Re: 500 gallon tank

[MGRigby]

After Ron spending over an hour with me on the phone and after speaking to the owner of the tank this morning we have decided to do a few things.  He has what looks like about 500 to 600 lbs of live rock in the tank.  Most of it is void of life and covered with a brownish algae.  The bottom of the tank has a bunch of green slimy looking stuff on it too.  He is not very motivated to replace all the rock at Ron's recommendation because of the cost factor.   Going to eventually drain the tank, take out all rock and fish that are still living, scrub the rock as some of you recommended, and probably add some fresh live rock to the tank.  There are traces of cor. algae on some of the rocks so maybe it will come back pretty quick.  Going to build a canopy hinged to the wall and put 8 actinic 6 foot vhos, 2 daylight vhos, and 2 40 watt ac! tinics, and two 40 watt ultralumes on the back.  Going to use dual overflows from Ron running to a 100 gallon sump.  The return to the tank will be 1 inch plumbed with two iwaki 70's plumbed to a spraybar running across the back of the tank at the bottom blowing through the reef.  Going to use one iwaki 40 rlxt split on either end of the tank for top current.  Ron recommended two of his big skimmers with deluxe mag 350's and the dw962 air pump which we are going to use.  He has some big oceanview canister filters that I was wondering if I could use in place of the mag. 350's but not sure if they will do the same thing.  Looking at a spectrapure ultrapure 70 gallon a day with a 100 gallon reservoir all set up to come on and off automatically with float switch in sump for top off.   Going to use about 50 or so lbs. of Fiji live sand for the substrate.  Going to start buliding the canopy this! week.   Cleaning out the tank is going to be a big chore.  Any suggestions as to the progression of adding equipment, cleaning, etc. would be greatly appreciated.  He really doesn't want to buy all this stuff at once. I would love to be able to start over with new rock but he was pretty adamant about that not happening. Also, going to add two 40 watt uvs at some point down the road.  Sounds like a pretty good setup to me and I would welcome any comments from ya'll (as we say it down here).  Sorry for the long post.  Going to take some pics as I go so you can see my progress.   Glen