Help reviving my saltwater fish tank

Hello 3reef forums...

I've come to this great place looking for help. I have a 3yr old 50 gallons saltwater tank that at one point was healthy with plenty of fish and corals. After landing a job that required much of my time I found my self neglecting my tank and over the time loosing everything I had worked so hard for. Frustration kicked in but I never gave up on my talk so I never took it down. For the past 8 to 12 months I've kept my talk half way filled with water so the live rock/sand would not go bad and I've kept the power heads running to circulate the water with the idea that someday I can bring my talk back to life. I have changed the water every other month and kept is as clean as possible.
When I had my talk up and running. My only system of filtration was my live rock. I only ran my filters about a week per month just to keep things under control.

Here is my question. How can I bring my 50gal. tank back to life?
I am ready to give it the attention it needs.

1) Do I need to let the tank cycle again?
2) I do not mix my saltwater. I purchase my water from a mom and pop aquarium in town.
3) I have plenty of live rock and sand (original rock and sand for the past 3yrs)
4) I have a protein skimmer
5) I have a canister filter if need it.

Please feel free to ask any questions... I would really like to get my fish tank back to the beautiful talk it use to be.

Thank you

 

Have you tested the water any during the time it's been fishless?

I would first test the water, then throw in a table shrimp and keep testing. If your ammonia doesn't spike that would indicate your bacteria can still handle some bio-load and you should be ok to slowly start adding some live stock back in. If your ammonia does spike than just ride out the cycle as if you were just starting the tank.

 

IMO i would stay away from the canister. Have you kept the temp stable? If so, your LR should be fine, but i would change the sand if i were you because whatever died in there before is most likely in the depths of the sand and will be released when you stir it. All in all, IMO you need to restart but will be able to use your existing LR. Good Luck!

 

I have not tested the water. I will take a trip to my local aquarium store to purchase some salt water to get things started.

Thanks

 

Yes... I have tried to stay away from the canister filters. Over the time I've heard nothing but bad things about canister filters.

I have kept the heather running in my fish tank until about a week ago. Since I didn't have any fish in there I thought there was no reason to keep the heather running. I am guessing that was a bad move on my end. I will get the heather running as soon as I get home today.

Normally when things died I pulled them out of the tank as soon as possible. The only things that probably died and I didn't do much about them was a couple of small crabs that where hard to get to because of the live rocks.
Any fishes or corals that died where removed as soon as possible.

 

Can anyone provide additional advice?

 

Mods - can you join these two threads - they are dup's of each other

http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/need-help-3yr-old-tank-80346-2.html#post788364