Diary of a teardown...

[TankGirl]

How do you get away with totally tearing down your tank, removing every object except gravel, scrubbing every bit of glass and every filter intake/outflow/heater/[acronym:75477166ea="Carbon dioxide"]CO2[/acronym:75477166ea] diffuser, etc., plus gravel vac'ing extremely vigorously the entire tank, doing almost a 100% water change and not have a cycle of any kind? I don't know! This is not something I would ever recommend, and is strongly advised against by most anyone who knows something about keeping aquariums. Plus, this took almost a whole day and was a major pain. The family thought I had lost my mind. Maybe I did.

Here's the story: BBA took over my 55. Completely. Totally. I got busy and was not doing the daily nutrient dosing, and it was taking over every single plant, rock or solid structure in the tank. The visible driftwood was covered in fur. Even though I went back to my dosing routine it would not die. The problem for me is high lighting and high tap water concentrations of phosphate (5ppm - not 0.5) that I could not deal with effectively with phosphate media in my filter or compensatory nitrate dosing.

I had a nice carpet of glosso, and the background had filled in 100%, but here is the most recent pic of the tank:


Here is the tank today:


I removed everything and bleach dipped the plants. Some stayed in longer than others depending on what kind of plant, but I trashed a major portion of plants that could not be saved. The driftwood and rocks soaked in a slightly stronger bleach solution and I am wire brushing them to get rid of the dead algae. I will soak them in heavily dechlorinated water for another day and let them dry in the sun, and they don't go back into the tank until I can't smell any bleach whatsoever. Then I'll replant. I did replace some of the java fern to give the cats and plecos somewhere to hang, and to give the Endler's fry some protection. I need to clean my filter hoses but I will wait a week or two to do that - why push my luck?

The fish are completely and totally fine. Not a single death, not even baby Endler's, after two days. Add to this the fact that though I had let my pH go back up prior to tearing down the tank since I knew I would be doing a big water change, it would only get up to 7 (up from where I keep it at 6.7 with [acronym:75477166ea="Carbon dioxide"]CO2[/acronym:75477166ea] at 30ppm) and my tap is about 7.6 or so. They did not seem to mind the pH difference, either. There is not a trace of ammonia or nitrite. I am leaving the lights off (turned them on for the picture) until I get my plants back in there, and will cut the lighting in half to a little over 2wpg and monitor things closely so they don't get out of hand.

The results of my drastic procedure goes against collective wisdom (there should have been a mini cycle and at least some of the fish should have died from pH shock), so I thought I'd post about it to spark a discussion about what we think we know to be true. Thoughts?

[lmw80]

wow! well, I am just speechless!!

[Crusis]

Man, that's a lot of work! I hate tearing down a tank and restarting, but it's something that happens to everyone now and then. I had to tear everything down for a move in July, and set it all back up in the new house. Not fun.

When you say 'rocks', do you mean the decorative rocks or the substrate gravel? If you only vacced the gravel I bet that was what kept the cycle from happening. Just a guess, though. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

[TankGirl]

I have decorative rocks that had to be soaked and scrubbed, and many pieces of gravel had BBA stuck to them, so I removed them by hand (BrianNY knows what I mean about this task ).

I then vac'd the gravel deeply in all areas, turning it all over vigorously, in a way that I usually do not recommend, especially when combined with removing all structures in the tank that could support biobugs.

[Jchillin]

Ok, you got me there TG. If you recall, I tore down my 30 [acronym:894f909f77="Gallon"]gal[/acronym:894f909f77], had a mini-cycle and lost fish in the process.

Now I'm completely insane with jealousy but I don't wish that process on anyone, especially one with soooo many beautiful plants.

Great to hear you were successful.

[azn_fishy55]

I know how you feel TankGirl,I had to tear down my tank twice because of staghorn algae break-out and another time to change the substrate. It was a tiring process,planting replanting moving the tank out side to scrub the algae off....it was very tiring espeacially after school. But then I always want best for my aquarium and every thing in it, so it was worth it.

[Meredith]

My new tank is still cycling, and I am planning to move all my plants (or most anyway) over to the new tank. I also have a very bad BBA problem in the 55. What is the bleach solution you used for your plants? And every piece of driftwood I have is also fuzzy but there is also java fern on all of them. Should I just scrub away what I can?
Its so weird to see what a huge difference plants make in a tank. I am glad that everyone survived!

[TankGirl]

Meredith - I use one capful of "ultra" bleach (can't get anything else these days) per gallon of water to dip my plants. I removed all of my plants from their rocks or driftwood for dipping. The java fern can handle 4-5 minutes in this solution, as can the Anubias sp., but my other plants I left in only 2 minutes or less. I would really recommend painstakingly removing every single filament of BBA from everywhere you can (as much as possible) in order to keep it from returning. A lot of plants had to be sacrificed but I can replace those without too much difficulty once order is restored. I can use cuttings from other tanks to help jump-start the process.

The rocks and driftwood got a slightly stronger bleach solution, maybe a capful-and-a-half per gallon. I now have the wood all completely scrubbed free of now light grey fuzz. The only thing that would get it off was a wire brush, and lots of elbow grease. It does not come off easily at all, even dead. I will have to re-tie the java fern/moss and the anubias to the driftwood. I pruned every plant free of as much BBA as I could, so the anubias has a big long ole rhizome but only a few leaves. I lost a ton of glosso, because even though it was spreading and covering the entire open area of the substrate it had tiny bits on the majority of it. I saved some, though, and considering how fast it grew since I got it I am not too worried. This is definitely not going to be a heavily planted tank for a while!

Years ago I changed out some substrate and caused a cycle, myself, so I have no clue why I did not crash the tank. This week's fun was much more drastic than when I moved, because then I just took everything as-is and put it in tubs, keeping the substrate and plants/rocks/driftwood intact and wet, and setting it up again. I guess it is just that hefty XP3 filter that is supporting the tank. I tested again just now and I still even have only about 5ppm nitrate, ammonia and nitrite still zero.

[BillD]

A couple of points here. Since the water you used probably had the same [acronym:6e328ce894="Total Dissolved Solids"]TDS[/acronym:6e328ce894] as the water you discarded, even though the pH was different, there would be no deaths from pH shock. There is strong eveidence to indicate that so called pH shock is not caused by differences in pH but rather because of differences in [acronym:6e328ce894="Total Dissolved Solids"]TDS[/acronym:6e328ce894], which is total dissolved solids. I have done this a few times for various reasons,and I bleach everything; tank, rocks, gravel, and filter. I always prefer to start from scratch, with a sterile environment. I actually did thes a few weeks ago, to set up a planted tank. The fish went in the next day (just a few baby guppys). I have never conciously cycled a tank, as more often than not I come home from a fish club meeting with a bag of fish, and have to set up a tank within the hour and be off to work. This, of course often means sterile tank, sterile filter, and sterile water. I know I'll have to do a few extra water changes while the tank gets itself cycled. I have yet to lose a fish from doing this. I would, of course, prefer to have a mature filter, but it seldom works out that way. It has yet to be a problem. For what it's worth.

[TankGirl]

That is interesting about [acronym:f29d446add="Total Dissolved Solids"]TDS[/acronym:f29d446add] - since this tank gets weekly 50% PWCs then I suspect you are right. Interestingly enough, when I do the water change I watch my pH monitor and after that major [acronym:f29d446add="Partial water change"]PWC[/acronym:f29d446add], with the tank at 6.7 and the tap at 7.6, I do not see the pH fluctuate.

All of this reminds me how much I have to learn and how many factors that we may or may not be aware of influence our tanks.