new..sort of.. but have questions!

[Heather]

So I bought my tank about 7 years ago... I have a 35 gallon hex. I used to maintain it very well. I have about 10-15 pieces of live rock and used to have a few living things. Then I moved away and left the tank as is (no fish) running. It soon lost its siphon and then sat, full of water and the rock for about 2 years.

Now I am back and trying to revive the tank. I have siphoned out all the dirty water and taken the rock out. The rock is full of green gunk and smells very bad. About a week ago, I took all the rock, place it in buckets of hot water and it has been soaking outside since.

My questions basically are... what do I do now? Have a killed the rock? Ultimately I would like a reef type set up with 1-2 fish. Can someone help me?

P.S. I'm not sure what kind of filter I have. I bought it about 7 years ago. It has blue balls on the right side and on the left is empty for the water to run through.

Thank You

 

[Chris]

Wow, the rock is probably dead but you could re-seed it with new live rock. As far as your other questions i'm going to leave that answer to a more experienced user.

 

[jhnrb]

Heather, welcome to the forum. well 2 years stagnation. not to worry. provide hard circulation for the rock and do major water changes every 3 days or so for a couple weeks, then if all smell ok, take rock out and lay out in the direct sunlight turning rocks every couple of days for couple weeks, back into the water bath with hard circulation for another week, then out and into the tank. pull out all substrait and replace with new, restart tank as if brand new. you can reseed the tank with a small piece of live rock from hobbist or lfs. initially you may experiance some algae bloom but a clean up crew can get after that. dont be afraid to scrub your rocks to get as much of the junk off as possible while cleaning. hope something here helps. good luck and again welcome. oh, and less I forget, make sure you throughly clean all equipment and tank. keep the blue bio balls in the filter until you can reestabish your live rock about 6 months, then you can remove the blue bioballs from the filter. Leaving them im initially will assist in establishing your bacteria and help cycle the tank system. you did not say but i assume you have a protien skimmer and heater, lights etc for a complete marine system.

 

[minireefer]

Heather welcome to forum ,
I agee the tank will need to completly recycle

 

[bkv1997]

excellent advice above..

And welcome to the forums.