Gifted used reef tank with all equipment and 2 fish

[J-money]

I was recently given an acrylic 130 gallon tank (about 6ft L x 18in W x 27in H) with all the equipment from a friend who no longer wanted it. He had it for about 3 years and mainly had fish. I hired his aquarium upkeep guy to assist in transporting it to my home from his, but am not 100% sure if he cleaned the sand or not, however he did transport the water with a 20% change. With the move also came a filefish, a six-line wrasse, and a hermit crab. He did have an ich outbreak back in March this year which wiped out the majority of his tank (came from chromis he introduced).

Question to everyone, are there any measures or steps I should take to "prepare" this tank for future livestock? I have had this tank for about 3 weeks now and my top priorities were to get a feel for monitoring the salinity, setting up my RODI water system and mix my saltwater, performing a couple water changes, and keeping the existing fish alive. My plan is to create a reef tank with coral and would like to add a pretty tang eventually as well as other fish.

I've been trying to ingest as much information as possible on this forum and YouTube. Should I QT existing fish due to the ich outbreak earlier in the year and fallow the display tank (current fish appear healthy)? Should everything be ok to move forward with adding QT'd livestock in the coming weeks? Something else I'm not thinking of? I don't want to waste time/energy on something I shouldn't do but I also don't want to be ignorant of something I should do, so any advice from ya'll will be much appreciated.

 

[KrisReef]

@ opinions re QT

Current Quarantine Protocol

2023 Quarantine Procedures Jay Hemdal David Scarborough Protozoans (Cryptocaryon/ich, Amyloodinium/velvet) and Metazoan trematodes/flukes are by far the most common parasites found on newly acquired fish. A carefully managed quarantine process can effectively eliminate these parasites before...

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The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine) I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else. It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef...

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I'm squarely in both camps but they have almost nothing in common when approaching how to deal with diseases.

If you are going to QT, read the first and buy all the equipment, follow the protocols, and does the set up have a UV sterilzer? Protein skimmer? Dosing system or calcium reactor? What test kits do you have?

Those last questions are for later, for QT you will want a good copper test kit, I don't recommend those because I don't know which one you need. Also, corals eat light for energy so the light(s) you have need to be intense enough in the proper spectrum to keep things alive. What things you want can help decide what you need, in all of this. Your question is so open ended that folks are not certain where to start.

The fish you have, what are you feeding them? Are you testing the water for parameters other than salinity? YOu mentioned RODI, so I presume you are using that for evaporation replacement.

Gotta go feed my fishes.

 

[J-money]

The filtration setup currently only uses 3 filter socks, no protein skimmer or other devices (i.e. UV, reactors. etc.). Plan to add at least a protein skimmer before adding additional livestock. For lighting there are 3 Radion XR15 G6's. No dosing is currently used either. I've setup a RODI system and use that for my evap replacement and mixing my saltwater (currently have purple bucket of instant ocean).

As for testing I've been first monitoring salinity and pH with hanna products. Will be picking up a hanna nitrate checker soon.

For the two fish, have been feeding a combo of frozen mysis shrimp and seaweed extreme pellets that my friend had been using. They are eating well and show no signs of distress.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

The filtration setup currently only uses 3 filter socks, no protein skimmer or other devices (i.e. UV, reactors. etc.). Plan to add at least a protein skimmer before adding additional livestock. For lighting there are 3 Radion XR15 G6's. No dosing is currently used either. I've setup a RODI system and use that for my evap replacement and mixing my saltwater (currently have purple bucket of instant ocean).

As for testing I've been first monitoring salinity and pH with hanna products. Will be picking up a hanna nitrate checker soon.

For the two fish, have been feeding a combo of frozen mysis shrimp and seaweed extreme pellets that my friend had been using. They are eating well and show no signs of distress.

Sounds like you're on the right track. If the tank had ich in March and wasn't fallowed/fish treated in another tank, then there is almost surely ich still in the tank. As has been previously posted, there are 2 main schools of thought about ich - prevention vs. management. If you want to treat the fish and fallow the tank, and then quarantine/treat every new addition, you can probably prevent another outbreak. On the other hand, if the current fish survived the outbreak in March, then they can likely continue to fight off any new infections. You'll just need to make sure the fish you add later are healthy, that your water quality is good, etc, so that all the fish can fight off an infection. (But if there's an outbreak, you may still need to remove some fish to treat them...)

Continue to have patience and ask questions! Good luck

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

If you haven't already seen this, give it a read. Some of the setup info won't apply to your situation but it will give you a good idea of the big picture.

The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium

The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium This article was sponsored by @MarineDepot at www.marinedepot.com. Introduction The marine environment is one of the most complex systems on the planet. The aquarium you are about to set up is only a tiny sliver of the vast ocean...

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