First off,
I'm not exactly a newbee. I was a member for a few years when I had a nice 55 gal and nano reef tanks. Apparently I was deleted though, as that was about 5 years ago when I rid of everything due to insufficient time to care for them.
Well as of yesterday, I'm back in the hobby after relocating a 250 I found on craigslist. Its a display tank that was in a photography shop in the mall. Its a little rough; really dirty inside and out. It has some green hair, some slight plumbing leaks and the hood is a little bit rotten and moldy. Nothing major though. It came with about 200 lbs of LR, 1 pencil urchin, 1 pistol shrimp, 1 blood red shrimp, 1 coral beauty, 1 yellow tang, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 yellowtail blue damsel, 2 two stripe damsels (pretty sure), and 1 other (I believe angel). It also has several purple mushrooms, and some other corral (leather maybe?). Oh, and I found 2 hermits and a sponge lol.
So me and my dad, my truck and small utility trailer showed up equipped with these new items; pump, garden hose, 4 50g trash cans, 8 20g totes, a small scooper and 2 four wheel flat dollies. We separated the rock, sand and livestock into the totes and pumped the water into the trash cans, including the water from the refugium. Then we loaded the tank still on the stand onto the dollies and pushed it across the mall right onto my trailer. 4 1/2 hours and $1300 later we were done!
The tank is still really cloudy and dirty of course. But I plan to start working on it tomorrow, I currently have zero supplies. I plan to start with scrapers, test kit, a large CUC, siphon tube, new filters and a couple replacement bulbs. It came with a coralife hydrometer and fish food, but I'm debating on a second or different one. ( I know, "get a refractometer". I had one before but I mainly used an Instant Ocean hydrometer for years and it was fine). I'll think about that too.
So my problem is, before with my smaller tank I had canister filtration with side mount skimmer and now I have this Precision Marine 14"X30" fuge with skimmer and what I suppose looks like a skimmer overflow, and an Aqua Logic Inc. 1/3hp chiller and all this extra plumbing.... all of which I know very little about. So if you guys would, give me some basic maintenance advice/tips on my new journey. Currently the refugium has no plants, I've always thought that was best but never had to think about it really.
I'm not exactly a newbee. I was a member for a few years when I had a nice 55 gal and nano reef tanks. Apparently I was deleted though, as that was about 5 years ago when I rid of everything due to insufficient time to care for them.
Well as of yesterday, I'm back in the hobby after relocating a 250 I found on craigslist. Its a display tank that was in a photography shop in the mall. Its a little rough; really dirty inside and out. It has some green hair, some slight plumbing leaks and the hood is a little bit rotten and moldy. Nothing major though. It came with about 200 lbs of LR, 1 pencil urchin, 1 pistol shrimp, 1 blood red shrimp, 1 coral beauty, 1 yellow tang, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 yellowtail blue damsel, 2 two stripe damsels (pretty sure), and 1 other (I believe angel). It also has several purple mushrooms, and some other corral (leather maybe?). Oh, and I found 2 hermits and a sponge lol.
So me and my dad, my truck and small utility trailer showed up equipped with these new items; pump, garden hose, 4 50g trash cans, 8 20g totes, a small scooper and 2 four wheel flat dollies. We separated the rock, sand and livestock into the totes and pumped the water into the trash cans, including the water from the refugium. Then we loaded the tank still on the stand onto the dollies and pushed it across the mall right onto my trailer. 4 1/2 hours and $1300 later we were done!
The tank is still really cloudy and dirty of course. But I plan to start working on it tomorrow, I currently have zero supplies. I plan to start with scrapers, test kit, a large CUC, siphon tube, new filters and a couple replacement bulbs. It came with a coralife hydrometer and fish food, but I'm debating on a second or different one. ( I know, "get a refractometer". I had one before but I mainly used an Instant Ocean hydrometer for years and it was fine). I'll think about that too.
So my problem is, before with my smaller tank I had canister filtration with side mount skimmer and now I have this Precision Marine 14"X30" fuge with skimmer and what I suppose looks like a skimmer overflow, and an Aqua Logic Inc. 1/3hp chiller and all this extra plumbing.... all of which I know very little about. So if you guys would, give me some basic maintenance advice/tips on my new journey. Currently the refugium has no plants, I've always thought that was best but never had to think about it really.