DNR88's Blue Marine Reef 90 (24 gallon) - Sand bed rinsed

[brandon429]

I would siphon that red right up in 2 mins vs let it remass

 

It'll eventually exhaust but like dandelions a few come back / need guided right out

[brandon429]

Did you lower the lighting intensity, curious of any preventative changes made

[DNR88]

Except for the red stuff on the sand, things go pretty well.

 

[debbeach13]

The coral do look nice.

No way I could look at that sand for a week.

[DNR88]

14 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

The coral do look nice.

No way I could look at that sand for a week.

If you leave it that way long enough, it will eventually go unnoticed. 😋 Clean-up day tomorrow.

[growsomething]

Was this tank new when you posted Jan 18?  If so, if that much detritus built up in a month or 4 to cause the need for a rip clean, reef tanks with sand are unsustainable.  

Was it a new tank or old, and if new, do you think it was something other than detritus accumulation in the sand?

[brandon429]

lighting adjustment, verification of topoff/ make water zero tds was listed, taking 3 minutes to simply guide out a single red strand vs farm a full tank was listed, uv turbo twist works well after rip clean for the sustain. In re reading the thread we covered that, then it was missing from the process

 

Adding pods after the rip clean to begin predation effort against the target cells would have been a change of pace. Can still do

 

 

 

[brandon429]

 here's 56 pages/willing to make changes to exact control

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/page-56

 

It helps to have the exact method on file so there's not confusion. Rip cleans are an exercise program for sedentary reefs, a multiple step process. Allowing complete re invasion makes it where cells will escape cleanup and mass builds, with no prevention steps enacted. 

 

being willing to siphon up 1 strand of cyano that was two inches long, small repeat tasks vs allow total takeover was key. The tendency will always be to blame external things on having an invaded nano, but it's really us with the final say.

 

It's possible to be invasion free in nanos always.  The hard part is in the prevention but you don't allow your tank to wreck over just because prevention didn't come from one single workout session. 

 

It takes weeks and months of sustained changes in approach to win. 

[DNR88]

On 3/18/2023 at 9:36 PM, growsomething said:

Was this tank new when you posted Jan 18?  If so, if that much detritus built up in a month or 4 to cause the need for a rip clean, reef tanks with sand are unsustainable.  

Was it a new tank or old, and if new, do you think it was something other than detritus accumulation in the sand?

I think it's more how you 'approach' the sand. If you don't do anything and let it go dirty, you will get algae/dinos/cyano on your sandbed eventually.

 

If you have a decent CUC that also stirs your sand on a daily basis, it will probably stay clean longer. Apparently my hermit crabs and sand snails don't do enough in this.

 

The 'rip clean sand' was just a test for me @brandon429 and sorry not sorry for not following your instructions for the 100%. I do what I think is good, for the short and the long term.

 

I will now manually disturb the sandbed daily (after sunset), to see if the sand remains cleaner with minimal resources and effort.

 

We can never (completely) imitate nature in our tank, but in nature there's also no thorough deep cleaning of the sand and dirt eventually builds up somewhere. The sand is regularly stirred up for various reasons in nature, so I'm going to try that too and see how it holds up.

[DNR88]

The green toadstool leather is still the star of the tank and the main reason I keep this tank. 🙂

[DNR88]

The sand looks good after churning up after sunset. Let's see if that's still the case tomorrow. 😅