Restart my neglected tank...

dburt520 · Aug 4, 2020

Not sure if this is the right spot or not:

I am getting ready to drain / restart my IM50 lagoon that I neglected over the past year and am curious what I can use after I drain the tank to clean the back AIO chambers out well?

I ran a fuge in one of the back compartments that started to grow green hair algae better than it did chaeto, some of the GHA broke off during maintenance and went into the tank, under a rock and it was game over from there... I want to ensure I get it all off / out before I restart the tank.

I will of course drain, and then refill with fresh water and run pumps with vinager and then drain, but wasn't sure if that would be enough to get rid of the GHA.

Will be using new sand and new live rock.

code4 · Aug 4, 2020

The GHA dies easily if it dries out completely for a couple of days. But you could carbon dose for a bit to get a handle on it. Then up your game on exporting excess nutrients and skip restarting a tank. I had a 65 gallon tank that looked like a really healthy hard once. ;Nailbiting;Lurking

robbyg · Aug 5, 2020

Do you have a picture of what the tank looks like now. If you have lots of live rock I would clean it down in the Tank water and get off all the GHA plus detritus and then store it in garbage container with fresh SW and use a pump and air stones and then let the darkness eliminate the rest of the Algae. If the rock is crap then that is another story but there is no way I would start over again with new rock when I already have rock that is seeded and most likely full of good bacteria.

dburt520 · Aug 14, 2020

Sorry, been a busy couple of weeks.

I ended up deciding not to reboot it. I got pretty aggressive with the GHA (I am actually not even 100% sure that's what it is), but it was just sitting on the sand and rocks, only took a hold of the rocks in a few places. Did a few decent sized water changes and siphoned out almost all of it - should get the rest with 1 more water change this weekend.

The second thing I did (which was probably the most important) was put my MP10 back on the tank and upped the flow, big time. This was a nem only tank for quite a while so I had taken the MP10 out, bought a second return pump and some RFG nozzles and was using them as my main flow source - the nems were happy but I had way to many dead areas.

It is only a 50G IM Lagoon tank, and I have always ran a big skimmer (Aqua Max 1.5 HOB), a small refugium in one of the back compartments and a bag of Chemi Pure elite but I think a lot of this is attributed to the lack of flow in the tank.