The guy I got the sand from is in the Navy, so other than having been busy a bit lately the tank looked maintained rather well. He had a whole lot of gear for his 55 gallon tank included 5 Lifeguard modules and a CPR refugium and skimmer. He had a lot of gear that I'd never pay for because it simply costs too much and I can make DIY stuff to do the same thing. My point is that he spent a lot of time and money on his system.
While we were siphoning off the sand from the tank, he was pointing out all kids of animals like the baby lettuce nudibranchs, abalones, and huge cleaner clams. After we finished with that, he meticulously sifted through the refugium sorting out the rubble rock, couple different snails, etc. into several 5 gallon buckets making sure not to miss any of the bugs. He spent two hours with me from start to finish getting all this stuff ready to go.
I left with 6 5 gallon buckets of sand, rubble, and other stuff. He gave me a full bottle of Paraguard and two full bottles of decapsulated artemia cysts; the refrigerated kind. The guy was great and his gf was funny as hell too. First thing he did when I walked up after we said hello was offer me a beer and then another a little later as soon as I had finished that one.
The tank didn't have any bad smells and the refugium wasn't full of the tell-tale black dead areas. There was of course the sediment from a tank that needed a little TLC and the dirt cloud expected from stirring up a sand bed. It wasn't all that bad. Nothing a few water changes and some TLC won't cure.
Tomorrow, I'm going to get around to cleaning my skimmer and hooking it up. That should speed things along a bit.
