Rebooting Tank

Marine Iguana

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Howdy all!

I’m in the process of planning a reboot of my 65 gallon reef. If I’m being honest, the tank has been neglected over the past 2 years as I’ve been in college, but it’s managed to still look good as I shifted mainly to softies and kept stocking pretty light. However, this summer I was away on a missions trip for 6 weeks, during which my family was taking care of the tank. Long story short, my mother became incredibly ill two weeks into my trip and had to be hospitalized. My dad spent most of the time caring for her, and neglected the tank while I was gone. I came back to find that my custom LED’s had burnt out, most of my corals had died, and all but one of my fish were missing. Most of my motivation to get the tank back to where it was before was gone, and so the tank has sat in the dark for the past 5 months. I’ve topped off the water when the sump level gets low, but besides that, I haven’t touched the tank.

I have decided that rather than tear down the tank and exit the hobby that I’m going to try to reboot the tank. I ordered a replacement light, and will be trying an Aqua Mars fixture (first time dabbling in anything other than T5’s or Custom LED’s). My question for you is, what should I do to properly reboot this tank?

I’ve thought of removing the corals that have been hanging on (mainly a few polyps, some leathers, and one resilient mini carpet anemone), and baking the rocks- or do you think this is overkill? I also thought about replacing the sand bed, but I don’t know if this will do more harm than good?

My main concern is doing something that will drastically affect the tank, because my banded serpent star and Yellow Sea cucumber, which have been with me over 5 years, managed to hang on, and I want to make sure that the reboot won’t kill them. Is simply doing a few large body water changes going to fix the tank, even if it’s been pretty neglected?

Any and all advice are welcome. Thanks for being understanding and helping me re-enter the community.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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Reboot: replace all sand keep none

Use all new water

Clean tank w vinegar while taken apart

Pre rinse all new sand with tap water for an hour so there’s no silt, final rinse in saltwater
Rinse all rocks heartily in saltwater externally over the sink, flush them clean

Clean off any dead coral tissue and algae at the base
Remove all animals and hold elsewhere while cleaning

Reassemble a perfectly clean cloudless 100% new reef using your old rocks that’s enough biofilter to transfer over, we dont need the old sandbed bac, and reacclimate animals to all new water.
 
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Marine Iguana

Marine Iguana

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So replace the sand and water, clean/rinse the rock in sw, and vinegar bath the tank and I should be good?
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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Yep since it’s literally tank surgery it’s best to read it all to check for any standouts but it won’t be wasted time, we do not lose tanks there, we don’t fail to deliver on predictions but that order of ops is critical. It all comes down to simply don’t expose animals to waste in the sand or on the rocks

Hold animals separate from cleaned items, the recycle follows the detritus and clouding always. Please take pics we want to use another example in the thread for others
 
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Marine Iguana

Marine Iguana

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Brandon, here are the pics you asked for- sorry for the delay, been a busy week.
20f664122fae3d2ec5d29c7350ee9777.jpg
9cd62f92b36cfbb42d56fe8a654320b7.jpg
fa8529c0f350da126182624f9718e819.jpg
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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