Starting over

[Chief]

Well, after hurting my back almost two years ago and neglecting my tank because I could not stand on a six foot ladder and bend into the tank to clean it ( I am much better now ). And after a terrible nitrate spike after I took my refugium offline ( bad flatworm epidemic ). And after most of my coral has perished ( I have a large toadstool and some heads of hammer left ). Now my tank is infested with hair algae ( and flatworms - DOH! ).

 

I believe it is time to start over. So here are my thoughts. I am going to remove all the live rock. Scrub it down. Freshwater dip it. Flatworm exit dip it. Then let it cook for about a month ( should I let it cook longer??? ). During this time, I will be doing some serious water changes ( about 60 gallons a week on a 300 gallon system. I will also flatworm exit the tank, sump and refugium to make sure I have eliminated them.

 

My tank will be kind of bare for a while, but I believe this is the best course of action. The tank was in great shape when I could take care of it, but I think it has gotten too far out of hand and requires some drastic measures.

 

Some questions.

 

Will I have to go through a big cycle when I put my live rock back in the tank? My remote DSB in my refugium will still be online. I just don't want to kill my fish.

 

I have heard of some people pressure washing live rock, but I am afraid of all the minerals in tap water. Your thoughts?

 

Any other ideas that might make this process a little smoother? I will probably drain my tank completely and redo some plumbing that I did as a novice when I set up the tank.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Jay

[Nyles]

I would do a full rock cook, use a rubbermaid tub like your fuge and put all your rock in there. I would blast the rock twice weekly in your "cooking" water (5 gallon bucket) and I like to dunk and spin the rock in the water to help release any detritus. I would do this for about two months if you have flatworms, if there regular flatworms you will probably get away with less but more time the better, you honestly can't guess, but you will know when there is not anything coming out of the rock anymore. I still think you should consider building a opening on the living room side for better access to the front glass. This just eases the burden.

 

Keep in mind no live rock and lots of fish could lead to a nitrate spike, so keep a close eye on your levels, as this is a bare bottom tank the only things breaking down waste from fish will be refugium and skimmer, I would filter sock out all I could for this time with no rock and skim like mad.

[Nyles]

Oh and cooking rock will not cause a tank cycle, but removing it with a large fish load may, so watch your levels.

[andy]

Since you'd be going fish-only, you could supplement the tank filtration with a canister filter. Throw some bio-media, GFO and Purigen in there and you'll be fine for a couple of months. Once you put the rock back into the tank you can periodically cut down on the media in the canister filter until things are back in balance.

[dsoz]

What will you do with the leather and hammer corals that you have left?

 

I have not done it myself, but I hear that cooking rock takes 6-8 weeks, or more, to be complete. You will probably be sorry if you don't do it at least that long. The hair algae will just come back.

 

It is good to hear that you are doing better.

 

dsoz

[Miniwhinny]

I don't have a lot of stuff in my meager 29 but you're welcome to anything I have that I can frag when you are ready ('cept for Dsoz's baby bubble 'shroom )

[reef-fisher]

I think this all depends on your patience level. I had a similar outbreak not too long ago. I also had the same debate as to what needed to be done. I opted for the more natural(not the right word, but you get the point) route. After finding my RO to be the culprit of adding phosphates, among other things, I attacked my rock with a scrub brush and some elbow grease. Shortly after, I added a clean-up crew that would help with my situation, lots of hermits, a foxface, and some extra snails.

After about 3 weeks of 2x a week water changes, and a bit more patience with the clean up crew, my tank was spotless. I slowly moved the hermits to the sump and have had NO algae whatsoever. I think there are still a dozen or so hermits, but now I am having to add nori to keep the foxface happy.

The flatworms went away as well, though Im not quite sure what handled them.

Not sure if I did more or less work than I should have, but I am very pleased with the results in such a short time(about a month from start to finish).

I guess the other bonus to the direction I took is that I always had something to look at in the tank.

Good luck, and let me know if you need some hermits,

Ben

[chewie]

Jay,

 

Depending on what kind of rock you have, pressure washing could easily break it up if you're not careful.

 

If you're feeling extreme, you could BOIL the rock. Then scrub, rinse and repeat. It took me 3 sessions of boiling for an hour, scrubbing, rinsing with the garden hose ect.

 

It certainly works.

 

50% of the rock in my new tank was boiled almost 2 years ago, and a recent batch of about 25 lbs was boiled about a week before I setup my new tank.

 

You'd just need to get a good piece of rock to reseed it.

 

I would suggest only doing about 25% of your rock at a time. Isolate it in your sump until all rock is ready to go back in the tank.

