Starting a new to me tank

RomoFL · Jul 18, 2019

Hi all.. I just got a Red Sea Reefer 350 V3 second hand. The previous owner had coral and fish in there along with cured shelf rock (started as dry rock) and live sand and that setup was up for about 3 months before he decided to sell and go bigger. The whole setup (excluding livestock and water) is now at my place. The deal included the rock and that’s sitting in a Rubbermaid tub with his tank water. The sand is still in the tank and is damp.

My question is, should I keep the sand? And if I do, should I rinse it with RO first? I was thinking of putting in like 15g of RO in the display, stir it up and make it cloudy, and syphoning out the water as the rinse process. Also should I do any cleaning of the rock? I was suggested by someone to pressure wash it.

I plan on taking my time with this tank so I have no problems letting it cycle for months.. I just want to make sure I’m not starting on the wrong foot and making my future with this tank more difficult than necessary.

RomoFL · Jul 18, 2019

@brandon429 ?

brandon429 · Jul 18, 2019

hey cool setup, and, its skip cycle ready if you've kept the formerly cycled items wet, in saltwater the whole time. you're in no rush, can bottle bac redundantly again if needed but the firm microbial rule is wet = support, and it needs to be saltwater matching vs freshwater holding so the right strains of bac stay alive. they access plenty of feed when wet, we don't have to feed or circulate or even heat them, wet.

regarding your sand, opinions vary. without doubt if it was my sand it would be rinsed in buckets in tap water, over and over until clear since its limitless, and then final rinse in ro water, and then into tank.

this does not strip the bac, the bacteria are still there. when doctors scrub in for surgery they must take 26 mins lol and six soaps and no top layer of skin left, only to be partially sterile where they need donning of totally sterile gloves to then get to 99%.

that's why one limited pass through bacteria infested tap water doesn't strip the bac, and if it did it still wouldn't matter, your live rocks are all the surface area you need. that's the one change id make, it does no good to rinse partially, we don't need any of the clouding to ride over and its bad when it happens because its moving over waste from animals we never got to see for entertainment, and locking it deep down to be stacked rocks above.

a combo for cyano outbreak in 2020