Zombie tank, can it be saved

[Sticker shock]

I have a 75 gallon reef. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve done more than top off and feed. It’s a nightmare…tank is like the walking dead, somehow staggering forward when it should have been dead and buried.

What happened was, my oldest daughter got sick and my tank became something I just didn’t have the time or desire to upkeep. I was barely able to keep myself employed as my entire family was shook. Now with her doing much better, she has asked me to start picking up some of my old hobbies again. I was practically ordered to start with fixing the reef.

So here we are loaded with algae, and completely overrun by aiptasia. I really don’t even know where to start. I have 12 gallons of water mixing and I literally scooped out some of the algae from the front glass so I could get a read on what I’ll be dealing with.

I’ve never been great at keeping a reef, so trying to heal this thing will be a
Monumental effort. Pray for me and feel free to offer up any suggestions.

I’m starting by clearing the scum on top of the water

Next I’m hitting the my pumps and mag float.

Then I’m going to clean up the front glass

I’m not sure what to do with the back and sides as it looks like I was farming aiptasia…there are literally thousands

I want to order a batch of Bergia, but I did have a leopard wrasse (haven’t seen him yet, but it is past his bedtime)

I put up a couple pics so you can either laugh at me or commiserate. You can see I cleared a little algae from the front glass. And then the back glass you can see that wonderful aiptasia farm.

 

[7of9]

Sending you hugs. Sometimes life sends us a sucker punch and we just have to shift into survival mode. It sounds like that's what happened with your daughter's illness and you rightly prioritized taking care of your family.

I think I'd start by pulling things out and cleaning them. You could start with the rock, then the glass. Put your rock in freshwater and scrub off anything you can and then put back in the tank, scrub the glass, vaccuum your sandbed, etc. Then several bigger water changes and then see what you have to work with after that and clean all your pumps, filter media, etc.

It might actually feel healing to see things begin to clear up.

 

[littlefoxx]

I have a 75 gallon reef. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve done more than top off and feed. It’s a nightmare…tank is like the walking dead, somehow staggering forward when it should have been dead and buried.

What happened was, my oldest daughter got sick and my tank became something I just didn’t have the time or desire to upkeep. I was barely able to keep myself employed as my entire family was shook. Now with her doing much better, she has asked me to start picking up some of my old hobbies again. I was practically ordered to start with fixing the reef.

So here we are loaded with algae, and completely overrun by aiptasia. I really don’t even know where to start. I have 12 gallons of water mixing and I literally scooped out some of the algae from the front glass so I could get a read on what I’ll be dealing with.

I’ve never been great at keeping a reef, so trying to heal this thing will be a
Monumental effort. Pray for me and feel free to offer up any suggestions.

I’m starting by clearing the scum on top of the water

Next I’m hitting the my pumps and mag float.

Then I’m going to clean up the front glass

I’m not sure what to do with the back and sides as it looks like I was farming aiptasia…there are literally thousands

I want to order a batch of Bergia, but I did have a leopard wrasse (haven’t seen him yet, but it is past his bedtime)

I put up a couple pics so you can either laugh at me or commiserate. You can see I cleared a little algae from the from glass. And then the back glass you can see that wonderful aiptasia farm.

Oh rough for sure. A sea hare would help the algae problem as would some turbo snails! For aptasia you could do those or look into a molly miller blenny, filefish, copperband butterfly (harder to keep) or a klieni butterfly! I actually have a molly miller by accident and a kleini butterfly, doing good eating the aptasia for sure!

 

[Anemone_Fanatic]

Sounds like a good plan, hope you get back on your feet soon. I would suggest doing a water test. I'd imagine that nitrates might have gotten quite high, especially given the algae growth. It would be good to try and siphon out as much algae as you can before cleaning the glass, as otherwise the floating cloud of algae could cause problems.

The aiptasia is going to be your biggest problem with the tank. If your leopard wrasse is around, I might try a copperband or a molly miller blenny (maybe both). Only do the blenny if you don't have any decorative anemones, they would eat those too. If you don't see the wrasse, a bunch of berghia should clear that up. I'm no expert with those, but at least a dozen would probably be required.

Best of luck, wishing you success with this project!

 

[Sticker shock]

Believe it or not there’s quite a lot of corals alive on those rocks, so I don’t want to just pull it all and nuke everything.

 

[littlefoxx]

Believe it or not they’re quite a lot of corals alive on those rocks, so I don’t want to just pull it all and nuke everything.

Ah yeah I would pick from the aptasia eaters (probably not filefish with coral) and a dollabella sea hare. They will have that in control in no time. That way you can focus on scraping the glass and stuff

 

[paragrouper]

Get in touch with @brandon429 and learn about his rip clean process. That would go a long way towards setting things right.

 

[formallydehyde]

On the plus side, berghia seem like really cool pets and wouldn't go hungry for a while.

 

[Anemone_Fanatic]

Believe it or not they’re quite a lot of corals alive on those rocks, so I don’t want to just pull it all and nuke everything.

I can see some of those back in there. If the corals are still doing well, you should be able to bring your tank back in a relatively short time frame. I'd be more worried if they were all dead, because it might suggest a problem with pollutants. I wouldn't go too quickly, though. The corals might be accustomed to poor conditions, and rapidly changing lots of things at one time could shock them.

 

[brandon429]

We did two like that in here

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

Fixed to

 

[nothing_fancy]

I had to take a break myself and let my tank go for Id say at least a year and change. It looked similar to yours mainly on the rocks, algae growth was incredible. You can easily re-start this, it's a dirty job, but if you psyche yourself up for it and pick a good day to dig in it'll get done. Its actually a very good chance to get rid of anything you don't need. I pulled out a 75% of my rock work and chucked it. I was in a position to replace most of my equipment as everything was getting close to ten years old. Pull out your filter, soak everything in SICCE clean, let the pumps run in that over night. Same for anything filter tubing that your don't want to replace. I took my sand out and replaced it after rinsing. You might look into the tank transfer method thread for some of this stuff. You might not need to empty your tank completely but thats what worked for me in order to really deep clean the tank itself, full reset. I lost one fish and a hammer coral colony that was unfortunate because I had had it for a very long time. Good luck it'll be great!

 

[Biochembob]

Definitely 2nd (3rd or whatever) rip cleaning. You will scrub around your coral. Removing most of the aptaisa and algae.

Your tank will look many times better. Then throw in a peppermint shrimp to deal with the aptaisa that survives and you'll have a good launch point for starting over.

Rip Cleaning is easy as you just clean your rocks and use new sand and water. Brandon's guide will walk you through the details.

 

[Sticker shock]

I did actually try reviving this a while back, not sure how many months it was, but then dinos were running wild. Seems like that isn’t an issue at the moment. I fully expect that to come roaring back as soon as I remove the algae. Also there is a ton of nasty red mat algae on a lot of the rocks. I think that’s from the drastically reduced flow.

 

[Sticker shock]

All flow was off and scraped out the front glass and this is what we have. Could definitely be worse.

Lost a ton of zoas, and almost all the color on my lps

I have to pull about half this rock aince it leaves so many dead spots that just cant be cleaned

And when I said aiptasia were everywhere, it’s not figurative

 

[Anemone_Fanatic]

Looks like a start!

 

[brandon429]

if you aren't cleaning the entire tank at once, as a completed take down cleaning fully parted out as shown, this isn't going to work. the sandbed holds more waste and cast off dying material than you could ever remove, and if it's not removed, in comes the dinos, cyano and new GHA regrowth. you have to take the tank apart and skip cycle clean it for it to work, partial cleaning will just regrow in 2 mos.

the key detail to what we do is cleaning from the bottom up, not from the top down.

 

[Sticker shock]

if you aren't cleaning the entire tank at once, as a completed take down cleaning fully parted out as shown, this isn't going to work. the sandbed holds more waste and cast off dying material than you could ever remove, and if it's not removed, in comes the dinos, cyano and new GHA regrowth. you have to take the tank apart and skip cycle clean it for it to work, partial cleaning will just regrow in 2 mos.

the key detail to what we do is cleaning from the bottom up, not from the top down.

I hear ya, but this is just a start to having a semi functional tank again. I know bigger changes are needed, but I’m just hoping to get things going and keep anything else from dying off. I couldn’t even see into the tank to know what to take out before this.

I also had so many aiptasia in there when I was done I found a couple little suckers on my arm. I could feel it moving or maybe it was a sting. Either way I soaked my arms in steaming hot water. I’m going to have ghost feelings all night I think

 

[jabberwock]

You can do it! At least it is a mature tank...

Berhgai Nudibranchs for sure.

 

[Sticker shock]

Pretend I didn’t tell you what was going on with this tank. It doesn’t look half bad under blues

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Best of luck to you! Hoping you can get the tank completely clean! Also, sorry to hear that about your daughter