove the Dino from water when I "Turkey baste" it off the rock, but I've resisted the urge so far.  I'm slowly working algae over my rock and hope that will ultimately win out.

Yeah makes sense,  I know it's generally good to leave the "food" in the water but dosing phos/nitrates seems like a better, controlled way of increasing nutrients, so was curious if mcarroll was suggesting the filter pad removal for a different reason for the dino mitigation.

[Jakesaw]

Just now, skippylou said:

Yeah makes sense,  I know it's generally good to leave the "food" in the water but dosing phos/nitrates seems like a better, controlled way of increasing nutrients, so was curious if mcarroll was suggesting the filter pad removal for a different reason for the dino mitigation.

Dosing is an option. 

 

I'm dosing Phosphate b/c dry food wasn't increasing enough - my low nitrates were resolved by adding a fish and dirty feeding frozen food at night.  

 

My nuissance now is GHA on the walls of tank.  Got my first snail star astrea last week and he's been grazing a bit.  Will be interesting to see if I can get the GHA off the walls via CUC if the Phos will raise themselves naturally.  

 

From my limited experience ( about 1  yr ) The reef tank is a balancing self-regulating system,  All the problems we experience are a response to something being off balance a bit.  

For me - low Phos / Nitrate for about 7 months -> DINO + little to no algae

Add fish + dirty feed frozen foods - > GHA but still too much DINO

Dose Phos - > DINO recedes a bit and back wall looks like a green wookie

Manual removal not keeping up, add Algae grazing snail > we'll see 

 

Basically my tank is still out of balance and I'm seasoning my rock over time.  At some point, I expect to find a balance where things stabilize on their own.   We'll see if that happens and how long that takes.

 

My corals seem very happy now with nutrients in water column where they were not at 0 Nutrients in water. 

[W1ll]

9 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

Filter pad will filter out some of your food from column, exporting nutrients that raise nitrate / phosphate. 

 

As a fellow DINO fighter, I'm split on the issue.  Filter pad definitely removes some of the actual dino from water, but the root of the problem starts with low nutrients, If the pad is keeping your nutrients low from exporting dead food parts, may be worthwhile removing it ( in theory ). 

 

I'm in a reduced dino stage and encouraging healthy algae growth and keeping my nutrients up as my main strategy.  It's a slow process, but I'm feeling good about my current path.  My only current filter media is carbon which I started using last week.  

 

Mentally, I do feel like putting the filter floss back in HOB filter to remove the Dino from water when I "Turkey baste" it off the rock, but I've resisted the urge so far.  I'm slowly working algae over my rock and hope that will ultimately win out.

I totally agree that this could be a completely feasible approach to battling dinos, have you noticed a significant reduction in dinos since you starting battling them? How long did it take to notice a difference? My strategy revolves heavily around manual removal, in conjunction with nutrient control. I let the filter pad catch the large chunks of dino as they let free from the rocks, I have been feeding my regular amount and relying on dosing concentrated Nitrate and phosphate using Seachem Flourish and homemade Potassium Nitrate solution to keep nutrients at elevated levels. I guess this just demonstrates that there can be multiple different ways to approach beating dinos, all of which can be successful. Interesting. 

[W1ll]

9 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

Mentally, I do feel like putting the filter floss back in HOB filter to remove the Dino from water when I "Turkey baste" it off the rock, but I've resisted the urge so far.  I'm slowly working algae over my rock and hope that will ultimately win out.

I think that unless you are running mechanical filtration that its <15 micron, you'll probably only catch the largest strands of dino, which within a couple hours of being under the water movement of an overflow, will break down into individual cells or chunks small enough to pass right through, just a theory though. 

[Jakesaw]

34 minutes ago, W1ll said:

I totally agree that this could be a completely feasible approach to battling dinos, have you noticed a significant reduction in dinos since you starting battling them? How long did it take to notice a difference? 

 

[Jakesaw]

I had let my DINO's get out of control for several months when I learned what I had going on there.  I wasn't testing anything for an extended period of time. 

 

Once I got my nitrates up with added fish, I started growing some algae on walls almost immediately but it didn't last so well.  There was a back and forth for several weeks of Dino / and Algae.   

