Inherited setup

S

Superbikejay

New member
0IDyzfz


https://i.imgur.com/0IDyzfz.jpg
Pre move initial setup

So I had a tenant who I am responsible for getting into the reefing hobby. He moved out someone else moved in and the tank was left behind... running. The second tenant did not know anything about it but just to keep topping up fresh RODI water with evaporation... it ran for about 14 months like that... now he is gone and I have inherited the entire setup.
I moved it into my basement and am trying to recover it. When I got to the tank (as pictured above) actually you could not see in as the front glass was grown over. But beyond that the salinity was about 1.021 and nitrates were at 40 ppm which considering it's history seemed pretty good to me. There were still several hermits a fair sized toadstool and a yellow tang that had been grazing algae for at least the last year to sustain herself. So I started doing some water changes and very slowly increasing salinity in preparation for the dreaded move. (More to come after I charge my phone)
 
Continued

Continued

Let me tell you a little about the equipment. The tank is a 45gal bow front drilled for overflow and return (which I did my self in the initial setup of this tank about six years ago, as my tenant was less handy), the sump is a 20gal which I partitioned with a few sheets of glass and some silicone, the skimmer is a super reef octopus XP1000SSS, the light is a no name Chinese LED rig which seems to be of pretty good build quality, power head is a Sicce voyage stream 4 I think and the other power head was a Jebao wave maker which was not working when I got to it so just the one power head for the moment.
 
The move

The move

For the move the first thing I did was fill a brute with RODI water and mixed it to 1.022 to match what was currently in the tank. Let it mix for 24hrs with 2 heaters in the can. Setup some towels next to it's new home for bucketing. Stopped the return pump and disassembled the equipment uun the sump. I setup a 10gal with a hang on the side filter from my freshwater days with no media in it just for gas exchange. Siphoned out the first water from the setup for the 10gal and put the top four or five live rock in there. Now I had to cut the toadstool in half basically as it had rooted onto two rocks, to do this I had used a brand new exacto blade washed down with plenty of tap water and just sliced him apart carefully with the cleanest cut I could do. Then buckets for more water till the rest of the rock was out. Now with about 12inches of water left and no rocks I was able to catch the tang, put him in the 10gal setup at the new local. Drained the water down to less then an inch over the sand bed ( most of the hermits still in there), had to move the tank to a table, get the sump and stand in the new place and then carry the tank and replumb. Replacing the rocks as close to where they were as possible and filled using about 1/2 old system water and 1/2 new. Here is a pic the day after the move.

https://i.imgur.com/67RYsHv.jpg
 
Post move reflections

Post move reflections

Moving any reef setup is a huge undertaking. That being said most of the intimidating factors melt away as the hours burn on. Quick advise; give more time then you think it could take, get more help then you believe you will need and think out all the steps as they will play out.

Although my salinity was way lower then I wanted it I think matching my new water to it exactly was the right call and I could slowly increase it in the following weeks. None of the livestock showed any signs of shock after the move.

Although it would be a great time to disassemble and clean all the equipment during the move, maybe I should have got an extra person to just take care of that aspect as the timeframe did not allow me to clean much of the equipment I had hoped to clean.
 
Post move

Post move

In the next week or so I slowly brought parameters closer to in check. With the move about 50 per cent of the water was new so not surprisingly the nitrate level dropped in half down to 20 ppm. Over the next week with several water changes using water at 1.027 I got salinity up to 1.024. And good thing started to happen, the green Cyrano dramatically reduced and a little patch of almost unnoticeable purple mat started to open up some green star polyps. A few tiny feather dusters started to appear.

