Buying a fully stocked Reefer 170 Reef Aquarium

[Ecasey]

I’ve never had a salt water tank and it’s been a long time since I’ve had an aquarium. Our 33 year old son has terminal brain cancer and he really wants a fish tank, since he had a salt water tank a while back when he lived on his own. He lives with my wife and I now …. He’s very sick. The Craiglist post includes (and the guy is really nice) “Reefer 170 Black, Radion XR15, Reef Octopus Classic 110 INT, MP 10 Quiet Drive, 100 watt submersible heater, Pair of Platinum clowns, domino damsel, yellow tail damsel (yellow tang not included). Multiple Corals encrusted SPS, Zoe’s and LPS on the live rock. Asking $850 for everything.

It looks beautiful. It seems like a deal (doesn’t matter- we just don’t want to start from scratch).
Does this equipment list sound complete or antiquated?
Transporting will be about a 20 mile ride. Gotta keep it all warm. Right? What else?

Sounds like I should toss the sand except for some old sand to seed the new stuff, right? How much old sand do I keep and how much new sand do I buy?

Do the mechanicals down below look ok?

Any other pointers would be helpful.
Thank You

 

[DaveK]

For what your getting the price seems very reasonable. At first glance the mechanicals look ok, but this is tough to judge since we can't reallt examine then closely or look inside them. Expect to need to replace a few parts, but that's typical.

As you indicate, discard most of the sandbed keeping only a few pounds to seed the new setup. The amount of sand is wide open. You can use jest enough to cove the botton or go up to about 4 inches. Generally I like to keep it about 1 1/2" deep.

The tank does look like it has some algae issues, but those can be dealt with using some good aquarium management.

Generally you don't want to move all that water. Have enough SW premixed at the tanks new location to full most of it. The rest will come from the old tank when you tear it down. Offhand I'd want to take about 10 gal of old water.

If well planned you should be able to move the system in one day, but it might take longer since you may want to clean everything. Make your priority getting the tank in place and the filtration system running. Lighting and the skimmer can wait a day or two.

Good luck with your project.