150G Rebuild Project - OTS Recovery

[fridmani1]

I have a 150 Gallon Reef tank with what I think is old tank syndrome. This tank has been up and running for 10 years with the same sand bed with a plenum. Now I learned at MACNA that there is no such thing as old tank syndrome but instead it is old lazy aquarist syndrome. (according to Joe Yaiullo) Either way I had to do something and a tear-down was what I decided.I was curious to find out what things looked like under the plenum.

I posted before on what I was seeing in terms of old tank syndrome here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=101192

So I took a few days off work so that I could get started on my tear-down project. I took off 3 days and I expected to do the following in those 3 days: 1 - Day 1 remove all the livestock, Day 2 - remove the sand, drain the tank and sterilize and Day 3 - replace the sand, aquascape and refill the tank.

Great plan however Murphy stepped in and slowed things down for me. It was actually almost 3 weeks now since I broke down the tank.

Let me chronicle what I've accomplished so far. Here is the tank as I'm about to remove the fish. Most of the rock had been removed at this point.

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I moved the fish and the snails and crabs that I had left to an old 29 Gallon tank I had in the attic. I setup an old sump for the LPS I had left the Rose BTA and the clownfish.

The first problem was getting the BTA off of the rock he was on. I tried the hang upside down method for 40 mins and he didn't budge. In the end I took a screwdriver to break the rock in half to get him out. Small tear but he was fine.

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Next I couldn't catch the lawnmower blenny. Every time I would go in to get him he would duck into a rock in a crack somewhere. I'd pull the rock out but we wouldn't come out. I put the rock back in the tank and 30 mins later he would be swimming around the tank. Finally I had to get going so I put the rock he was in into a rock-cooking barrel. I actually have not seen him since so he might not have made it but he sure wasted a ton of my time.

So at the end of day one I have most everything out of the tank; temporary housing is up for the livestock and I'm ready to get the sand out in the morning.

So I started to scoop up the sand and I was amazed at what this kicked up.

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I started to drain the water to make it easier to scoop out the sand. Once this was exposed to the air the smell was terrible. I keep scooping as fast as I could and fed a garden hose through the window to wash things off the walls to clean up the tank as best I could.

Finally I got out enough sand to expose the plenum.

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So what does 10 years worth of sludge look like; this is my - anti-miracle mud...

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I was impressed with how well the screen, egg-crate and cable ties help up under the sandbed for that long.

So removed the egg-crate and cleaned out all the sand. Then I filled the tank with fresh water and added bleach to kill anything left and drive anything out from the silicone or glass.

Next step was to make some plumbing changes to improve things

 

[K_Red_Raider]

looks like a huge task

 

[Mike M]

Wow, nice job documenting this so far.

 

[fridmani1]

Since I was rebuilding my tank I decided to do some plumbing changes. The biggest change was taking the tank from a single drain to dual drains. The existing overflow had a single drain but I also had a glass lined area used for a return line so that nothing had to run behind the tank. I don't use the return line and I wanted to have a second drain so I planned to cut out the glass panels so that I could put in another bulkhead and drain line.

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The first step was to cut out the front panel of glass since I thought I could get to it the easiest. In looking for a method to cut it out I decided to try an X-Acto knife. This actually worked pretty well and I was able to cut all the way down both panels to free up the glass. It took way longer than I thought to get out a single panel about 35 mins. Also I ended up breaking about 3 blades in the process.

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I was happy to get the first one out and I noticed something troubling. The back two glass panels actually are glued either on top of or into the seal for the bottom of the tank in the overflow. So if I break the seal the tank will leak from the bottom. But at this point I'm committed to getting the glass out of the overflow. So I cut very carefully down the length of the glass to get to the point just above the bottom. I also cut from the front towards the back on the bottom. After another 20-30 mins of careful cutting the piece is loose and I carefully release it from the tank. The bottom seal looks fine so I proceed with the last piece.

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Finally success I have all three panels out and I need to clean up the area. Notice some the Nerite snails that crawled in but could find their way back to the tank.

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Now I can add my second drain line to the system. I was planning to just go with dual dursos but in the end I went a different way.

I have a video with my test results that I post as a separate entry.