My next course of action was to try and make my water changes as easy as possible. So I plumbed into an adjacent utility room my RODI setup into a 10gal glass aquarium where I drilled two holes in the bottom of it and on one of the holes I have a toilet tank float valve and the other hole is a bulk head which gravity feeds through the walls into my sump. What I do is let the RODI fill the tank and use a valve in that room to do my top offs. Then when I want to do water change I fire up a submersible pump in the RODI water and mix the 1080g of salt it takes to get 1.027. I put a "T" into the soft line that comes from my return pump valves in the utility room into buckets for now. So once I make my mix in that 10 gal aquarium I just need to open a valve to let water out till the sump gets low and then open the other valve to let the fresh seawater in. I am very happy with this system so far and I'll post some pics of it as soon as I upload them
 
Pics of water changer/fish room

Pics of water changer/fish room

This one shows the fishroom side
https://i.imgur.com/93FBOYG.jpg

This shows the two tubes leaving the tank... the larger one is taking pressure from the return pump to empty into those buckets under the fishroom desk (soon I will connect straight to the drain, but that is another project) the silver valve closer to the front of the desk controls this. And the little blue and white valve feeds water from my mix tank to the sump by gravity.
https://i.imgur.com/I6XaerH.jpg
 
Here's where the advise may start (I'm open to all of it)

Here's where the advise may start (I'm open to all of it)

That I think was a pretty good foundation of how the system came to be the way it is in my hands.

So after about a week at roughly 7ppm nitrate and salinity around 1.026 my wife and son (& me) got itching to put something in the way of live stock. So I agreed for us to goto a LFS and maybe get a couple hermits and a shrimp.

I came home with a coral banded shrimp ( he lost two appendages while being bagged, arms were not in the bag but on the shrimp when he was in her tank), a sand dollar!?, two Halloween hermits, and one regular tiny clown fish
 
Next steps

Next steps

crawlerman said:
Not really that bad for a tank abandoned for 14 months. Good job cleaning it up.
Click to expand...
Thanks man

I've been continuing my aggressive water change sched and about 5 days after that livestock I went into LFS to buy some carbon. My wife really wanted a starfish and I figured the micro fauna pop and detritus would sustain her so I got this blue starfish
https://i.imgur.com/wwsAKHI.jpg

I want that to be the end of livestock adding till I get a real good handle on this system.

I added my carbon on a bag in the sump and did notice some improvement in clarity.

Also yesterday I completely cleaned out a small Chinese uv sterilizer I had hanging around and added it. I am pumping out of the skimmer box (Not ideal) and the sterilized water returns to my bubble trap... seems to be okay.
https://i.imgur.com/RctrM8B.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/TB1F6ZD.mp4
Also I have kept up with my aggressive water changing sched and last time I vacumeed about a 6"x6" square of sand right in the front of the display got so much dirty detritus out with that one. Now debating weather I should continue with other squares like that systematically trying to clean the sand or what?

Since the star has been added I have also been dosing 1ml of Kent essential elements every 3-4 days.

And advise on some next steps I should be taking that may have been overlooked?
 
maevepotter said:
This is insane!! No water changes for a year and the tang was still alive???

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Maybe something good as far as classifying nitrates is going on in that sand?

And yes for sure over a year no water change... even tap water used for top offs at times instead of RO water I was told.
 
reefsupplies.ca and petsandponds.com seem to be the best sources for most online things I've ever had to order in Canada.

canadacorals.com also sometimes has things I'm looking for though they usually don't have as much dry goods as the other two.
 
I found everything cheapest on Amazon for any other Canadians out there wondering, only the sediment filters and DI resin were next day so I'm now waiting on carbon blocks and a new RO membrane... Should be a week or so till I have everything, so I've changed in a new sediment filter ( picked up 4 pack of 1 micron for less then 20$ ) won't waste the DI resin till I get the rest of the filters to put in before it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Squatch_86
New to RC!
2
Replies
39
Views
4K
wvned
wvned
D
Help with new tank cycling
Replies
12
Views
715
wvned
wvned
R
Getting back into the hobby.
Replies
3
Views
3K
Cjs305510
C
A
New Naso Tang breathing heavy and not swimming much anymore
Replies
2
Views
1K
griss
griss
ChadTheSpike
New?
Replies
6
Views
798
EchoVetEcho
E
Back
Top