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Floyd R Turbo
12-02-2011, 06:37 AM
Since I have been running my scrubber temporarily on top of a tank, and it sheds light into the tank all night, I have been battling a cyano and dino issue for the last couple of months. I decided to run a canister filter for a few weeks to suck out the cyano after blowing it off the rocks. I let it run for about a week and it was pretty clogged up so I shut it down but couldn't clean it for a day. I did that last night and about lost my lunch when I opened it up. Talk about gross. It stank of spoiled seafood, and I mean STANK. If anyone has smelled it, cyanobacteria has a distinct odor to it, I have found this odor to be exactly that of Anthelia / Waving Hand coral. The odor from the canister filter (a diatom cartridge) was NOT this odor. The filter had effectively removed food from the water column and shutting it down for a day before cleaning allowed it to rot.

It was the second grossest thing I have smelled in a reef tank. The grossest was when I was cleaning a pump on a system that had not been cleaned in a few years - that smelled like I opened a sewer drain.

Algae never smells that bad.

RkyRickstr
12-02-2011, 07:34 AM
Dang.. and i was planing on having bf now.. :roll:

Floyd R Turbo
12-02-2011, 07:47 AM
bf?

kerry
12-02-2011, 07:49 AM
Think he means breakfast??

Ace25
12-02-2011, 09:01 AM
I got one similar.. a couple weeks ago I was nuking the last of my aiptasia infested live rock. I let it sit outside in the sun for 30 days to dry out, then I put it all in a couple 5G buckets filled with RO/DI to soak for a week before putting it into my live rock cooking tank. After 1 week in the bucket of RO/DI water the bucket turned black. You couldn't even see 1/2" into the water. I didn't touch the buckets all week (stagnant water) and when I went to take the rocks out it was the absolute worst smell I have ever smelled from something aquarium related. I would rather stick my nose in a full skimmer cup and breath it all day vs 5 seconds of this water. It took everything I had to not hurl. When I got all the rocks out, scrubbed them clean before placing in the rock tank (because seriously, there was still some aiptasia ALIVE after all that!), I looked in the empty white buckets and they were literally stained black inside. I could not scrub them clean. I have been in this hobby for 20+ years and that was the worst thing I have ever smelled.

Floyd R Turbo
12-02-2011, 09:05 AM
Whoa. I have been upstaged.

Hey, let's make this thread about the grossest things you're ever experienced in relation to your aquarium! Oh wait, it already is. Let's hear it folks. Gag!

Aeros
12-02-2011, 05:56 PM
Found a small white "egg shaped" thing stuck in my overflow grate. You never know what's going to turn up in a reef tank. Curiously, I fished it out with the aim to dissect it.

Laid it out on a sheet of paper, grabbed the ol' exacto knife and sliced it in half. Was the consistency of curd, powder white exterior, and deep red throughout. The smell was like cat piss X 100,000,000. The whole kitchen reeked of it for hours.

Turns out is was a bloated, rotten food pellet... Iol gross.

dtyharry
12-03-2011, 03:42 AM
Ace25 makes a very good case for not having any live rock in your aquarium at all, and maybe an artificial rock with no porosity for easy cleaning would be better. You do not require denitrification if using a scrubber and I think live rock's denitrification ability is way overrated anyway, just look at all the threads from people with excess nitrates.
If you have taken your rock out and baked it for 30 days in the sun all the 'life' on it will be dead anyway.
A shallow sand bed for easy syphon cleaning will do all your nitrification for you and the scrubber will do the rest.

Aeros
12-03-2011, 04:57 AM
Ace25 makes a very good case for not having any live rock in your aquarium at all, and maybe an artificial rock with no porosity for easy cleaning would be better. You do not require denitrification if using a scrubber and I think live rock's denitrification ability is way overrated anyway, just look at all the threads from people with excess nitrates.
If you have taken your rock out and baked it for 30 days in the sun all the 'life' on it will be dead anyway.
A shallow sand bed for easy syphon cleaning will do all your nitrification for you and the scrubber will do the rest.

I don't know any reefers that syphon their sand. What would the point be?
Also, why would you want to clean a rock? I hear of people using a turkey baster to "blow" off their rocks. Seems pretty pointless to me. Maybe it's the old mindset: "this is how it's always been done".

As for "porosity", there are several reasons off the top my head I use these rocks. Aesthetic, coral placement, low displacement (more water, less rock), that "natural" look, living quarters for more variety of life. But foremost, it's surface area. A porous rock has hundreds of times the surface area of non porous rock, or even a sand bed. It will also get better flow than sand.

I'm not sure if it's needed for the nitrogen cycle, but the others reasons and my OCD for efficiency keep it in my tank.

Floyd R Turbo
12-03-2011, 06:01 AM
Hey! You guys are WAY off topic and I am not getting grossed out currently.

RkyRickstr
12-03-2011, 07:17 AM
I took down one of my many tanks once and put the live rock in a container with a powerhead.

My wife didnt know and disconnected the power. Two weeks later i went to sell the rock and the water became a gel.. it was like rock in black jello.. the whole house got fouled and i had to hire people to come steam clean my carpet and couches.

