restarting dead reed

[heloimdany]

i have a 110 reef tank that was full of corals and fish, sps, lps and soft (vairous leaters mushroom etc). My tank crashed at one point due to a bad water change and everything started dying - due to work I was unable to spend the appropriate time on the tank and let it decy. It has been about 6-8 month nows - the lights have been off and the water has just been standing there with all electrical equipment off. no circulation no filtering nothing. hhowever, the rocks are still in water and it's just about at that point where it's down to 70% water left and the top of the rocks is about to be above water. when i look inside - all the corals are completely dead and I see something that looks like an star fish / octopus tenticles coming in and out of all the rocks - the speciam is gray with brisstles.

What should I do if I want to restart the tank? I'd like to rearrange the sand and the rocks prior to restarting the tank - should I completely drain it - do whatever I need to with the arrangement of rocks and sand and then let the tank cycle? what is the best method to restart my beatiful reef that became a dead swamp?
THanks for any advice

 

[ChrisRD]

Hello and :welcome:

All the dead and decaying crap has probably left the tank loaded with nutrients and personally, being a bit nutrient anal, I would want to start fresh...

I would probably start by syphoning off some of the water into buckets and removing the rock (ie. putting it in the buckets for now). I would dump the remaining water and sand and give the tank a good cleaning outside with a hose and clean towel. If you can't or don't want to move it you can just wipe it down in place. I would then refill with RO/DI water, get the circulation/heating going again and once it was up to temp add the salt.

I would then swish the rocks around in the bucket and probably blast them a bit with a powerhead to get all the decaying crud off of them. I'd aquascape the tank with the rocks and dump crappy water in the buckets. I'd fire up a good protein skimmer, make sure there was lots of strong circulation, and let things sit like this for a few weeks before I did anything else. You'll probably see all sorts of stuff start popping out - you'd be amazed at what some of these critters can survive.

My guess is that a bunch of detritus will shed from the rockwork over that timeframe. I would help it along by blasting it periodically with a powerhead. With no sand in the tank it's easier to remove it with a syphon hose. Once things settle down and the rocks aren't shedding much I would add back sand (if you want any) and start restocking slowly.

JMO of course - I'm sure others will chime in. If you'd like, start a thread and post pics of the the rebuild - I'm sure many people would like to follow your progress. HTH and good luck with the recovery.

 

[heloimdany]

thanks so much for your reply - i just a few quick questions

1) what does aquascape the tank mean?
2) since skimmer and all the pumps have been off, do you think they are still in workable condition considering all the salt probably dried up in them? How can I test them to make sure they are good
3) While looking inside the tank I noticed a speciman that I've never seen before, and now i'ts all over the place. It looks like bristled star fish is it is coming in and out of all the rocks, as if it lives inside of them. I've also now noticed it on the glass, it moves pretty quickly, is about 4-6 long, is not a star fish, gray in color and bristled like the bristle star. What do you think this is and could it have a negative effect on my tank in the future?

Thanks

 

[bleedingthought]

Aquascaping is the way you decorate your tank mostly with your rocks. Basically the way you position your rocks and corals and whatever else you have in there that you use to decorate your tank with.

Soak your pumps and skimmer in warm water with vinegar and it'll dissolve all of the salt build up. Leave it like that for the day and then rinse them off really well and run them in warm water to see how they're working. They should be fine if they were working well when they were turned off.

If the specimen you're describing are not star-like and rather worm-like, then it really sounds like they're bristleworms. These are harmless to your tank to a certain degree. If you have a very large amount of them and they're rather large themselves, I would remove them.

Hope that helped some!

 

[bleedingthought]

P.S. Who's this poor "Reed" guy? I hate to break the news to you Dany, but dead people can't just be "restarted." Sorry...

:wink: