Scott,

Yup. Basting and sponge cleaning is exactly what I was talking about.

Don't be concerned about blowing into the cyano. That's what I did. It gets picked up by the foams as does the detritus, then you clean the foams, and do it again. You have to keep it up at least once a day for at least a week for there to be any significant difference in your cyano problem.

And, yes, some of the detritus will settle on your rock and corals. That's why you baste them too, then continue basting and foam cleaning until the tank looks good again.

I have done this in my own tanks. It takes time and effort, but it is a non-chemical means of accomplishing a worthy goal. You get rid of tons of detritus that would normally stay in your tank and keep accumulated detritus from being a problem.

Bev,

This does seem like, and is a good thing to do. I am more than willing to do this.. but I think at this point it would be kind of pointless as I am upgrading tanks in the next month or so. At this time I will be replacing my sand bed, and cleaning my rocks thoroughly.

Otherwise, I'd without a doubt do this ! I did it for a couple days and the amount of crap that came out of my tank was insane! :eek:

Definitely makes me re-think the sandbed idea!

Scott,

I hear ya on the sandbed idea! It wasn't until we had our BB tanks all set up and did our first water change and bottom siphoning that we realized how much crud accumulates in just ONE WEEK :eek:

I still baste my rock in our three reefs the day before doing tank maintenance. Some tanks have more crud on the rock than others, but all tanks cloud up pretty good. Within a half hour, though, the water clears very nicely. Oh, and I make sure the glass is cleaned before basting. Otherwise, the crud sticks to the film algae on the glass and I can't see into the tank :eek:

Good luck with the new tank when you get it. I want pics!!

Yeah, when I basted.. the crud stuck to the glass as well haha.


Whoo hoo, Gold's just called and said my cube is ready for pick-up. Yahoo :exclaim: :smilecol:

Time to start saving the pennies for all the little extras I'll need, but it won't be much! Time to start building a stand :D

I was there buying some stuff and seen your new cube.

Nice! :)

That cyano sucks. I had an outbreak of it about a year ago. (tried the chemical stuff also.) Kept coming back. It was rather easy to fix for me. I didn't have a protien skimmer yet. once I got the skimmer I cleaned as much of it as I could and it didn't fight back. I see it says you have a skimmer but if anyone is reading this who has this problem and no skimmer. It helped alot to pick one up.

Thanks Gary, heh.. I think I am going to go grab it today.

In regards to cyano and skimmers. I do run an AquaC Remora. It skims very nicely and I always keep it on the wettest setting. I think I have lots of algae INSIDE the skimmer that I can't remove... and the water keeps passing through it. How would one go about fixing this? (ie: cleaning inside the skimmer, to remove all pest algae?)

Remora User's Manual...

http://www.proteinskimmer.com/Remora.pdf

thanks Bev,

unfortunately it doesn't say how to clean INSIDE the actual body of the skimmer. Oh well..

Bottle brush is what what I use. I have found them in Canadian Tire and even the grocery store. They are usually either by the baby bottles or kitchen gadgets.