View Full Version : Do you blast your live rock
Interested in how many of you blast your live rock now and again with a power head to get the detrius out and any link to nitrates.
I used to, but have stopped and the tank ain't looked better.
Nope never have done and my nitrates were around 0.2-0.5ppm last time I checked.
Jeff.
i just blow the detritus off with my turkey baster... so not sure 'blasting' is the right term for me :) even though ive ticked i do and higher than 5ppm they were around 40ppm and are now barely 10ppm so its coming down :) but im sure thats due to an upgraded tank with better circulation and starting to use fauna marin bio :)
Yep, I count any form of active detrius removal be it turkey baster or not as blasting.
Jeff, I really hate hate hate you lucky swines who have zero nitrates:)
No I dont blast LR. NO3 less than 5ppm
Ticked no, NO3 greater than 5ppm. I do use a turkey baster no and again just to blow crap off.
Current NO3 level is about 25ppm, never seen zero on a test.
Nitrate below 5 and use a turkey baster all the time, powerhead occasionally.
All my 8 streams blast through my rock work. Its the way I designed the rock work.
Never ever had an issue with Nitrates.
Well currently, it looks like that it makes no difference whether you clean the live rock of detrius or not when it comes to nitrates. Interesting...
Believe what you want...100% works for me. Certainly not a myth.
Craigg, maybe the point of the poll wasn't explained by me properly...
What I meant was when people take a turkey baster or powerhead around their rock to remove the extra over detrius.
Fully signed up member of the tank flow through and around rock work brigade.
So long as others interpreted the poll as such, then the results don't correlate to any nitrate reduction by the maintenance regime.
I hoover thr rockwork with an adapted powerhead with a wand type tube for getting in those hard to reach places,,
the crud is collected in the foot of the wifes tights...I hope she don't find out!!!!
it is amazing the stinky crap it removes. I have to sort out the odd snail that goes up the pipe.
nitrates less than 5ppm
Pictures please Mucus....
The reason I stopped clearing the rock was because of the crud that floats around the tank afterwards most of which then settles back onto the rock work. If you've worked out a way to vacuum clean the rock great!
Pictures please Mucus....
The reason I stopped clearing the rock was because of the crud that floats around the tank afterwards most of which then settles back onto the rock work. If you've worked out a way to vacuum clean the rock great!
I'm at work at the moment :( so cannot post pics...
mobille internet :)
it is basically an aquaclear 802 powerhead , which I have mated the intake to a short stump of overflow pipe, this is connected to about 3 feet of eheim tubing,, the wand on the end is a bit of 12mm pex pushfit pipe heated and bent to allow the end to be manipulated like the end of a petrol pump nossle.
the end is cut @ 45 degrees.
the water is sucked through the wand,down the tube, through the pump and a piece of the wifes tights is attached to the outlet using a re usable cable tie..
I use re usable cable ties to hang powerhead in tank . I hang it on one of the crossbrace bars.
works a treat :)
I will try to post pic soon.. if I don't, pm me latter part of week and I will post pic
mark
i use turkey baster - it stirs things up a bit - some of which i seem to catch in floss -
nitrates between 5-10
but i'm overstocked :o n over feed:o but can't help myself:(
Pictures please Mucus....
The reason I stopped clearing the rock was because of the crud that floats around the tank afterwards most of which then settles back onto the rock work. If you've worked out a way to vacuum clean the rock great!
I Know,,, it looks like a dogs dinner but,,,,
As promised, the pic of my "Mucus Industries Aquarium Vac":laugh:
http://www.ultimatereef.net/uploader/2007Q2/IMAGE_299.jpg
http://www.ultimatereef.net/uploader/2007Q2/IMAGE_300.jpg
It basically hangs from the cable tie where the green tubing mates to the white tube..
It hangs upside down, but works really well :)
The only drawback to the design is that if i go too close to the sand, it gets dragged into the motor housing and jams the pump, but `hey ho` i can live with that
Oh, that's so clever.:worship:
Going to make myself one of them this weekend.
