After a hectic couple of weeks with work, I have finally managed to spend a bit of time with the new tank & taking a closer look at it and the equipment it arrived with. Below are some of the images of the tank, in the original state.
As you can see, it has salt creep all over it! I set to work cleaning it over several days and inspecting the condition of the tank while I was doing it. I should point out, at this time I have only managed to clean the display tank & the equipment, I have not even attempted the sump yet! Updated pictures won’t be posted until the whole lot is sparkling clean.
To clean the tank I used treated tap water and elbow grease. I don’t have an RO unit yet and I figured that because there won’t be water in it for a while, a little bit of treated water wouldn’t hurt. I hope to god I am right in saying that!
The majority of the salt creep was so dry and brittle that I could actually peel it off with my fingernails. The coralline along the back of the tank came off relatively easily with a sponge and overall the glass cleaned up nicely.
Unfortunately, there are some large & deep scratches on the main display, I am gutted about that, but I am hoping we can fix them. My partner seems to think he knows a man! I will follow this up with a later post.
Now, at the moment this seems like a pretty pointless post, but this morning I realised I had made a terrible mistake while cleaning this tank. Thankfully I seem to have gotten away with it, but I think it is worth posting about so others don’t make the same mistake.
So what did I do?
I cleaned the tank without any protective gear. No goggles. No gloves. No mask. No nothing.
Why is this a big deal? Because I read a post on a forum that someone had who done the same thing with an old tank ended up with Palytoxin poisoning, and he made their whole household sick. They think there were spores left on some use dry rock that when they started scrubbing them with a brush the spores released into the air.
Palytoxin poisoning is not something I have ever experienced, and if I can avoid it I will. There is plenty of information available on Palytoxins so I won’t bore you with the details of it now, but just know… It’s nasty!
While cleaning half an inch of grime out of my skimmer, I did manage to cut my hand, this would have been a good opportunity to realise my mistake and put the appropriate PPE on, but I missed that opportunity too! I am kicking myself for being so stupid now & I will be putting on gloves, a mask & goggles for the rest of the clean.
So what is left to do?
- Clean the sump
- Re-silicone the glass
- One last wipe over of the main display
- Cure the dry rock
- Plumb in the sump
- Aquascape
- Fill the tank!
