novahobbies
Well-Known Member
So I volunteered to help my 15yo cousin reset his tank. He'd gotten discouraged with it earlier when he made some typical newb mistakes (no QT, one fish crashed the entire tank) and he'd been letting the tank sit dead in his room for a few months. This is what I came in to....brace yourselves....
I was glad to see the filter and heater had been turned off and removed. He'd washed the SW out of the filter, too....it works fine. The thing on the left that looks like a giant turd is a nice sized piece of LR. Just for shiggles, I tested the SG of the water with his hydrometer. It didn't even measure on the pole, it floated too high! We're talking saltier than the dead sea here. Here's a nice thing, though: I scrubbed off all the schmutz from the live rock while it was in the tankwater, then I (very carefully) smelled it. Believe it or not, it smelled fine! Oh, sure, all the little clams and whatnot that usually comes on LR were long dead, but the rock itself was good. I'm keeping it and using it to help his cycle. Here's the tank after the water and sand came out:
And later, after everything was cleaned and scrubbed...clean as a whistle!
Here's where we're at now. 15 lbs of live sand, 20 lbs of dry sand. I'm building tufa rock towers to go in his tank too.....pics of those later when I get to them.
Part of the deal we made with this reset was that I would make weekly visits to check on the tank, do 5g water changes every other week, etc. His job is to do the daily stuff, clean the glass, test his own chemistry. We'll see. His mom now has a QT tank for their 90g setup, so there's no excuse not to QT properly now. I'm working with him to make a good stock list for a tank this size, and he's got a 92w t5 fixture (that I'm 'borrowing' currently for my seahorse tank) for some lps and softies when he reaches that point.
I was glad to see the filter and heater had been turned off and removed. He'd washed the SW out of the filter, too....it works fine. The thing on the left that looks like a giant turd is a nice sized piece of LR. Just for shiggles, I tested the SG of the water with his hydrometer. It didn't even measure on the pole, it floated too high! We're talking saltier than the dead sea here. Here's a nice thing, though: I scrubbed off all the schmutz from the live rock while it was in the tankwater, then I (very carefully) smelled it. Believe it or not, it smelled fine! Oh, sure, all the little clams and whatnot that usually comes on LR were long dead, but the rock itself was good. I'm keeping it and using it to help his cycle. Here's the tank after the water and sand came out:
And later, after everything was cleaned and scrubbed...clean as a whistle!
Here's where we're at now. 15 lbs of live sand, 20 lbs of dry sand. I'm building tufa rock towers to go in his tank too.....pics of those later when I get to them.
Part of the deal we made with this reset was that I would make weekly visits to check on the tank, do 5g water changes every other week, etc. His job is to do the daily stuff, clean the glass, test his own chemistry. We'll see. His mom now has a QT tank for their 90g setup, so there's no excuse not to QT properly now. I'm working with him to make a good stock list for a tank this size, and he's got a 92w t5 fixture (that I'm 'borrowing' currently for my seahorse tank) for some lps and softies when he reaches that point.
) 
