Need advice/opinions on tank cleanup

T

tonymac

Some of you may have seen my post in the member for sale forum about shutting down the tank to clean (gha problem). I have 2 questions...

Once I pull everything and clean, should I leave my sand bed alone or should I pull it out and start completely over? My idea was to leave it alone...not sure if that is the best idea or not.
I am planning on cleaning the sump, skimmer, etc as well. With cleaning pretty much everything will it benefit me to keep the sand-bed?

I do not want to "cook" the rock as I do not want to loose all the coraline algae. I am scrubbing the rock, 1 by 1 to remove the hair algae and rinsing in ro/di water. I am then placing into tubs (salt water) with power heads until I get the tank cleaned up. Question here is...will this be sufficient to remove the gha?

Any help, ideas, advice would be appreciated.
 
Tony,

How ya been? Saw the post about tearing it down, sounds like you have had a change of heart.
As long as you don't add a bunch of tap water to the sand while cleaning the tank, you should be fine. It should help keep a good bacteria bed going in tank when you start it back up.
 
I would say to remove it. I had a horrible Hair Algae problem. I scubbed my rocks twice only to have it reappear. Only after I cooked half the rock and removed my sand bed was the curse lifted.

This was my situation: I bought my setup used and just dumped the sand back into the tank after we moved it. That had completely mixed it up. The tank looked fine for several months but then the algae set in.

I also added a refugium.

for what it's worth, I'd rather spend a few bucks on new sand and eliminate the possibility of a problem.

now I run a shallow sand bed with a sand sifting starfish.
 
Tony , if you decide to get rid of the sand and start new I have a few bags ( 3 ) of the sand left over from the group buy you can have . I can bring them by when I drop off your bucket and air pump.
 
i would "cook" the rock - the corallin algae will come back fine, but, man, if that stinking gha comes back, it might be the last straw for you - i would also take out the sand bed and clean well or replace - when you are at this point, don't risk it - do everything you can to avoid a relapse
 
Tony,

You are more then welcome to take 5 of my astrea snails to clean your tank. I gave fish2morrow 5 snails and they chump down on the algae. These snails must be on steroids. I believed they are starving in my 560 gal tank.
 
Well the real question is what is fueling the algae growth? What are your PO4 and NO3 readings? Unfortunatley if you have had high readings for some time, the phosphate may be imbedded in your live rock and will leach back into your system even if you scrub away all traces of the GHA. But if you can figure out how to get PO4 down to less .1 ppm, you should be able to starve the algae since it needs a fertilizer to grow.

Figure out your PO4 source ( and NO3 source(s) ) and get a growing crop of macro algae going and sit back and watch the tank stay relatively nuisance algae free. Or keep doing the SOS, and eventually you will likely let the frustration get the best of you.

Good luck
 
Thanks for the replies guys...I guess I will pull the sand bed completely and start fresh. Why take a chance??? It is not a "deep" bed or a true deep sand bed.

My nitrates never measured more than 10ppm at any point, usually was less than that. Phosphates never had a readable measurement, but I know it had to be in there. I was doing water changes twice a month for over 6 months and there was a stretch of 6 weeks I did it every week. 10 - 15% each time.

I know exactly when my algae outbreak started and could never get control after that point. Believe it or not, when my lawnmower blenny died (I should say murdered by another goby) all h3ll broke loose!

Albert...how much for the sand and what kind is it?
 
Have you thought about getting an ozonizer or putting some sort of UV. You may want to check our ORP level (between 400 and 450) before you decide to remove the sand.
 
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