saxerphoner

My wife's cousin joined the military a few years ago and left his aquarium for his parents to care for. However, his parents wanted nothing to do with taking care of it. Soooo... when I heard that I could acquire a 125 gallon tank, stand, sump, skimmer, powerheads, and lighting for free; I jumped on the opportunity! All I had to do was rent a trailer, break it down, and transport 2 hours to my house.

It was July and the hottest day of the year. Luckily, I didn't have to carry stuff far to get it to the trailer. That was where the luck was to end. Lets just say I could smell the tank before I could see it. The parents pointed out all the anemones that popped up! The Aiptasia literaly lined the water line all the way around the top of the tank. There were two normal ole flourescent freshwater strips across the top. The sump was dry and had been for a long time and the powerheads were barely trickling water through them. Basically, there had been nearly zero water movement through this tank in probably years. Yet, there were two fish and a couple mushrooms still alive (poor guys).

We started by siphoning out the water. I had originally planned on keeping a lot of the water to limit cycling at my house. I quickly changed my mind. After siphoning, I put the rock in bins with water after shaking all the junk off. I then caught the fish and put them in another container. He asked me if I wanted to keep the sand, I said no. We shoveled it out with dust pans. It was gross. More like mud than anything else. I was worried something was going to take off my hand from in there but didn't find anything. He was very curious why I was wearing gloves. I wish I would have had thicker ones.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I consider myself fortunate to get the tank, stand, and rock. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I just wish I had taken a before picture when I was there.

I forgot to mention that my first son was born on April 30th. So the timing for this was not perfect to say the least. This wasn't just a case of taking over a tank. I basically had to rebuild it from the ground up. But I could only spend about thirty minutes to an hour on it at a time. It has taken FOREVER! I hadn't planned on doing a build thread or anything like that so I didn't take any pictures but it's been such an adventure that I figured I had to write something. I will take pictures and video soon to include in this.

Once I got it to my house, I ran the rock with flow and zero light for about a month to kill off bubble algae and aiptasia. I also did some RODI dips and scrubbing to get the junk off. This worked out pretty well. However, somehow, one Aiptasia managed to survive along with a few single bubbles of bubble algae.




The following is what I've done since filling it with new saltwater.

• Set up the rocks and aquascape (this was terrible... probably my least favorite part of the hobby)
• Kept two powerheads I was able to salvage by soaking in vinegar and running in vinegar for a while. I don't think their flow was hurt. They are a Seio 1100 and a 2600. I also put in a MaxiJett 1200 from a previous tank.
• new esheips (sp.) drain because the other one was yellow and gross and probably brittle.
• new plumbing down to sump OH... THE SUMP I went ahead and put the same tank in the stand for the sump. I had unknowingly messed up! The tank is only a 20 gallon Long which I now know is waaay too small for the display tank. (I've never had a sump before.) I only realized this after I filled the display tank with water, rocks, and sand and couldn't get it out through the doors. So I'm stuck and had to include a check valve (a pretty nice one that's see through and removable for cleaning) and siphon breaks on my return line.
• I originally put baffles in the 20L for a skimmer section, fuge, and return section. My skimmer was a little too snug for my liking and the fuge was too small to be effective so I took out the baffle separating the two and made it one big skimmer section. I now have a 10 gallon separate tank for my refugium that will gravity drain into my return section of the sump and be fed by a powerhead from the skimmer section.
• I got a new skimmer- Reef Octopus 150 (I now kinda wish I would have gotten a bigger one but this one is working really well)
• Two Little Fishes reactor that I'm going to run PhosGuard in. I'm having a hard time figuring out where I'm going to put this where it is easy to get to to clean and change the media.
• I'm running GAC in a media bag now but I'm considering either including it in the reactor with the phosguard or getting another reactor for the carbon. It's now positioned in front of the outlet of the skimmer so it's washing over the carbon that way. Any suggestions here?
• For lights I got the Aquatic Life 12 bulb T5 HO fixture that i'm slowly replacing the bulbs that came with it with ATI bulbs.

I just found out that this may have already been posted when I wasn't ready and thought it was just a draft. Soooo while I still have more to say, I'm going to go ahead and stop here and more later!

Please comment with suggestions or comments!!! Thanks!