Need help for this weekend

[mnat]

If you read our other post you know we still do not have power and moved everything we could out of our tanks. I have a few questions for those out there when our power does come back on

The tanks are sitting stagnant about half full with live rock and sand in them. We left a bunch of inverts in there which I am sure have died off so the water quality is probably garbage at this point. What would be the best way to get the tanks on line again? The twist to all this is it has to be done pretty quickly, I don't think my parents want a reef tank in their kitchen for the next month.

We will be breaking down the 12g and selling it (we were going to do this when we moved anyway so no big deal) and moving everything into the 30g and 20g so we only need the two tanks. We have Aqua C remoras on each tank for skimming, HOB fuges on each and vortechs (one mp10 and one mp20) for flow. We have a seperate 20g filled with liverock that has been cycling for a month or so. I am thinking of picking up some insta cycle stuff this weekend and starting from there. We have about 6 five gallon containers to get saltwater to fill the tanks.

Any recomendations or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[mikem]

The Bio-Speria will give you an instant cycle.

 

[Mbodell]

Obviously dump the water out. I would buy the microlift bacteria stuff. It seems to be better than the biospira, which I have used as well. My mom used it to cycle her tank and also when she had an ammonia spike and it took care of it well.

I would pull the rocks and dunk them in fresh salt water to rinse them off as well as your can. I would pull any sand as well if you can and wash it/bleach it. It has probably gone anerobic by now. You are obviously going to have a cycle, but the microblift and keeping up with water changes should help.

If you need people to show up and help I may be able to come down there after the meeting.

 

[rodclement]

Dr. Tim's makes the best bacteria liquid out there for my money, AO has it in stock, just make sure you get the type you can use for saltwater.

"Cycle" and "Biospira" work well but Dr. Tim is for my money a better product. If you want I can pick some up for you with Will and bring it to tomorrows meeting and save you a trip, PM me if you need it, I would have to pick it up today since we are leaving here at 9:00am tomorrow!

Let me know!

Rod

 

[Mbodell]

The stuff I was mentioning is called nite out 2 by ecological laboratories.

 

[Phyl]

I bet there's less ammo in that tank than you'd think. I'd start with an ammonia test to see how bad it really is. Bring it back up to temperature, change all of the water... you may find it cycles a lot less than you'd fear. Additionally I wouldn't remove the sand. I wouldn't even stir it... personally.

Add one of the cycle liquids offered up above, test, re-test and then put things back together.

 

[mnat]

I know they have some of the instant cycle stuff at Trop, and we need to get water there anyway, so I will pick it up there. We will not be making the meeting as our whole weekend (three days for me) will be putting the fish tanks back together along with the rest of our apartment. Our fridge and freezer were already defrosting so we saved about 3 bags of groceries but will have to do a restock. We already cancelled our ski trip for this weekend (second weekend in a row we were supposed to go skiing but the weather did not cooperate).

 

[Phyl]

Well that just STINKS that a snow storm is keeping you from SKIING! Shame shame shame (and SOOOO ironic).


Good luck getting your babies tucked safely away. They are lucky to be in your care, in spite of the situation you're faced with. You'll be missed at the meeting (though you have an excellent excuse. The rest of you slackers without such a good excuse should be ashamed! ;D )!

 

[mnat]

So here it the plan for tomorrow now that the power is back on:
Empty and clean the 20g we are going to replace the sand, not going to leave anything to chance at this point. Refill the tanks with water and add the instant cycle. Rinse the live rock off with the salt water we are mixing tonight.
Got back and get more water to redo the 30g and do the same.
Sunday: Check the water parameters and hopefully add fish and corals back to the tank sunday night if parameter are ok.

Shopping list:
Lots of water
Instant cycle
Live sand (about 60 pounds)
Extra heaters

 

[mnat]

First trip to Trop is complete. 20g is full of water and sand and we are just letting the sand settle at this point. The 30g has about 10g of water in it and we are off to pick up some more. The instant cycle stuff was Dr. Tim and we picked up ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite test kits considering we actually have to check our water parameters again. We also picked up some Brightwell products as they are having a sale but 1 get the second 50% off.

Our live sand was all shot, smelled like rotten eggs. Live rock is good so we got that going for us which is nice. We found 2 dead pistol shrimp that we thought had died a long time ago and replaced. They were both twice as big as when we bought them and we had not seen either of them for about 6 months. One guy was about an inch and a half and was invisible in our tank. We found no dead hitchkicker crabs which was good.

 

[Jcurry@wesketch]

...Live rock is good so we got that going for us which is nice...

Sounds like all you need now is total consciousness on your death bed.

Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga

 

[mnat]

I feel like looper after today. Basically carrying 11 5g jugs of water up a flight of stairs, moving all the livestock back to the apartment, and moving all our stuff. Very tired tonight, will be dosing the instant cycle tomorrow, 2 of the tanks are still opaque after adding in the live sand.

 

[mnat]

Dr. Tim's instant cycle went into the tanks this morning. We found the probidilo startup system that we got in our gift bags at MACNA so they went in as well. Multiple strains of bacteria can't hurt a tank, so we will see tomorrow. We will test the water tomorrow and hopefully all the fish will be in their tanks tomorrow. The silver lining about this whole episode was the fact we got to reaquascape the tank and were able to use some of our choice pieces of live rock that we were saving for the 57. I will post some pics up in our nano threads tomorrow.

 

[Phyl]

Thank goodness for the silver linings, eh? Glad to hear that you're making progress getting things put back together. Good luck moving the fish home.

 

[mnat]

I think the fish and corals will be very happy to get out of their brute container. They are swimming around and they all eat, but I am sure they will be happier back in the tanks. Our stocking plan looks like this:

30g:
Flame angel
Picasso clown pair
Blue spot jawfish
Mandarin
Gold assesor basslet

20g:
Pair of black and white clowns
Bangaii cardinals
Cleaner goby

12g which is covered:
Pair of helfrichis (bought them this weekend will be picking them up today or tomorrow)
Goby to be named later (magnificant, dracula, or yasha not sure yet)

 

[redfishbluefish]

Always like to find the positive in whatever happens, and it looks like you guys did just that. Plan looks good!….And two new additions. However, I had to go back and re-read your first post, because I thought you had said the 12 was going…and sure enough, that is what I found. I guess the addition of the two firefish convinced you to keep it. Nice job!

 

[mnat]

The plan was to break the 12g down and sell it, but once we saw the pair of fire fish for 33% off that made us change our mind pretty quickly. Nikki has wanted a pair forever but they were either too expensive or we didn't have a cover for the tank. With the loss of the flame back angel we can move the clowns from the 12g to the 20g which left us with an empty covered tank, and viola we keep the tank setup.

 

[GregW]

Glad to see it wasn't a total crash.

 

[mnat]

The fish that made the move are all still alive and swimming around. They eat pretty well so the stress level seems to be pretty low. Corals we are probably looking at like a %50 loss, maybe more will have to wait and see how they do once they are back in their tanks with the lights running. Picked up the CUC today and fish are either going in tonight or tomorrow night.

 

[NikkiT]

The fish went back into their tanks tonight. We did a bit of reshuffling.

The black & white false percs we moved into the 20g with the pair of bengaii cardinals and the neon cleaner goby.

The flame angel, blue spotted jawfish, gold assessor, pair of picaso clowns, lady mandarin, and bulls eye pistol went into the 30 g.

We bought new babies for the 12 g. I'll let mike post about them later