What would you do after tank crash?

S

SALT

Premium Member
Well I had a very bad tank crash a few weeks back. Here are the 911 threads,

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=76122

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=76172

At this point my fish and what few corals that are left are being kept by a friend but I want to start the process of getting things back up and going.

Here is where I am. The tank had a definite mini cycle. For the last week or so it has been pretty much empty accept for the rock and what corals were left behind (many green frilly mushroom, some Texas trash plays, small frags of devils hand and toad stool, a couple of Yuma rics). I have been running it normal as far as filters/flow/lighting. I have been running the skimmer very wet and the skimmer cup is full every morning with dark skimmate. In addition to the normal skimmer/fuge/return I am running a BRS reactor with carbon and a poly pad in a canister filter. The poly pad shows no color other than a slight tan which means organics. I have been without ammonia or nitrites for a week now. I did have a nice diatom bloom but it is done. The corals that were left are starting to open and I am getting green hair algae all over the rocks. I still have at least a dozen cerith snails crawling around and last night started to see some bristle worms.

So at this point I am wondering what to do as my next steps. My thought was to take out all of the rock and scrub it a fresh batch of salt water. Clean up the large rubble from the top of the DSB. Restack the rock and add back my pair of false percs and see what happens. I have thought about mixing up the sand bed but the thing with that is that I have been looking at it closely, the bottom of my stand is open and I can see the bottom of the bed and it is pure white accept where the fuge light shines on it, there is a bit of light green. Due to the moving of the rock there is section or two where the sand was stirred a few inches deep and it is pretty much white all the way through. The sand bed is about 5 inches deep. So I am thinking of leaving it alone.

Anyways, just wondering what others think, Is this a good course of action? Maybe I should do something else? Tear it down, clean and restart?

Thanks for your time and consideration in advance.

Stanley T''' - SALT
 
Any time I move a tank or do a tank transfer, I scrub the LR in a fresh batch of salt water. Although, I usually see it as an opportunity to remove little bits of algae, more then anything else.
 
You canscrub the rock if you choose to but I wouldn't stur up the sand leave the sand alone and do a good size water change. Then check the params and see how the water checks out. And if everything looks good then slowly add the livestock back in. I would do the pair of percs then wait a week then add something else then wait a week. The reason I say wait is to give the tank time to catch up on bio load.
 
I always get back on that horse but I'm a glutton for punishment. [smilie=surprised.gif]
 
Well I did not get a chance to do anything this weekend. I did turn the maint lights out to keep the algae from growing, fuge light still on 24/7. I guess I am going to go with scrub the rocks, just clean up the top of the sand bed and then give a few days and test, of course that is when I get the time. Hopefully on night this week I can work on it. Thanks for the replies.
 
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