How high for nitrate?

[sadie]

18 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

I recommend this too.  I just cleaned my HOB filter yesterday.  From all the Dino, it was pretty nasty in there.  I ended up running vinegar water through ti for 20 minutes and scraping it out to dump down drain.  All clean. 

 

For an AIO back chamber that's not possible, but you could still scrape and siphon the stuck on gunk of back chambers. 

The only thing I have in my tower is filter floss.  I was running Purigen and carbon, but my nutrients were so low I took it all out.  But I did take my tower out a bit ago and clean it all down with vinegar.  

 

I was going to do this all on Sun, forgetting it was Easter!!  My days are all messed up since I've been sick. 😵  I'm gonna go get more buckets today and start mixing the water.  I can keep it in my tub in the buckets till tomorrow.  I should be able to do it all tomorrow.  Can't wait to have a clean tank again!!

[brandon429]

Clarifying: you don't have to keep heated over night in tub that's a dip of ten minutes right before you begin disassembly

 

So have all your ready water salted and just let it sit in a room open topped until tomorrow, it'll be too cold by then as it sits not covered/ taking in oxygen

 

Then right before rip clean set the cold water buckets in the heated bath for 10 or so minutes to verify temp 78-80, re verify salinity, and now that's your 100% change water ready to go back into the rip cleaned reef

[brandon429]

The way my water works is every two weeks I go fill up saltwater from the pet store pre-made. One blue 5 gallon drinking bottle full but never capped for lengthy reasons. 

 

It sits in my pantry open topped not circulated not heated. 20 mins before my water change weekly on 1 gallon vase I simply set the blue container in sink hot water for 10 mins take out and swish around to mix. Add distilled water from wal mart to bring salinity down to 1.026 i like mine high, verify temp, change the water. Remaining water sits back in pantry until next use, it could sit for months all that happens is it evaporates and the salinity goes up but that's harmless quick shot of distilled brings it right back

 

It's important to not cap storage water for myriad reasons even if it's been safe so far, begin storing all prep water uncapped.

[Jakesaw]

1 hour ago, sadie said:

Can't wait to have a clean tank again!!

I'm in process of doing my own variation of this. 

 

Found a way to get a daily clean of DINO's yesterday too.  Cut off some filter floss / chase the big nasties with turkey baster and squirt it through that 5" square of filter floss pad and let the water drain into tank.  Prior to that I was squirting the Turkey baster water to back of HOB filter chamber with filter floss pad.  The muck would fill up the pad in a day and all my water would flow right through it.

 

Pulled out some big brown DINO snot balls last night.. and it was good  

 

Good luck 

[sadie]

20 hours ago, brandon429 said:

*if you have back areas that are not algae but that bright nice coralline, keep it! It looks great, you’d simply dropper or dribble saltwater onto the keep coralline zones so they don’t dry out

I am looking really close at my back wall and it is 99.9% coraline on top of coraline.  How do I get the algae off w/o hurting the coraline?  I'll try and get a good picture.  

I'm thinking I might have to scrape it all off to get that algae off.😔

 

 

[brandon429]

yes in my opinion it needs to go if its the attachment base for algae and per your priming for that system that coralline will still come back. it was a luxury to keep where possible but all algae being gone so none can break off and re seed the tank is priority #1