Taking the BB plunge

reef_noob · 07-13-2005, 05:59 PM

Hi all, I am heavily leaning toward pulling the shallow sand bed out of my 46g bowfront because I've recently decided to head towards an sps dominated tank. I don't have a lot of corals attached currently and the live rock is just stacked (not glued). I was thinking that this would be a good time to scrub my lr clean of a red hair algae outbreak and to re-aquascape using plastic rods. My current plan is to buy a kiddie pool and fill it with sw, transfer my lr to the pool with a couple of mj 1200s circulating the water, move the fish (2 clowns, blenny, royal gramma) corals(1 leather, 1 ricordia, 1 gsp, and some xenia) and inverts(15+ misc snails/hermits) to the 20g refugium and scoop out the sand with the water still in the main tank. once that is reasonably clear, I would place some starboard on the bottom, and let the detritus settle before vacuuming out with a 50% water change. While that is settling I would have a scrub bucket and a dip bucket for the lr, and take a day or so to aquascape the lr and add it back to the tank.

My biggest concern is shocking the tank into a new cycle. The refugium has about 15# of lr and I will have about 30g of water between the sump and refuge.

Is there anything I can do to mitigate an ammonia spike? The bioload is relatively low, but suddenly removing 80% of the bacteria can't be a good thing, especially when combined with stirring up a sand bed. I could potentially keep some of the lr in the sump and add some of it to the refuge, but not that much.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

tims · 07-14-2005, 07:38 AM

having extra water ready for changes will help.

I you are 100% going this way. slowly remove the sand bed over the next few weeks. this will help the lr catch up. if you can get some more LR already cured

that would be a plus. and yes having some in the sump is a good idea.

reef_noob · 07-14-2005, 06:13 PM

Cool, Thanks for the info.
After further research, I think I've decided to cook my live rock.
Some of it came from a tank breakdown and I don't know about the rest.
I figured I'd keep the livestock in the main tank and rely on the dsb and lr in the 20gal refugium to do bio filtration. I'll add some base rock from the lfs for habitat and hopefully it will become seeded while I cook the other rock. In addition, I plan to add a couple of filter sponges to the sump and a hang on tank powerfilter I have lying around. Do you think this will be enough? Is there anything else I should consider when I do this?

tims · 07-14-2005, 07:27 PM

if you can, pick up soem PVC and make a "stand" to raise the LR off of hte DSB. this will help the flow a bit more adn keep detrious from getting trapped at the base.
keep the cooking LR in water and have a power head in there to keep water movement. watch the levels adn do water changes .

Justin · 07-15-2005, 01:40 PM

Id be concerned with dipping the LR, once you do that, your gonna kill some good stuff as well as the bad stuff. Going BB,lightly scrubbing what you can, good flow, and less feeding along with decent waterchanges seems the safest way to go. Just seems very risky and asking for spikes the other way.

edited: Notice your getting some more from the lfs, any time you add new rock without knowing the history, even just getting LR from the fishstore, is asking for some spikeage as well. Unless theyre selling it with critters on it, and not outta the so called "live rock" tank.

-Justin

reef_noob · 07-15-2005, 01:58 PM

Thanks, I'm actually going to go with "cooking"(really mis-named, purging might be a better term) the rock now. I think that the rock I got from the tank breakdown is really saturated with po4 and my poor husbandry has made the rest bad as well.
The technique basically removes all light from the rocks, thus starving the algae and allowing bacteria to consume the excess detritus and p04 in the rocks. Essentially it resets the rock, sure, I'll lose some coralline and some "critters" but I've come to the conclusion that the only way to rid myself of this red hair algae is this, or going with new base rock and seeding it. Either way I'm going to be pulling all the lr from my main tank.

If yu're interested, this is a long thread discussing the technique and the pros/cons thereof http://reefcentral.com/forums/showt...threadid=485572

I'm trying to mitigate the ammonia shock by slowly removing the sand and lr, while adding temp base rock. I'll be leaving the live dsb and 15#'s of lr which is currently in the refugium which along with skimming should be sufficient for the bioload I have. I think the trick is to just take it slow, monitor ammonia levels, and be prepared to do some large water changes if necessary.

Justin · 07-15-2005, 02:05 PM

-Justin