Smelled like.:. I dunno.. undescribable with words.

dtyharry
12-03-2011, 07:32 AM
Sorry floyd for going off track! Aeros is wrong about surface area. A sand bed has vastly more surface area than any amount of live rock you could put in an aquarium. It does not need to be a deep sand bed if you do not require it to carry out nitrate removal, which you don't if you run a scrubber.
I guess you have to ask why you use 'live' rock in the first place. If you are going to bake it in the sun for weeks it is just rock not live.
How about creating an artificial reef look or foam rock. Let's not pretend live rock is the miracle worker some people think it is.

jcooler
12-03-2011, 07:40 AM
Here's one. It might not be quite as bad as some of your stories, but it was pretty bad.
I have a Coil Denitrator. And one of the issues with it is the sulfur smell, until you get the flow dialed in just right. Well, mine had been up and running for about a year, and was dialed in right, keeping nitrates at zero. :D
One day, I noticed that the flow was barely dripping. This has happened before, no big deal. Something has gotten clogged in the 1/4" hose somewhere. To fix this, I take my air compressor and gently blow air through the intake tube.
Well, this time, it must have been clogged really bad. Instead of the air pressure blowing the gunk out of the line, it blow the whole bottom of the Coil denitrator, and about 2 gallons of extremely stinky water, went all over the living room. floor. Within 5 minutes, the whole house smelled like rotten eggs.
It took about 2 or 3 days for the smell to completely go away. And that was a long 3 days of listening to my wife telling me how much she "appreciated it." :roll:

Aeros
12-03-2011, 10:59 AM
Sorry floyd for going off track! Aeros is wrong about surface area. A sand bed has vastly more surface area than any amount of live rock you could put in an aquarium. It does not need to be a deep sand bed if you do not require it to carry out nitrate removal, which you don't if you run a scrubber.
I guess you have to ask why you use 'live' rock in the first place. If you are going to bake it in the sun for weeks it is just rock not live.
How about creating an artificial reef look or foam rock. Let's not pretend live rock is the miracle worker some people think it is.

Sorry as well Floyd.

As for surface area: It depends on a few factors. Grain size of sand, and porosity of LR. I'll use my system as an example of how LR has more surface area.

I have medium grade aragonite sand. The thickness of my sand bed is irrelevant to surface area since only the surface matters here. My tank measure 4' x 2' x 2'. Given that none of my sand were covered, I would have a surface area of 8 feet square. In my system is likely half of that due to LR and coral. A single football sized piece of my Pukani LR has many times that surface area. I'm not going to test this cause I'm about 98% sure I'm correct.

Live rock isn't "alive" it plays host to life. If you get a unwanted life that cannot be easily removed, you can "nuke" the rock. Killing everything to kill the once pest. FYI sun baking will not kill everything either, just surface life.

As for artificial materials: we're just not that good at imitating nature yet, e.g. algae scrubber. Even the best man-made rocks pale in comparison to LR.

As for "miracle worker": No, LR is not a miracle worker, it's a tool. It houses the bacteria that turn Urea into Nitrogen. It sits high in the water column (usually) for good nutrient exchange, houses fish/invertebrates. There are more reasons to use LR in a reef tank than I can think of right now.

Ace25
12-03-2011, 01:19 PM
Two weeks later i went to sell the rock and the water became a gel.. it was like rock in black jello.. the whole house got fouled and i had to hire people to come steam clean my carpet and couches.
Smelled like.:. I dunno.. undescribable with words.
Yup, that was exactly how mine looked, black gel for water, surface was solid with a few giant gel bubbles. Like you said, smell was so bad and indescribable to anything else I have smelled. Rotten egg and bad sewer smell doesn't come close to the smell of the containers.

RkyRickstr
12-03-2011, 01:48 PM
Dont be sorry.. lol.. start your own thread.. its free. Lol

RkyRickstr
12-03-2011, 01:49 PM
I think i know how to describe the smell..

Smelled like millions of marine organisms decomposing..lol.. its what it is you can compare it.

dtyharry
12-03-2011, 03:19 PM
I have medium grade aragonite sand. The thickness of my sand bed is irrelevant to surface area since only the surface matters here. My tank measure 4' x 2' x 2'. Given that none of my sand were covered, I would have a surface area of 8 feet square. In my system is likely half of that due to LR and coral. A single football sized piece of my Pukani LR has many times that surface area. I'm not going to test this cause I'm about 98% sure I'm correct.

This is a major error. Each grain of sand becomes colonized with bacteria of different types depending on depth, is it not silly to say thay only the grains of sand at the very top do anything?

Floyd R Turbo
12-03-2011, 04:22 PM
:bangs head against wall: you say sorry, then keep going! Man! What up?

And Harry, are you TRYING to get kicked off the site with that avatar? I'm pretty sure there are a few kids on this site.

joelespinoza
01-01-2012, 10:14 AM
The never ending plague of dino, It has made my tank an ugly mess from the first time I added the live sand activator, the day after I first added the marine salt. The smell isnt THAT bad, but its like fighting a war against snot:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b124/JoelEspinoza/th_PICT0123_mpeg4.jpg (http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b124/JoelEspinoza/?action=view&current=PICT0123_mpeg4.mp4)
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b124/JoelEspinoza/th_PICT0122_mpeg4.jpg (http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b124/JoelEspinoza/?action=view&current=PICT0122_mpeg4.mp4)