Experimenting with a Crashed Reef

[KeMiKiLL]

I have a 32G BioCube that was once a thriving coral reef until a crash last year. The tank has been left to its devices for all of 2022 and is now live rock, substrate, and a ton of dark green algae.

I did a quick cleanup of the filtration stack, pumps, powered, and refugium and am planning on doing a full water change but I want to play with this tank a bit before making it habitable for fish.

Would this be a good tank to throw in a seed pack of copepods? Would the copepods thrive on the algae in the tank?
I see many members culturing copepods with bins and spiralina, but I'm interested to see if a large enough population of them can help clean up a tank like this over time.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[blaxsun]

Definitely get the algae under control first.

 

[KeMiKiLL]

Definitely get the algae under control first.

Is the algae bad for them? I thought it was their food source?

 

[blaxsun]

Is the algae bad for them? I thought it was their food source?

You're assuming they'll be able to tackle all the algae in your tank.

 

[KeMiKiLL]

You're assuming they'll be able to tackle all the algae in your tank.

No, not exactly, and not quickly. It took the better part of a year for that algae jungle to grow so I don't know what to expect.

I think I know what you're getting at now. The cooepods are only going to eat certain types of algae so they might now touch it at all.

I plan on letting this tank sit for a while yet so I was hoping this would be a fun experiment. Maybe it's best just to clean up all visible algae, vacuum, and scrub the rock before starting with pods.