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emptying tankout


slappers

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Brush as much off as you can and put it into the new tank.

Then make sure you have a good skimmer and phostphate remover.

The algae will die away once you get you water quality right. No need to get the rocks really clean as it will come back anyway if you dont sort out the water conditions.

If you got no coral then reduce light to a few hours a day for a few weeks .

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cheers reef :bow: i havent got my tank yet, i will be picking up next week so the rocks i have cleaned will be going into the garage in a container fill with saltwater and a air stone, until the new one is up and running about two months away as will be going into a wall which hasnt been built yet

as for a skimmer i need one to bigger is better so i heard so will need one of those to

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I would HIGHLY recommend cooking your rock. Details on what this is can be found here:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... did=485572

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... did=437342

That way you won't have to worry about using phosphate remover and things like that.

It really is quite an amazing process, you will be surprised with the amount of phosphate laden crap which comes out of the rock. Even dry base rock is full of it.

I would recommend this process to anyone starting a tank. The amount of rubbish that exists in "new" rocks is probably the reason why virtually everyone goes through a stage of algae when setting up a new tank.

Over the last few months I have removed 5 or 6 litres of SOLID detritus, which has come from the rock cooking process in my tank. Plus hundreds of litres of skimmate.

And I considered my rock to be clean before hand, no algae problems or anything like that.

Do it, you wont regret it.

Layton

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Yip my tank is BB, not by intent, just by laziness really. I couldn't be bothered cleaning the sand and putting it back in after I had to move the tank.

You should absolutely cook "dead" dry rock, and yes, the diatom bloom when starting up a tank I believe is due to the crap on and in the "dead" dry rock.

The cooking process is a cycling process, but you are removing the crap, rather than just have it fall into a sand bed, and storing it.

If you placed cooked rock into a new tank, you won't have those initial algae problems. If you do, then the rock wasn't cooked long enough, or properly.

Layton

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So what's the difference then in running a mininal (1/2" max) sandbed with cured live rock and keeping it clean/vacced and the rock in reasonably high flow?

Either way the crap coming off the rock doesn't stay in the system, right? Possibly not as surgically clean I guess?

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Maintenance is the difference. With properly positioned flow, BB tanks can be extremely low maintenance. For example, Bombers tank on RC, 300gal + only requires siphoning of 1/8th of a cup of detritus a month.

No phosphate removers, not even a calcium reactor. Just water flow, skimmer, UV, and 2-3hr/day photoperiod.

When you have sand, you really never know how dirty it is. I think you have to keep a tank BB for a while to truly appreciate the part rock and sand plays in cycling nutrients in a tank.

But clearly it can be done. Steve Weast (www.oregonreef.com) uses this approach.

Layton

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