- Over the past few weeks we started dosing Dr. Tim's
Re-Fresh and Waste Away.
Today we are gonna walk you through the process
of these bacteria additives and their results.
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Cyano algae is a headache that pretty much
every reefer has faced at some point.
Even just a little bit of tank neglect can lead
to your sand bed, rocks, equipment, and your corals,
being coated in red slime.
If left unchecked it can even start to choke your corals
out of light and nutrients.
We've previously taken a look at other ways
to deal with Cyano Algae but hey, knowledge is power,
and sometimes a combination of different tactics
is exactly what your tank might need.
Re-Fresh and Waste-Away are the perfect one-two combo
for ridding your tank of Cyano bacteria.
They were developed by Dr. Tim through extensive research.
Dr. Tim has used his expertise in Biology
and his PH.D in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology,
to conduct extensive research on nitrifying bacteria.
This research has led him to be granted a number of patents.
The culmination of this research has resulted
in his lines of bacterial additives,
including Re-Fresh and Waste-Away.
Re-Fresh is gonna be your first method
of attack when dealing with Cyano problems.
By dosing Re-Fresh you'll be adding
beneficial bacteria to your tank
that will start breaking down algae and sludge,
removing them from the surfaces of your scape.
Once the your rock and substrate are looking clean
it's time to start dosing Waste-Away.
Waste-Away is filled with a different set
of bacteria that are designed to out compete
any new algae and slime before it can becomes established.
It does this by feeding on the same nutrients
that the nuisance algae and Cyano feed on.
Once the bacteria becomes full and bloated,
they are stripped from your water
by your mechanical filter and your protein skimmer.
It is very important to remember that you will need
to have a protein skimmer when dosing Waste-Away.
We wanted to put these products to the test
so we decided to try them out on one of our office tanks
that was having some Cyano trouble.
Our team member Christian took charge
of dosing and documenting the process.
Christian made sure to turn off the protein skimmer
before dosing Re-Fresh, to make sure it stayed
in the system.
The next step was to siphon out all of the loose Cyano
that he could find, making it easier
for the bacteria to get to the tougher stuff.
According to the chart below, you will need
to dose five mL for every 10 gallons of water
in your system.
We are working on our Red Sea XL 525,
which has a total system volume of 139 gallons,
but we rounded down to 130 gallons to make it a bit easier.
This meant that we needed to be dosing 65 ml of Re-Fresh.
We didn't dose any additional bacteria on day two,
but we did allow the skimmer to run
for around nine hours.
Not only did it start pulling out nutrients,
it went a bit overboard on the skimming.
After emptying the cup of the sludge,
we shut the skimmer back down for the night.
For day three we once again dosed the tank
and left the skimmer off.
But at this point we were already starting to see results.
As many reefers do, we have the tendency
to over feed our tanks a bit, so its not uncommon
for us to find a bit of Cyano growing on our sand bed
the morning after a heavy feeding.
Despite having our protein skimmer off,
we were already starting to seeing a distinct
lack of red slime anywhere in the tank.
Day four we cycled the protein skimmer
back on for eight hours.
We elected not to do the optional water change
at this point as we weren't seeing that our tank
was reacting adversely to anything.
On Day five we once again dosed and left our skimmer off.
At this point we were very impressed
with this dosing regimen, as not only had our substrate
been cleared, our water column seemed to clear up as well.
Day six was another non-dosing day,
and thankfully the start of our weekend.
Day seven is when we were supposed to start dosing
Waste-Away, but as it also fell on the weekend,
we pushed it back to day eight.
We added a day to our schedule to help us stay on track.
Once again using the provided information,
we calculated that we needed about 130 ml
of Waste-Away per dose.
After you dose leave the skimmer off
for between two and four hours before turning it back on.
We had a little mental slip up, and left
it off for overnight.
Whoops!
Thankfully everything ended up just ok.
When we turned the skimmer back on during the day,
it once again went into overdrive
and started skimming like crazy.
On day 10 we matched our dose from day eight
and once again turned off the protein skimmer,
but this time it was for the correct period of time.
On day 11 and day 12 we repeated the same Waste-Away
dosing interval as before.
Day 13 was the last scheduled day of our treatment
and we performed a partial water change as recommended.
All in all, we were very happy with how
this dosing regimen performed.
Even with the gaps in our dosing and overrunning
our skimmer, we had very noticeable results
and our tank looked the cleanest it has in a while.
We would recommend these products for anyone
looking to give a slightly neglected tank
a much needed cleaning.
Even if you're just noticing bits of sludge here and there,
Waste-Away can be dosed weekly to give you a spotless look.
We do hope you found this video helpful,
but if you have any additional questions about Dr. Tim's
bacteria additives, let us know.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this video
with your friends.
We'd also like to hear about your experience
about getting rid of Cyano, so please comment below.
As always, thank you for tuning in, and enjoy
your reefkeeping journey.
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