Re-start Up Advice

[cdhollan]

Sooooo... had to shut down my nano for roughly 3 months due to basements renos, basement flooding, etc. Gave all the livestock away but never emptied the tank and cleaned it since its been just sitting in storage... so the LR is still in the tank, 80% of the water evaporated, and the lights haven't been on months... wondering how i should proceed to start up again.. do i have to re-cycle? get new sand? just put water back and cycle a bit? The tank was established for probably 4ish years.

Heres a pic of what it looked like before ><

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/328/p1000038ho.jpg

[toytech]

Wash the sand or get some new stuff , and have a nice long cycle , there should be some bacteria still alive but there will be tons of die off in/on those rocks .

[cdhollan]

Wash the sand or get some new stuff , and have a nice long cycle , there should be some bacteria still alive but there will be tons of die off in/on those rocks .

hmm posted this on another site too and got a similar response to "wash the sand"... how exactly do i do this lol just put it in a bucket and hose it down? and roughly how long a cycle? month or so?

[BC564]

rinse the sand in buckets or whatever you have....set it up just as if your starting over...cause you are.....do the same steps you did the first time you set it up.....

I would wash the sand......put the live rock in the tank....followed by sand......fill with your salt water mix....and then wait.......its going to need to cycle. I would forget about it for awhile.....by awhile I mean over a month.

[reefwars]

you can always add a couple scoops of sand from someones established fuge or even add a small amount of lr to it and it will help boost your bacteria population.i would also probably cure the rock seperately in a rubbermaid or tote bin before i added it into my tank to flush out alot of the die off;)

best thing for rinsing sand is simply a fishnet put some sand in the net and flush it with water over a bucket keep dumping the water and re rinse the sand untill your completely sick of it lol oh and i did the same thing a long time ago and i paid a friend $20 to rinse my sand outside.....after a couple months of being not stirred up it was pretty bad and well worth the 20 bucks...for me anyways lol hehehe:):)

[Myka]

If it were mine, I would toss the sand, then mix up some new saltwater and scrub the rocks with a scubber brush. Then I would "cook" the rock (link to directions in my signature). Once there is no more ammonia in the cooking rock (probably 2-3 weeks) I would add a small "fresh" uncured piece of live rock from the LFS to seed the old rock with some new life. Once the rock has been cooked, which will take probably 6-12 weeks total you can put it back in the tank with new saltwater, powerheads, whatever you want for equipment, then after a week add some brand new sand (rinsed well). The live rock will make the sand into live sand after a short while. Let the sand settle for a week, and add your first fish/coral. :)

In the future, if you drain the tank and store the live rock in a bin with saltwater, a powerhead, and a heater you can keep it indefinitely if you feed the rock a piece of shrimp once a week or so. The size of shrimp would vary according to the amount of live rock. I would say one of those tiny cocktail shrimp per 40-50 lbs of rock. This will keep it alive.

[gobytron]

Washing sand well is no easy task.

Unless you're really on a tight budget, I also agree you should toss the old sand and start with fresh stuff.

And just an IE as far as keeping live rock goes...
shrimp isn't the only thing live rock bacteria eats...lol

I find even throwing some pellets or some frozen fish food does the same thing.

[toytech]

Ive washed my sand for a couple of tanks now , i just put a few inches in a 10 gal pail and rinse with my hose on full blast . When no more crud or dust comes out of the sand its clean and then its just a matter of rinse and repeat.

[reef684]

Send me a pm. I can give you a scoop of sand from my tank, it will cycle much faster. There are no pests and the lady I got it from shut down her tank so the sand is like 10 years old.

[ScubaSteve]

I've done it both ways now. Just couple of weeks ago I used old sand that I washed the bejeezus out of. Super hot water in a buck 1/3 full of sand. Mix and wash it until the water coming out of the bucket is clear. Rinse and repeat.

That being said... After my swap I had a way bigger cycle than expected and it took down most of my nice big show piece colonies. @*%$. The rock stayed wet and warm during the swap, so the only thing that comes to mind is possibly the sand.

In hind sight, I think I'll just buy new sand from now on.

[cdhollan]

I've done it both ways now. Just couple of weeks ago I used old sand that I washed the bejeezus out of. Super hot water in a buck 1/3 full of sand. Mix and wash it until the water coming out of the bucket is clear. Rinse and repeat.

That being said... After my swap I had a way bigger cycle than expected and it took down most of my nice big show piece colonies. @*%$. The rock stayed wet and warm during the swap, so the only thing that comes to mind is possibly the sand.

In hind sight, I think I'll just buy new sand from now on.

thanks to all that posted... i ended up just buying new sand, and am re-cycling the tank again.. thanks for the advice guys