You could market them on ebay, no problems I reackon.
Thanks alot, Tim.:thanks:
Oh, that's so clever.:worship:
Going to make myself one of them this weekend.
You could market them on ebay, no problems I reackon.
Thanks alot, Tim.:thanks:
thanks for the kind words mate :)
good idea!, they sell these made up already for trop.s, but not sure how successfull they are with live rock.
marshalls2007
13-09-07, 22:27
blast with a 802 powerhead every other week roughly and nitrates on 5ppm.
only because i had a bit of cyano but i got a little powerhead with a built in cylinder so i packed it with filter floss in there with loads of carbon and had it gently flowing over the rock work and cyano has completely gone in 2 days :D
i am with mucus on vacuming the rocks i us a maxijet and a coke bottle
filled with floss with loads of holes drilled in the bottom and i also blast them i have just gone barebottom and the water looks so much crisper
I just blasted all of mine full 360 degrees..
just rebuilt my 6ft tank and washed every rock in a large water barrel with a power head...talk about fish muck.. eeewwwwwwwww
When I rebuilt the tank I placed the rock back on egg crate/pond filter grid (its black). Cut the grid to the basic shape of how I wanted the rock in the tank. Raised the grid up 1 inch using clear plexiglass feet zip tied to the grid. To keep the rock off the back of the tank and side walls I did the same thing zip tieing it to the base grid mesh and cutting out the general contrast of how I wanted the reef to go. Using the same clear plexi tube I brought it off the side walls by 1\2 inch... but off the back wall by 2 inches. This 2 inches off the backwall allows for plenty of clearance for me to aim 3 stream 6025 straight down which washes out all the build up under the rocks. Also adds to flow to the tank.
The 6025 are high enough (20 inches) to dispurse the flow evenly across the bottom, but not so powerful so that when I put sand back into the tank it will push it away from the grid. I'll probably use a coarse sand/reef pebble towards the edge of the reef to keep it in place, then use a fine sand in the very front.
I use a fluval 404 filter as a vac. Simply use the return end to blast into the crevices of the rock itself and the intake end as the suction side to suck up the crud on top and that floats pass.
I thought about the powerhead vac idea as well, but the canister filter is more handy. If I come across a patch of hair algae that I can't blow/suck loose or brush off with my hand, then I get out a old toothbrush that has the vibrating bristles (oral b soft to be exact) and use this to scrub it off.. works a treat. The vibration seems to help break it up a bitter better as well. place the intake nozel next to it.. and its like reef tank denistry sucking up all the plaque!
hope this gives some of you some ideas
cheers,
Joe
Never bothered, NO3 at 0.25ppm.
stan.the.man
04-11-07, 08:07
Yes I blast, but not as often as I would like. Every now and then I turn off the return pump and wrap some filter wool around my two streams and leave it in for an hour or so. Picks up a lot of the crud floating around.
Stan
Edit: forgot to add, nitrates around 25, but I am underskimmed (to be resolved) and underflowed (too much rock and not enough movement - to be resolved) and probably overstocked with some large tangs.
I've only ever 'blasted' the LR a couple of times. My tank's always measured 0 nitrate, so I began to get suspicious of my test kit (quite old). So I bought another and I was right! It now measures 1 ppm! :rolleyes:
iv never blast mine. nitrates seem fine without the blast.
ive trained my tangs to hold a 5 ml syringe and they cruise around the rocks with the syringe under their fins doing mini blasts. Between the 5 of them they do a good job
I also blast using a turkey baster, at this stage. BUT, I blast for 2 reasons - one is to get the "muck" up into the water column, to have it go down my down-pipe into the sump (a lot goes down - not everything, I know - that's why I do this as often as I can).... Water goes all murky in that main display for only about 10 minutes or so.....
My corals feed of the muck in the water column at this stage.... (2nd reason)....
I think that the ideal position to be in would be to have either a spray-bar with a reasonably strong power-head, or a few power-heads, or perhaps a CLS system, directly behind the rock-work, or pointed down directly at the rock-work, to keep the live-rock clean from detritus, as well as around the rocks....
BTW: my nitrates show below 2ppm on the Salifert test kit.
I think that nitrates is not what one should be worried about - it's more a case of phosphates possibly fueling unwanted algae growth, and stunting coral/corraline algae growth.
All my 8 streams blast through my rock work. Its the way I designed the rock work.
Never ever had an issue with Nitrates.
Same as Craig, had the "traditional" method of streams outside the rock and had high nitrates, now have them "inside" the rock and nitrates barely detectable :)
Hi Kitenski - seems that this is the way to go for a reef aquarium.... having major spurts of water constantly "clean" out "Dead" areas..... so no nitrite/nitrate spikes, and no phosphates....
Fishman1908
07-11-07, 19:23
I Know,,, it looks like a dogs dinner but,,,,
As promised, the pic of my "Mucus Industries Aquarium Vac":laugh:
http://www.ultimatereef.net/uploader/2007Q2/IMAGE_299.jpg
http://www.ultimatereef.net/uploader/2007Q2/IMAGE_300.jpg
It basically hangs from the cable tie where the green tubing mates to the white tube..
It hangs upside down, but works really well :)
The only drawback to the design is that if i go too close to the sand, it gets dragged into the motor housing and jams the pump, but `hey ho` i can live with that
That's worthy of the Dragon's Den mate:worship: Sometimes the most obvious can be staring us all in the face.
As mentioned, there is a simlar product by Underworld for freshwater which is a hang on power gravel cleaner with a sock it but wouldn't have the power and effect that your little jobby has. If the suction pipe could be made of a material that was totally flexible and wouldn't go weak with the flexing of it continously, I think that's real winner.
As for the sand particles, you simply need to adapt it to solid handling like most pond pumps now.
You've got me messing about in my bits'n'bobs box now.:applause:
Norvern Rob
08-11-07, 20:22
There's nothing on my rockwork to blast off.
IMO if you've got detritus settling on the rocks you've either 1) got too much rock, 2) It's too tightly placed to allow sufficient flow around it 3)There isn't enough flow in the tank or 4) There's not enough clean up crew.
same here. there is nothing on my live rock to blast. nitrates at 2ppm tested by nitracheck digital nitrate tester.
Pictures please Mucus....
The reason I stopped clearing the rock was because of the crud that floats around the tank afterwards most of which then settles back onto the rock work. If you've worked out a way to vacuum clean the rock great!
Thats why I use a separate External Filter (an Old Fluval ) to suck out the settled detrius afterwards. Just have a flexible hose and get your arm wet - reach into all the crevices you can get to and keep on Sucking till you get the majority out. I have filter floss in the ext then just discard the floss - hey presto the detrius is gone.
Jay
There's nothing on my rockwork to blast off.
IMO if you've got detritus settling on the rocks you've either 1) got too much rock, 2) It's too tightly placed to allow sufficient flow around it 3)There isn't enough flow in the tank or 4) There's not enough clean up crew.
Just my opinion here, but I would doubt very much that detrius has not settled in some of your rock :confused:
Even tanks with high flow rates / open rock structures / low LR qty / and copious amounts of clean up crew will collect detrius over a period of time.
If you can't see it - it does not mean you have none, there are copious amounts of crevices that detrius can collect. Not all detrius will be held in suspension to allow the filter to remove it from the water. ;)
I would hazard a guess that if you tried holding a powerhead in different positions within your tank - using the jet from it and a pipe to hold the flow so that it is touching the rock - you would see detrius coming out of holes / crevices etc. This is why LR can get clogged and the efficiency of the filtration capabilities will reduce over time - it will build up and compact in the crevices and holes.
Regds
Jay
:)
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