Help needed confused
 

Has this ever happen to some of yous . im sure it has.Went away to school for a year and my mother was taken care of my 125gln reef tank.N o fish or corals in it.So to make long story short she topped off tank with tap water for months i asume.No lights on/tank was running all this time. So i guess im asking yous is my tank done now or do i have to start all over with new rock and sand/or can i still use them? rock still has a couple of sponges on it and glass has small flat like snails on it.Can it be saved if i do a few large water changes? getting ready to just pack it all in.HELP PLEASE WHAT SHOULD I DO?:sad:

What are your water params? I assume she wasn't feeding anything to the tank as there is no fish/corals/light. I would think that a treatment with prime to remove any chlorine in the tap water would be needed but if you still have life and low nutrients I don't see a reason to pull the plug. Just go slow with fish additions as your biological filter will be at a minimum.

NEED TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR THOUGHTS
 

come on guys ineed to hear if yous have been through this?

If you still have sponges and snails, things are not as bad as you think.

We have been waiting to hear about your water parameters, can't give too much advise when we don't know. Salinity, nitrates, ca,mg and alk would be good for starters.
A 50% water change would be good to do. After all, it has been a year.

+1

Test your water first and see where everything is at. Should give you an idea of where to start, post your results. Sounds like there's a bit of life in there. Start doing some water changes and maybe ghost feed the tank a little, add some snails and see what happens from there.

What are you worried about?

The ocean was fallow for a million years. Test water do a w/c. Chlorine will evaporate within 24 hours

So the big problem is that she's been using tap water? This isn't a huge deal, tons of people do it.

Sitting with lights off with no corals. No problem.

No Feeding? No problem.

The biological filtration of the tank will be in a fairly dormant state right now because of the lack of life, but if you take things slow it'll bounce back fast enough. I've left tanks fallow for months without issues.

Sooooo, let's go back to that first question that you seemed to have missed: what are your water parameters? We can give you a game plan if you tell us what we're working with. Without those it's like calling a mechanic and saying"my car is broken. How do I fix it?"... well, what's broken?

I can tell you right off the bat that you should start with a water change (After you test your parameters) and getting a simple clean up crew, etc... almost like you're starting a new tank.

Get you salinity in check , its out for sure . Do some water changes and then watch your phosphate , if the tap water had high levels then it might have saturated the rocks and will take some time to leach back out . With any restart algea is going to happen , as soon as you add light BOOM there it is , no big deal start adding a cleanup crew slowly and dont panic . Add fish slow too , let the bacteria catch up and you will be back running in no time . And again Dont Panic , go slow.

will let yous know my water parameters as soon as get my test kits this weekend.any sugestions for acurate test kits?

Hanna checker for phos, I use API for everything else except mag, which I use an elos kit. I wouldn't buy another elos kit, not mag anyway. Next on my list is red sea, they look like nice kits to use