 

I noticed that Phos was stuck on zero and speaking to a local coral store, Was told I needed to get Phos up to balance with Nitrate levels.  I treid dry food per his recommendation, but was stuck on zero and got some Brightwell Phos doseing.  That pretty quickly got my GHA growing on back walls.  Almost immediately once i got my dosing dialed in. 

 

Most of my DINO's are on my rocks right now.  The algae growth on my rocks is more of a slow growth corailne.  I don't have any GHA on my rocks. I figure it'll be months before that process is covered enough to keep DINO's in the rear view mirror.   The gold stuff on surface of rock is my DINO.  I blow it daily with turkey baster and have no mechanical filtration to remove it from water column so it re-settles on rocks over time. 

 

[Jakesaw]

Have to get my fish in the pic

 

[W1ll]

12 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

Have to get my fish in the pic

 

Do you ever notice DINO on the sand bed? It looks quite clean in both those pics. 

[Jakesaw]

4 minutes ago, W1ll said:

Do you ever notice DINO on the sand bed? It looks quite clean in both those pics. 

Sand was never an issue for my DINO's.  Was always covering the tank walls.  Thick globs that would form bubbles underneath.  

[mcarroll]

On 1/9/2022 at 8:41 PM, W1ll said:

What makes you think floss wouldn't be a good idea?

When you're trying to fix a problem where al the nutrients have been removed from the tank, does it make sense to keep removing nutrient sources from the tank with a filter?  No. 😉 

 

The only thing you want to avoid, nutrient-wise, is over-feeding.   That means feeding so much that food goes to waste in a filter compartment, or laying on the bottom of the tank, etc.  (I'm not a proponent of using over-feeding to increase nutrients in most cases.)

 

I took quite a bit of time back in 2016-2017 to put together this Dino thread.   It has a fairly concise guide to treatment...or as concise as it gets for dino's.  🙂  Focus on reading the opening post and all the links included there before you try reading all 10,000+ posts 😉....most posts are just about ID of specific tank's dinos and problems, so more incidental than directly useful to your tank.  (You need to ID your own tank's problems and your own tank's dino's....which is why the OP doesn't directly offer any solutions....problems generally need to be fixed before solutions are implemented.)  The exception to the useful info in the bulk of those posts might be the info folks included about the UV sterilizers being used...lots of positive examples there of using small UV filters to GREAT EFFECT...inlcuding working out any issues with the filters – good examples to steal from if you need UV!

 

On 1/10/2022 at 4:57 AM, W1ll said:

I believe the filter floss in chamber 1 became slightly clogged, slowing the amount of water passing into the other chambers and subsequently lowering the water level, making the ATO dump in more RO.  

That's quite a difference in salinity tho...wold there be enough excess capacity in the pump chamber to allow the ATO to cause this big a drop?

 

You can use this calculator to see how much fresh would have had to dump to cause the salinity you're seeing.

 

E.g.  If we assume you have a 120 liter tank (40 gallons), then that would take a "dump" of almost 32 liters (8 gallons) to drop salinity to 1.021.   That sounds like a lot, but suppose it's possible – just wanna check the numbers of your system to see if this seems to make sense of your situation.

 

On 1/10/2022 at 6:22 AM, W1ll said:

Update: Just ordered a small 12W UV sterilizer for the tank, I have an old 100W in the garage but I think a tad too big for my small tank 😆 

As long as the 100w was functional (bulb not over its useful hours) I'd probably use it.  (Still not sure what size tank you have tho.  How can that be this many posts into the thread??  🙂)

 

On 1/10/2022 at 9:45 AM, Jakesaw said:

Filter pad definitely removes some of the actual dino from water, but the root of the problem starts with low nutrients, If the pad is keeping your nutrients low from exporting dead food parts, may be worthwhile removing it ( in theory ). 

 

I'm in a reduced dino stage and encouraging healthy algae growth and keeping my nutrients up as my main strategy.  It's a slow process, but I'm feeling good about my current path.  My only current filter media is carbon which I started using last week.  

 

Mentally, I do feel like putting the filter floss back in HOB filter to remove the Dino from water when I "Turkey baste" it off the rock, but I've resisted the urge so far.  I'm slowly working algae over my rock and hope that will ultimately win out.

The main issue is that ONLY clumps of dino's will be caught.  Unfortunately I'm not sure this is a significant portion of dino's.

 

If you really want to filter out dino's you'd want filter media with an actual micron or mesh rating....something between 1µ - 10µ would be ideal....but at least ≤50µ.  (Lacking good options, just get the smallest µ/mesh rating you can.  For reference, most common filter socks are 200-400µ...probably similar performance to floss or most filter pads.)

 

The only pet-oriented filter pads I'm aware of that have a rating at all are Coralife's PureFlo pads which come in 100µ and 50µ (as far as I know).

 

 

If I wanted to run a filter in the tank to help with removing dino cells, I'd use a Marineland Polishing Filter (I have two for when I need this kind of filtration on my large tank) with the pleated filter insert – not a generic filter pad or floss.  (Or another similar diatom-capable filter.)

Generic media pads and filter floss are more or less meant for catching over-feeding and the occasional large fish poo – more for fish tanks than for reef tanks.

 

FYI, activated carbon is usually only needed during the peak bloom to offset the amount of toxins being produced by the high number of dino cells....once you're past that peak stage (if your pods and snails are active and healthy as proof) then you can pretty much lay off the activated carbon.

 

On 1/10/2022 at 10:17 AM, skippylou said:

Yeah makes sense,  I know it's generally good to leave the "food" in the water but dosing phos/nitrates seems like a better, controlled way of increasing nutrients, so was curious if mcarroll was suggesting the filter pad removal for a different reason for the dino mitigation.

Yes, dosing phosphates is better IMO.

 

But no, there's no recommendation for extra food in the water either (not from me anyway) – just feed what food it takes for your tank/fish to be "well fed".

 

Unfortunately, the pad is good at removing things like fish poo that your corals (or the reef more generally) should have repeated chances to eat thanks to the excellent flow you provide in the tank that keeps those particles from settling on the rocks or sand too quickly.

 

On 1/10/2022 at 10:25 AM, Jakesaw said:

From my limited experience ( about 1  yr ) The reef tank is a balancing self-regulating system,  All the problems we experience are a response to something being off balance a bit.

Most folks (see my opening commend on that thread from 5-6 years ago) seem to start their "future dino tanks" by jacking up the system with a HUGE SPIKE OF NITROGEN (ammonia) on day 1.

 

I do not think this and the dino trend are pure coincidence – so I think you're on to something. 😉 🤷‍♂️

 

Quote

Add fish + dirty feed frozen foods - > GHA but still too much DINO

You're mostly adding "organics" when you only really want to be adding phosphate....so this result really makes sense IMO.

 

 

Quote

Dose Phos - > DINO recedes a bit and back wall looks like a green wookie

That means the phosphates finally got your tank over the "eutrophication hump" caused by your dino bloom.  Dosing made enough dissolved nutrients available for competition to grow!  (Being pedantic since this isn't your thread! 😉)

 

The quicker a tank gets over this hump (eutrophication = bacterial action keeping dissolved nutrients at 0.00), it seems the quicker the tank recovers post-dino.....which is why my dino thread recommends dosing to what initially can seem like a fairly "high" po4 number once you correct all the problems that led to the dino's blooming –  ≥0.10 ppm PO4.

 

Some folks have had to initially dose quite a bit more than just 0.10 ppm to get past this "hump"...as much as .5 ppm in a few cases that I can recall.

 

Folks that try to slow-dose their way out of the problem have tended to have longer blooms and longer recovery times in general.  (Which may or may not be a big deal, depending how toxic your bloom is.)

 

Quote

Manual removal not keeping up, add Algae grazing snail > we'll see 

This is what success vs dino's looks like!!  🙏🥰

 

Keep up the hard work, and be patient and persistent with adding the snails 1-2 at a time.   You're almost there.  🙂 

Quote

Basically my tank is still out of balance and I'm seasoning my rock over time.  At some point, I expect to find a balance where things stabilize on their own.   We'll see if that happens and how long that takes.

Once you have a dino bloom, I usually characterize the wait until things become normal as "until you forget you had dino's".

