Resetting up after 4 years

Jemmam

New Member
We have 250 RS reefer, closed it down 4 plus years ago and reset up last weekend. Everything was dried and put in storage.

Filled, salted and have both skimmer and reactor (phos) running.

Have tiny amounts of algae on some rock, question is should I get a small amount of l/r to reseed the rock we have as it was dried and stored away.

ammonia, nitrate and nitrite are off scale (using red sea test kit) just wondering will it actually come down without ”live” rock also should I be doing weekly water changes

tia

current picture attached
 

Attachments

  • C90C02AD-CD59-4455-B468-5C1F5DE45146.jpeg
    C90C02AD-CD59-4455-B468-5C1F5DE45146.jpeg
    663.6 KB · Views: 2
Last edited:

DaveK

Well-Known Member
When you let live rock dry out, in effect you have killed just about everything on it. This is likely the reason your getting high ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings. Your live rock may also have absorbed some of this also, and be leaching it back into the system.

In time the ammonia and nitrite levels will drop, simialr to a new tank being cycled. You can help this along by adding a raw shrimp from the grocery store, or one of the live bacteria products sold for this.

Over a very long time the nitrate will also go down as the tank sets up an anaerobic bacteria system to deal with it, but this can take months. This is what goes on when you hear about someone "cooking their live rock". If you can wait that long, great, but most people want to speen up the process. You can easily do this when you see the ammonia and nitrite drop to 0 and stay there. At that point do an almost 100% water change. If the nitrate now stays low, your good to go.

I wouldn't recommend any water changes while this cycling is going on. I would also recommend that you leep the light level low since you don't want to give problem algae a head start.
 
Top