Starting it up again!

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

Hi Everyone, I am new to the forums, please go easy on me;Shamefullyembarrased

I am just getting back into reefing. I used to have a beautiful 75 gallon well established mixed reef tank with some gorgeous critters in it. Hurricane sandy came along and I unfortunately lost power in my whole area for over 2 1/2 weeks. Long story short, a lot of sadness and disappointment ensued. Lost countless corals and lost my precious mandarins!!

I am super excited to get back into it..Honestly I have been missing it from my life. The care, the pride, the precision, the troubleshooting...I LOVE IT & MISS IT. I recently purchased all new equipment while still being able to use all the left over dead rock and dead sand from the previous tank. I added the dead rock/sand, RO/DI WATER on OCTOBER 25th waited for everything to settle. Mixed in the salt on Sunday night (1.025), Added Bio Spira on Monday. Current water Temp at 76 degrees. Right now I have a combination of biomax, prefiter, biofilter ceramic block for beneficial bacteria and carbon in the sump while it is cycling. The cycling process should be done within the next 2 weeks. I have not been running the skimmer or the lights and have been noticing a small algae bloom happening. My plan is to start off with a small cleaning crew and then introduce some corals and eventually the fish.

Any recommendations on how long I should wait? any other steps I am missing? Again sorry If I missed anything I am mostly doing it all by memory.

New Setup
Reefer250-deluxe
80 lbs of LR / 70 lbs of LS
Various 4 pump
Octo 110 in-sump skimmer
2 mp10's
2 BRS Dosers
BRS RO/DI 5 stage filtration
BRS dual GFO & carbon reactor
BRS Heat element / controller

SPR1968 · Oct 31, 2019

Just get all your water parameters stable, tank cycled and your good to go

Oh and we do of course need lots of pictures!

And Welcome to R2R!!!

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

SPR1968 said:
Just get all your water parameters stable, tank cycled and your good to go

Oh and we do of course need lots of pictures!

And Welcome to R2R!!!

Hi SPR1968, Thank you!! I will take many pictures and upload them soon. I have seen some peoples cabinet / sump setups and WOW, crazy organization skills.. too bad my wifes OCD does not help me.

BeejReef · Oct 31, 2019

Very sorry to hear about your previous tank

Glad you're back!

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

BeejReef said:
Very sorry to hear about your previous tank
Glad you're back!

BeejReef, Thank you for that. I am so glad to be back. I look forward to keeping up with the reef2reef community. Everyone seems to be very friendly and welcoming. Whenever I talk to friends or family about this, I usually always encounter this same phrase "whats the big deal? its just fish"......No one really will understand unless they reef

The Aquatic Arsenal · Oct 31, 2019

Welcome back to the hobby. Sorry to hear about your last system. I don't know if you have seen the power heads that have the capability of being on a battery backup or not. They are pretty cool.

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

The Aquatic Arsenal said:
Welcome back to the hobby. Sorry to hear about your last system. I don't know if you have seen the power heads that have the capability of being on a battery backup or not. They are pretty cool.

Hi The Aquatic Arsenal, Thank you! I am glad to be back and thank you for the information. I will definitely look into that back up system.

reef lover · Oct 31, 2019

Welcome to r2r and back to the salt life!

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

reef lover said:
Welcome to r2r and back to the salt life!

Hi reef lover, thank you. It feels good to be back. I can really tell that this is a great community. Everyone here is so nice and the overall knowledge on reefing is unfathomable!!.

BeejReef · Oct 31, 2019

Fishy212 said:
BeejReef, Thank you for that. I am so glad to be back. I look forward to keeping up with the reef2reef community. Everyone seems to be very friendly and welcoming. Whenever I talk to friends or family about this, I usually always encounter this same phrase "whats the big deal? its just fish"......No one really will understand unless they reef

Yeah, we get it. Not to dwell upon the past, but that had to be horribly frustrating. Would be easier to get over if there was some catastrophic error or virulent disease. Waiting and hoping for the power to come back on for weeks, pulling for the animals to make it through... all while taking cold showers and lighting candes...No thanks.

Fishy212 · Oct 31, 2019

BeejReef said:
Yeah, we get it. Not to dwell upon the past, but that had to be horribly frustrating. Would be easier to get over if there was some catastrophic error or virulent disease. Waiting and hoping for the power to come back on for weeks, pulling for the animals to make it through... all while taking cold showers and lighting candes...No thanks.

Thanks BeejReef. To be honest, it killed me on the inside.. I tried to do everything I could, spending hundreds of dollars trying to keep the gas generator going.... I even tried giving them away to others

no dice. I never want to be in a situation like that again, so will be looking into a home generator unit eventually. UGHHHH all those bad memories, but looking forward to making new ones