 

It would be less time consuming than "cooking" the rock for 6-8 weeks.

[Chief]

Oh and cooking rock will not cause a tank cycle' date=' but removing it with a large fish load may, so watch your levels.[/quote']

 

Thanks for the advice Nyles. I plan on doing large water changes along with heavy skimming.

 

Jay

[Chief]

What will you do with the leather and hammer corals that you have left?

 

I have not done it myself, but I hear that cooking rock takes 6-8 weeks, or more, to be complete. You will probably be sorry if you don't do it at least that long. The hair algae will just come back.

 

It is good to hear that you are doing better.

 

dsoz

 

The toadstool and hammer coral will stay in the display. I will manually remove the hair algae from those corals and do dips in flatworm exit. If I drain the main tank, the coral can temporarily stay in the 55 gallon fuge or 100 gallon sump.

 

Jay

[Chief]

I think this all depends on your patience level. I had a similar outbreak not too long ago. I also had the same debate as to what needed to be done. I opted for the more natural(not the right word, but you get the point) route. After finding my RO to be the culprit of adding phosphates, among other things, I attacked my rock with a scrub brush and some elbow grease. Shortly after, I added a clean-up crew that would help with my situation, lots of hermits, a foxface, and some extra snails.

After about 3 weeks of 2x a week water changes, and a bit more patience with the clean up crew, my tank was spotless. I slowly moved the hermits to the sump and have had NO algae whatsoever. I think there are still a dozen or so hermits, but now I am having to add nori to keep the foxface happy.

The flatworms went away as well, though Im not quite sure what handled them.

Not sure if I did more or less work than I should have, but I am very pleased with the results in such a short time(about a month from start to finish).

I guess the other bonus to the direction I took is that I always had something to look at in the tank.

Good luck, and let me know if you need some hermits,

Ben

 

I have tried the "natural" approach and it has gotten worse. I think this is going to be the best option for me. It has been almost 2 years, and I am ready to have a stable tank again. Thanks for your advice and I may be looking you up when I need some hermits.

 

Jay

 

Jay

[Chief]

I don't have a lot of stuff in my meager 29 but you're welcome to anything I have that I can frag when you are ready ('cept for Dsoz's baby bubble 'shroom )

 

Thank you very much. We have some very nice people in this group.

 

Jay

[Chief]

Since you'd be going fish-only' date=' you could supplement the tank filtration with a canister filter. Throw some bio-media, GFO and Purigen in there and you'll be fine for a couple of months. Once you put the rock back into the tank you can periodically cut down on the media in the canister filter until things are back in balance.[/quote']

 

I have an extra canister or two lying around. I will give this a shot. Thanks.

 

Jay

[Chief]

Jay,

 

Depending on what kind of rock you have, pressure washing could easily break it up if you're not careful.

 

If you're feeling extreme, you could BOIL the rock. Then scrub, rinse and repeat. It took me 3 sessions of boiling for an hour, scrubbing, rinsing with the garden hose ect.

 

It certainly works.

 

50% of the rock in my new tank was boiled almost 2 years ago, and a recent batch of about 25 lbs was boiled about a week before I setup my new tank.

 

You'd just need to get a good piece of rock to reseed it.

 

I would suggest only doing about 25% of your rock at a time. Isolate it in your sump until all rock is ready to go back in the tank.

 

It would be less time consuming than "cooking" the rock for 6-8 weeks.

 

Thanks Chewie. This is almost too extreme for me. (scary) I want to stay away from a cycle if I can.

 

But if this whole "cooking" thing doesn't work for me... you never know. (whistle)

 

Jay

[pledosophy]

Are you really going to tear down the tank for hair algae? Seriously?

 

If your not 100% sure you want to do this there are many many options we can explore, some of them very inexpensive at that. Some are very very easy. Hair algae no matter how bad it is can be dealt with, without having to tear down the system.

 

If you want help before taking the radical approach I'd be glad to do what I can.

 

I your set on it, then IMO

 

Cook the rock for longer, it will help it release built up phosphates, kill unwanted pests. Don't dip the rock in fresh water, you don't want to kill the anaerobic bacteria, it takes quite some time to recolonize and without your LR will be pretty useless in denitrification. It's easier to clean your rock, then it is to reseed all of the years of bacteria.

