Nuking Brooklyn(ella)

[DaveBeaty]

Sad day. My fish only salt tank melted down due to Brooklynella. The only survivor was the camel shrimp.

I have set up the isolation tank to temporarily house the shrimp until I can restart the main tank. the specs are:

20 gallon glass rectangle set up for 9 months
Penguin 125 hang on back with bio-wheel
undergravel filter with shallow (3") aragonite sand bed
Red Sea test kit
PH 8.3
Alk High (f'ing nondescript scale)
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
No meds in the tank ever
Specific Gravity 1.022

What is the best way to deal with this fish scourge? I would like to populate the tank with 15 lbs live rock (if I can talk the wife into it), 2 clowns (percula or ocellus), 1 yellow tail blue damsel, and a citroen (sp?) goby or fairy basslet. Should I:

Bleach the tank
fresh water shock the tank for about a week
raise the temp to over 90 deg F for a week
or let it lay fallow for a month (on week into the month already)?

 

[quarryshark]

Sorry for your losses.
No need to nuke the system, you can leave the tank fishless for a month or 2. That should do the trick. You can also put the shrimp back in the tank, they are not hosts for this type of ailment.
Here is some good reading on the subject.
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/brooklynfaqs.htm

 

[TCTFish]

I suggest you ditch the UGF. Not only can it become a trap for disease causing bacteria and parasites over time, I think the LR may be too heavy for the grate to support. You'll be better off without it overall.

 

[DaveBeaty]

I don't have live rock. It "WAS" a fish only tank.

After waiting patiently for three weeks, I got paranoid and nuked the tank. 1 cup bleach to 17 gallons of water. What a beautiful mess. Drained the tank, filled it up with fresh water and the hinky little packet of dechlorinater that came with the tank, stir the sand, and test for Chlorine with my old freshwater kit. It came up 0 ppm chlorine so I drained the water AGAIN and added RO salt water.

And I left the UGF grid in. Mr Jaubert would be proud. The way I see it, add 20 more pounds of sand and I have a plenum system with cleanouts installed (the UGF riser tubes).

If I do live rock this time around ($105 for 15 pounds 8O ) I can simply not initiate any flow through the UGF.

 

[youronlysin]

Mr. Jaubert would tell you that his system will only work the way it was designed. A protein skimmer is the primary filter in his system and it doesn't look like you have one. In addition, the plenum space must be devoid of oxygen and contain CO2 to harbor anaerobic bacteria. Your riser tubes arent open to the water above the dsb are they?
I think plenum space under a dsb has been deemed a novel idea, but proven to cause more problems than its worth. Good luck with it, though. Sorry about your loss.

 

[TCTFish]

...and the UGF grates will break because of the weight any kind of fine grain substrate will fall through the cracks and deem it worthless anyway.

 

[DaveBeaty]

Moderator, can you move this discussion over to Monster Island? I have the hankering to defend the much maligned undergravel filter.

 

[quarryshark]

You can start a new tread in the general discussion forum. It will get much more attention there.
Just be sure to keep it nice.