Hey guys, im back

After about 6 months of essentially being out of the hobby, im back. My tank sustained a 2 week power outage. Though i had an emergency battery pump it wasnt enough. Most of my corals died while 3 out of my 4 fish survived. My tank is now left with my two original clownfish and a falco hawkfish. Regarding corals, all i have left is a toadstool that survived the outage. For inverts my derasa clam sirvived, oddly enough, but my snails and hermit crabs are all gone. Hair algae now covers my tank but i hope to bring it back to the beauty it had before the outage. I am ordering a new cleanup crew from reefcleaners tonight and i guess that begins my restart of the tank. Any suggestions of how i can bring it back would be much appreciated. On the bright side, my three freshwater tanks are still thriving including my planted tank.
-JJL

 

Welcome back JJL! I'm so sorry about the loss and your power outage. Are you planning on changing all of your water I would assume? How bad is the algae? That would help in terms of advise. It's so worth it to bring it back

 

Thanks!
The hair algae pretty much covers 75% of my live rock. Would you recommend buying all new live rock? Or will a clean up crew do the job? Wouldnt a 100% water change force a re-cycle of the tank?

 

I would take the rock out and scrub it.

 

I'd recommend a scrubbing and treatment outside of the tank with peroxide

 

I'm still stuck at 2 weeks of no power. I'd go postal!!
I'd like to follow this thread and see how you go about getting everything back to normal. There's some salt water tanks at one of the high schools I work at. Id like to help them out because they don't have the time. I'm still reading a lot and trying to learn but I think their tanks are point of no return..

 

Welcome back JJL.

 

I agree with the peroxide recommendation. Take the rock out piece by piece and add peroxide to the rock leave out for about 10 minutes then put back in the tank....I would then scrub all of the sides of the tank and do a real large water change. Take out your live stock and put them in a smaller tank or tote with a heater and an air stone or powerhead. You may have a little bit of a cycle but with no livestock in it, it shouldn't be a problem. Vacuum your sand while you're taking the water out....you may want to add some bacteria starter after the big water change to help the process along and perhaps shorten any cycle that may occur. Run some carbon and GFO from the start and then test and you should be good.....

 

Ok, I will take my rock out and put my fish in a large 5 gallon bucket with an airstone for the time being.

Thanks!

Ok sounds good. Thank you for the help! What bacteria started would you reccommend? Would pods to seed the tank also be useful?

-JJL

 

I wouldn't introduce pods yet, just my opinion....I've used the microbacter 7 and liked the results.....