 

When you put the rock in the bin, put as much flow in as you can. Turn the temp up as high as you can. If you can cover the rock it will help with evaporation, but plan on topping off frequently. When the rock is cooking it is important you feed the rock so the bacteria will continue to grow. Instead of feeding with traditional foods, feed with pure unscented ammonia (they sell it at Smart and Final) or ammonia chloride (FWIW IME it takes about .113 gm to hit 1ppm in 10g of water) Spike the ammonia to 1ppm as often as possible. Daily is great, but when your cooking stuff for months missing a day isn't that bad. Using a pure source of ammonia means the bacteria is eating, but the protozoans and pests are not. Don't worry about the pH, it will be screwy.

 

When I cooked my rock I also fed the anaerobes. I used Kettle One Vodka just cuz it was a good excuse to buy it, table sugar works the same. For vodka I was using 1mL once a week in about 55g of water.

 

I would use flatworm exit on the tank and rock, separately. The ammonia, temp, and starvation will probably kill the worms, but just in case. In the tank it will give better penetration and less places for the suckers to hide.

 

Pulling all of that rock is pulling all of your biological filtration in your display. Your going to see ammonia and nitrite readings. Amquel will only go so far, in a tank that size large daily water changes are just a stupid option. Your going to need to seriously plan for the loss of aerobic bacteria. It's going to take some time to catch up, even with your refugium and your skimmer. I know everyone hates them but I might start cycling some bioballs the same way you would cook the rock for a couple of weeks (it should take about 2 weeks) so at least the ammonia and nitrite will be gone. In a fish only system nitrate is not as bad, but your going to need to plan for that too. Nitrate reactors work well and can be made fairly cheaply. I might look into one. You could always toss a bunch of macro in the display during cooking but then you have to pull it out, and/or get a fish that will eat it as well IME or you will always have macro in your tank.

 

JMO, HTH

[Chief]

I will still have about 100 lbs of live rock in my sump ( no problems with that rock ) and a 55 gallon refugium with a 5 inch DSB that is about 3/4 full of macro algae.

 

I was thinking of doing 60 gallon water changes once a week (about 20%).

 

That is some interesting info on the ammonia and vodka ( or sugar ). I remember reading about these items a while back on RC. I will read back up on them.

 

I have beat hair algae in the past. After taking all the rock out and scrubbing it down, rinsing, swishing, rinsing again, Flatworm exit dip, rinse again, I may end up putting it all back and keep up on the water changes.

 

The reason I may break it completely down is to (a) finally cook the rock. (b) redo my plumbing © get rid of most of the flatworms before treating the tank. (d) catch and get rid of my majestic angelfish.

 

This is kind of the perfect time to get everything back to stable. The tank is not full of coral at the moment. I just want to give my tank the best opportunity for success.

 

Jay

[Chief]

Today was a busy day. I removed, scrubbed, and dipped ( flatworm exit ) all of my live rock ( about 400lbs ). I moved all my fish and inverts to the sump where I will treat tomorrow with flatworm exit. There is still about 100lbs of live rock in the sump along with the DSB in the refugium and lots of macro.

 

I will remove what is left of the water from my 240 gallon display and redo my plumbing ( killing two birds with one stone ). I have had a small leak near the bottom of my tank where my spraybar is for quite a while now and my plumbing sticks out too far from the back of the tank. It makes it very difficult to get into the tank.

 

I may leave the display empty for a little while. I would like to make some rock lifts for the tank this time around. I am very exited about getting my tank back to stable again.

 

Thanks again for everyones comments. My back is killing me.

 

Jay

[Michael7979]

Keep us updated..........

[Reefin']

Pressure washer!!!!! I've been on city water(no ro/di) and yes I have had algae problems but I account that to bad Tank husbandry and water flow....now that I'm more active with my tanks ( changing the filter sock moreoften) its all going away..........what I saying is don't be afraid to use tap water....BLAST IT!!! have you checked the tds of your city water....some citys water are amazingly low, some not.......and I don't believe you can kill off the bacteria on the rock that easily.....when the world ends they are what's gonna be left........if your worried about the

"Stuff" in city water , pressure wash then do a quick cooking process wit ro/di.......whaterever is there should leach out

HTH

Later

[Nyles]

LOL I can't even comment... I run a pressure washing business and would never pressure wash my LR. But thats just me.

[Reefin']

Nyles,

Lol.....were talkin a household unit with like 1300-1500psi...... I see where ur comin from but eventually you get fed up wit the hair algae........latr

[pledosophy]

Rock lifts do sound fun.

[andy]

I put rock lifts in my nano and while they've been great for aquascaping, I've got mixed emotions about them. The lifts have made things *too* easy for my goby and pistol shrimp... they've got such a great tunnel system under the rock that they pretty much never need to come out. The only time I see them is for 5 minutes a day at feeding time, and even then they just dart out and back. I guess not all tanks or livestock would have this problem, but it is a weird side effect...