Kessil

Starting up with a old reef tank

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hscow111

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Hi,
I was wondering if some member can give me some suggestions..

I am re-starting an old tank after 1 year lapse. I have a IM 24G with pumps, thermometer.
I planned to use my old rock. I have bought 20lb of live sand [Nature's Ocean].
Please let me know if I can restart with the above.

I was thinking if I need to reseed the aquarium with some sand/rock from another established tank.

Thanks.
 
You don't have to do any such thing as reseed. Bacteria will grow, just give it time. Or use one of those "bacteria in a bottle" products (e.g. Dr. Tims) to speed things up a bit. If you want the "fauna" chances are you're not going to get it in a cup of sand from someone, and the reality is in our closed systems you typically will have exactly one species that becomes dominant at any particular level so it's not like established tanks are just teaming with fauna (plus I'm a bit sketchy about getting potentially nasty things coming along for the ride).
 
Thank you. When I started my tank many years ago, I bought live rocks from LFS. After a few weeks, I have pods and worms. This time around, since all the rocks are dried and dead, I dont know where to "get" the copepods.
I thought it is the copepods that are helping to maintain the chemistry of the tank.

I planned to cycle for about a month before putting fish in. thanks.
 
sfsuphysics said:
You don't have to do any such thing as reseed. Bacteria will grow, just give it time. Or use one of those "bacteria in a bottle" products (e.g. Dr. Tims) to speed things up a bit. If you want the "fauna" chances are you're not going to get it in a cup of sand from someone, and the reality is in our closed systems you typically will have exactly one species that becomes dominant at any particular level so it's not like established tanks are just teaming with fauna (plus I'm a bit sketchy about getting potentially nasty things coming along for the ride).
Click to expand...

I agree that you can just use Dr. Tim's, or just give it time.
But how do you know that the bacterial diversity is limited in the closed system and that one species becomes dominant?
just curios...
 
dochou said:
I agree that you can just use Dr. Tim's, or just give it time.
But how do you know that the bacterial diversity is limited in the closed system and that one species becomes dominant?
just curios...
Click to expand...

I don't know the answer to that, but I think it doesn't matter. Just set up the tank with your rock, sand and water. Take a pinch of that expired fish food and toss it in to rot to get ammonia and wait and whatever bacteria grows will grow.

Later as you swap frags and stuff, you maybe get seedings of other bacteria, algae, AIPTASIA, pods, etc.

I am still stunned at the stuff I find in my tank, like little worms of various types, brittle stars, pods, asterinas, etc, etc ... for me, that's part of the fun. Oh, yeah, my tank is OVERRUN with aiptasia so that's not a good hitchhiker, but the tank has been semi-neglected for a while so the aiptasia just took advantage of that. I accept that I'll never get rid of it all.

V
 
hscow111 said:
Thank you.. Another question.. expired fish-food. Can I still feed them or throw out? thanks
Click to expand...
I think you’re talking about freeze dried pellets. Frozen food, I wouldn’t go more than a couple weeks past expiration. I guess you can do the smell test but that might not be very helpful since it is supposed to smell fishy.
 
dochou said:
I agree that you can just use Dr. Tim's, or just give it time.
But how do you know that the bacterial diversity is limited in the closed system and that one species becomes dominant?
just curios...
Click to expand...
I was more specifically speaking of macrofauna, aka pods and stuff, all you need is something like a live mysid in there and it will go through most all other pods as a predator. With bacteria, it's a little different,you're always going to have more than a mono-culture simply because the bacteria that takes care of nitrate is different than the one that takes care of ammonia.
 
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