That was my birthday in April
Not a car guy in fact I have a video of my engine shaking I need a car guy to diagnose
Thank you for not letting my algae soapbox off put you!
=got grizzled after 23 years of reefing online
Here's the thread the pics came from.
*there's decent argument at the start from naysayers so ignore that and just consider the links and pics from the actual jobs ran.
Notice nothing died, nobody crashed, they were willing to be thorough and not customize the approach so that consistency keeps all reefs safe.
There is an order of ops used in every tank to prevent a crash/recycle upon setting back up.
If we work your tank in sections since it's larger volume that is opposite so we'll need to plan carefully
I think it'll be practical once prepared for you to lift out rocks and detail them and set them back in without having to take down the whole tank, depends on what your full tank pics show
post a full tank picture here so we can see the sandbed details. This is just brainstorm stage for preps, no action required other than lighting adjust that'll help you without any risk. You can get the light reduced and more blue without harm to corals, they like the setting.
Quick summary: I think your tank is larger than these nanos your job is on the high end of effort. It's easy when the tank is only twenty gallons for example so we're just brainstorming here so far.
But the principle still holds: light is your cause most likely and physical controls work best. And you can still remove one or more rocks and detail them and set them back onto not clean sand. Perhaps your sand isn't so bad with waste being new, but it's possible. The key will be not stirring up waste in the tank when lifting out rocks, that clouding can kill sometimes so before any action is taken we should see full tank picture first and plan carefully.
These jobs above were completely safe because the tanks were taken down and the rocks and sand were cleaned externally, then the whole tank was put back together with fully rinsed sand + surgically detailed rocks.
No ammonia testing was done and no bottle bac was used in any job, even though this seems extreme the filter bacteria on rocks are preserved so that's why nobody's tank crashes. It's because we cleaned fully all at once; when you work in sections that upwells waste and casts it around the tank, that's unsafe.
This next thread is important to study patterns in skip cycle reef handling.
If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...
www.reef2reef.com
This thread above are the *exact* same steps, without variance, but it's used to skip cycle reefs into new homes or new tanks.
That thread does include rip cleaned systems up to 250 gallons, because they were moving homes and had no choice, they had to disassemble. am showing that in both threads we had different reasons to deep dive the tank but the order of takedown and assembly doesn't change and that's why no reefs died. As soon as we start kicking up bad sand in the presence of fish/ something will likely die.
Rip cleans are how to move reefs and never crash. Rip cleans are how we fixed those wrecked nanos in the first thread; the order of ops doesn't change regardless of reason to put a reef tank into surgery. I'm wanting you to see that regardless of tank size the handling steps and rules for how to handle sand don't change.
You could easily fix lights today and remove one rock off the very top, work it, and set it back for practice. That won't hurt anything.
We shouldn't do more than that without planning.
So an interesting reef rule is under scrutiny there: we've been told sandbed bacteria are crucial for reef balance and we can't live without them
Is that true based on the patterns shown?
Sandbed bacteria aren't your algae cause, but the rules formerly stated about sandbed bacteria set the cleaning boundaries. Due to perceived tight cleaning boundaries, thousands of old school reefs allowed algae to build up because they thought the system would die if deep cleaned. Not so, we see in ten years of work logged above.
Final summary:
partial cleaning kills tanks because of upwelling waste in the sandbed, rot, this kills things
It wasn't the lack of bacteria that kills, it's the cloudy waste kicked up. Hesitant and scared handling kills reefs.
Deliberate, planned and confident handling using a safe order of operations + total sandbed cleaning saves reefs. There's no middle ground. Practicing on a few top rocks in your scape and setting them back in is easy and safe.
And now you see why many large tank owners go without sand: it creates a giant headache in our reefs 9/10 times. If it weren't for sand we'd have just been lifting out rocks and setting them back in without all the fanfare.
