ok started closing my marine down upgrade for me to [cleaner tank]

whats the best way with my LR to clean it all. very green

have given about 10 pieces a soft waterblast but not as white as i wanted it still see the green but alot better.

any ideas????

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 .

cheers reef 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

you and your water blaster :lol:

another alternitive is cooking them there was a linf on one of the threads a few days ago to the procedure, or as reef says give them a scrub and pop them in the new tank and keep your water up to par

thats good, so just change the water every two weeks so that the waste gets removed. Make sure you have enough rock as you dont want to add any uncycled rock to your new tank.

i have enough rocks i hope. wont know until i do some reef building

i will just go and get some of brianemones lol when hes not looking :lol:

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

cheers layton doing it now having a break first got square eyes lol

ok tanks all empty fish are in the garage rocks in the garage having a boilup so now just waiting to get new tank and start to built the wall

lost my yellow wasse this morning didnt like his temp home so jumped out

silly boy

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/ ... C-001S.jpg

hey my anemone

lol yes not a good pic i was just doing a test, my poor anemone shrimp the clowns wont let him in

ill have to come have a look at your paddling pool reef

no worries

Iducan is your tank BB?

Ive been reading alot on rc about cooking rocks. It seems like it has a good theory behind it.

Was wondering whether or not you need to do it to dead dry rock?

wonder if the diatom bloom is caused by decaying matter when cycling the tank..

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

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?

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

Also, there is nothing surgically clean about BB tanks. They are still a lot dirtier than the natural environment most of the corals housed in them come from.

Steve west tank is far superior that bombers. so having sand is more benefit.

Low nurients is just as much a problem as high nutrients,

Bombers tank is pretty impressive. Different type of corals. Bombers are mainly Caribbean (restricted species) - golden brown acros, where as Steve's are indo-pacific - rainbow colours.

Layton

got the link to his tank

Here's a pic of his tank I found. Don't know that he has a site or not.

does he have fish? can only see one. That is why he has no nutrients, no need to feed .