 

Sometimes it goes faster – I've seen a few cases clear up in literally 2 days – but actual timing can be unpredictable.  

 

A LOT depends on the type of dino you have, so microscope ID can be crucial.  

 

But it also depends on how quickly and completely the problems that led to dino's are detected and rectified.  

 

(There have only been a small handful of tanks I've seen that were so bad that they were unrecoverable....and those tanks had usually been badly, badly treated before the attempted turnaround.)

 

15 hours ago, W1ll said:

I totally agree that this could be a completely feasible approach to battling dinos, have you noticed a significant reduction in dinos since you starting battling them? How long did it take to notice a difference? My strategy revolves heavily around manual removal, in conjunction with nutrient control. I let the filter pad catch the large chunks of dino as they let free from the rocks, I have been feeding my regular amount and relying on dosing concentrated Nitrate and phosphate using Seachem Flourish and homemade Potassium Nitrate solution to keep nutrients at elevated levels. I guess this just demonstrates that there can be multiple different ways to approach beating dinos, all of which can be successful. Interesting. 

Check out that link from the top of my post and see if anything there helps you to reframe your strategy in any way....sounds to me like you have most of the basics in mind, but your approach is understandably still just a bit scattered.  Holler if you have any questions – I think you will find at least SOME of the info there new and (hopefully) all of it will be useful!  🙂 

 

14 hours ago, W1ll said:

I think that unless you are running mechanical filtration that its <15 micron, you'll probably only catch the largest strands of dino, which within a couple hours of being under the water movement of an overflow, will break down into individual cells or chunks small enough to pass right through, just a theory though. 

Correct.

 

 

[W1ll]

18 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

That's quite a difference in salinity tho...wold there be enough excess capacity in the pump chamber to allow the ATO to cause this big a drop?

 

You can use this calculator to see how much fresh would have had to dump to cause the salinity you're seeing.

 

E.g.  If we assume you have a 120 liter tank (40 gallons), then that would take a "dump" of almost 32 liters (8 gallons) to drop salinity to 1.021.   That sounds like a lot, but suppose it's possible – just wanna check the numbers of your system to see if this seems to make sense of your situation.

Probably should have mentioned this in the first post, the tank I am having these issues in is my small one, only 15 gallons. This means the ATO would have to have dumped in about 11 litres. I believe this drop happened slowly, over a period of 7 or 8 days. This may have explained why none of the tank inhabitants looked overly upset, although some of my euphyllia were slighting shrunken. I was careful to slowly raise it again as to not cause shock to the system. Although I am almost certain that this, in conjunction nutrients bottoming out triggered the dino's to bloom.

 

24 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

As long as the 100w was functional (bulb not over its useful hours) I'd probably use it.  (Still not sure what size tank you have tho.  How can that be this many posts into the thread??  🙂)

 

Again, totally should have mentioned this earlier, this is all occurring in my small desktop tank, only 15 US gallons. I purchased the large 100W sterilizer a number of years back for my 60 gallon and only used it for a couple months. I reckon if I plumbed it into the little tank, it'd pump half the water out of the tank before it even got through the length of the sterilizer 🤣.  

 

30 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

I took quite a bit of time back in 2016-2017 to put together this Dino thread.   It has a fairly concise guide to treatment...or as concise as it gets for dino's.  🙂  Focus on reading the opening post and all the links included there before you try reading all 10,000+ posts 😉....most posts are just about ID of specific tank's dinos and problems, so more incidental than directly useful to your tank.  (You need to ID your own tank's problems and your own tank's dino's....which is why the OP doesn't directly offer any solutions....problems generally need to be fixed before solutions are implemented.)  The exception to the useful info in the bulk of those posts might be the info folks included about the UV sterilizers being used...lots of positive examples there of using small UV filters to GREAT EFFECT...inlcuding working out any issues with the filters – good examples to steal from if you need UV!

I must say, the Reef2Reef DINO mega thread really is an awesome resource, It somewhat calmed my panic the first time I went to war with dinos in my big tank back a couple years ago. I read quite far into it then but didn't have a much time on my hands this time, only read the first 10 or so pages. I'll be sure go back and have a look around for some more information on the use of UV. Thank you for contributing to this thread as well, you really do have some incredibly helpful information. 

