Advice on my 20 Gallon Saltwater fish tank i just received for free??

OttoTheOrange

Reefing newb
I recently expressed interest in acquiring a saltwater fish tank and a good friend of mine just happens to know someone that can no longer care for their aquarium. I only have the pictures my friend sent me via email and have not seen it in person or ever owned a aquarium. So I am reaching out to this site for help! The aquarium is approx. 13 miles away from where I live, completely flat roads, and should be a smooth ride as I plan to move it on a saturday or sunday. The aquarium has two clown fish and a sea urchin and various crabs and baby star fish you will see in the photos. I am looking for advice on how to move it, clean it, any advice on stabilizing it, and any advice in general to make their lives happy. I am also looking for anyone to point out what else is in it and other living things i have as i dont know anything else about whats in it. Also I am looking for someone to tell me how much they think this setup is worth? I want to express some sort of gratitude to the person as they are having financial problems and honestly dont know how much to give her. Here are the pictures and thanks for the help!

~ Otto


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Does it come with a stand? that makes a big difference in pricing. Ask her what she thinks is fair. Depends on her equipment, too....skimmer, lighting, etc.

For starters, I would get some buckets from home depot to transport the water, or a rubbermaid bin.. You'll have to have some saltwater ready, too, for water changes, because if you keep the sand, it will stir up the muck and cause an ammonia spike, so water changes will be needed.
 
+1 Wonton

I dont see anything in there that is particularly expensive (corals and equipment). Do you know what kind of lights it has?

Also for moving the tank, its much easier to toss the old sand and buy new. Otherwise you are going to need to dedicate some time to really cleaning the old stuff because the sand will trap all sorts of junk over time.
 
+2 yup use new sand keep as much of the "old" water as possible. While transporting keep the rock wet. Since the tank and sump are going to be empty give it a good scrub with vinegar and water, rinse a few time....Will take you pretty much a day to get it all done. Then the fun begins....
 
I had a similar 20g setup in college and moved it three our four times over holidays and believe it or not it always looked better right after I moved it than before I moved it. Here's what I did.

Take a few 5 gallon buckets and put all of the rock in the buckets and leave some room at the top. Use one bucket for the fish and coral only and fill them up with water from in the aquarium and put some lids on the ones with rock to avoid spilling and just put the one with the fish on the floor in the front seat so you can keep an eye on it. If it's cold you may want to throw a heater in the bucket with fish and coral to keep the temp up.

Whatever water is left in the aquarium/sump siphon into some other buckets or water containers only leaving the sand and enough water to cover the sand in the aquarium.

You should then be able to load up the vehicle with stand equipment and aquariums and head home. As soon as you get home put the stand and tanks back together and put all of the equipment into place. Put about half the water back in and then stack your rock the way you want. Top off the aquarium and put the coral and fish in last.

It would definitely be worth it to have a few gallons of saltwater already mixed and ready to go so you can do a water change after everything is set back up. That should hopefully help with any extra ammonia from the sand. If you want to use new sand you can but in my experience it wasn't necesary. It will realistically take you 1-2 hours to break down and 1-2 hours to put back up so if your only 15 min away your looking at a 4 hour or so project. The main thing is to keep an eye on the temp of the bucket with the fish, coral, inverts, etc in it. First time seems complicated but it's actually not as bad as you would think. Good luck!
 
Thanks Everyone, I make the move tomorrow! After calling around to a few lfs, I decided to keep the sand. I am going to add some new dry sand and rinse it off with ro water. I read on the forums that i could push the sand currently in the tank off to one side, put the new sand i just rinsed on the other. The current sand depth is not to my liking(less then 1") and would like to rise it up to at least a inch and half. I am still trying to understand the sump part of all this. From my pictures of my set up, it does not look like anything i read about lol I have only seen my set up once to take the pictures. Well that's all for now, i will post various photos tomorrow of the whole process. Thanks again everyone!
 
Good luck!

Remember to have PLENTY of saltwater ready for water changes! Because you will definitely end up stirring up a lot of the trapped gunk in the sand.
 
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