[DevilDuck]

@W1ll If the tank is only 15g, I would consider a "rip clean" approach. It's free and should only take an afternoon.

 Basically take the tank apart, do a deep clean and 100 percent water change and put it back together.

 

- Blast off all the dino and detritus you can from the rocks

- Remove the rocks and put it into a container

- Drain tank and remove inhabitants

- Remove the sand and rinse it in tap water until it runs clear. The final rinse should be with RODI.

- Put it all back together again with freshly mixed saltwater and adjust nutrients to desired levels

 

 

[skippylou]

I was always curious about a few things with these rip cleans:

 

* Does one attempt to save any sand critters like worms and such?

* From what I've read previously it sounds like the focus is on cleaning the sand completely with freshwater and rinsing loose detritus from rock in saltwater, but do folks also scrub the tank and gear completely as well?

[mcarroll]

6 minutes ago, skippylou said:

I was always curious about a few things with these rip cleans:

 

* Does one attempt to save any sand critters like worms and such?

* From what I've read previously it sounds like the focus is on cleaning the sand completely with freshwater and rinsing loose detritus from rock in saltwater, but do folks also scrub the tank and gear completely as well?

The main caveat I'd put on it is that folks who try to "reboot" their way out of dino's always have dino's come back.   In 10,000+ posts of the dino mega-thread I never saw an exception to this.

 

Further, if you can clear the dino's without practically rebooting your whole tank, then that's not only better in terms of dino's, it's also better in terms of preserving whatever bio-diversity you might have achieved.

 

Last, you should manually check your sand in a few places – stir the sand with your finger in a few placed around the bases of your rocks and underneath flow pumps, etc.  Anyplace like those where detritus tends to collect.

 

If you see a little brown cloud pop out of the area you're testing, then it's dirty.  

 

On the other hand, if you see a pure white cloud pop up, that's just aragonite – the sand there is clean.  

 

BTW, your tank is still so new that it "should be" very clean still.  If you DO NOT find that it's still clean, then this type of aggressive cleaning being recommended may make some sense.

 

But not because "rip cleaning" is some kind of miracle cure.  

 

It's becuase IF your find your sand already compromised, it means one (or both) of two things.  Either you were overfeeding.  Or your tank has poor/weak flow that's allowing excessive amounts of detritus to settle on the rocks and sand (vs staying adrift and eventually being eaten).  Again, could be both.

 

If either of those turn out to be true, then cleaning your sand will be a decent idea and will give you another shot to get feeding/flow right.  

 

Depending how much "dirt" you find, a simple gravel vacuuming might do the trick.....it does for most folks and it's a LOT less work/waste.

[brandon429]

Devil agreed, the rip clean surgery aligns a nano perfectly. It’s full mass removal, then the system can be fed well and not dosed with things, circumventing a monthslong test and response mode and tradeoff invasion into cyano or gha. Essentially a rip clean takes what a large reef can do over six months using test and response down to four hours, the tank is shining clean after a rip clean. 
 

 

then, since this is the top invasion in reefing, when a few small strands of dinos remass we remove them via siphon and never allow them to regroup ever again- it’s a nano, there’s no excuse. You guide the dinos out by hand, like weeds from a garden, we install uv after the rip clean not before it. The human causes the instant uninvaded condition, the machine fights growback vs dosing phosphate which will blast green hair algae into the system. We get to feed well in a rip cleaned tank, that fixes nutrient issues if any. 
 

 

whether or not you run a filter doesn’t matter whatsoever. We made a clean reef - run any filter you want it won’t be full of cast off mass.

[brandon429]

Here’s a roadmap to the top five rip cleans on file, out of a thousand, making any nano reef on this whole site immune to invasions. It’s impractical for large reefs, due to access needs, but nanos are only invaded if we choose to be. Here’s the opt out button

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/algae-identification.707457/

 

 

it sure is neat when forums allow scientific cross linking. Helps reef tanks live and lose fewer animals. Rip cleans only have positive outcomes if they’re done right.

 

let’s do a rip clean here live time, so I can add it to my thread on rip cleans here, then nano-reef.com can build up its own rip clean roll of examples for pages of happy outcomes.