Buying an established/neglected aquarium

[PhysicsGuy]

Hello,

So i am completely new to SW but have kept freshwater planted tanks for years.

Anyways I have an opportunity to purchase an established 90g saltwater tank with all the needed supplies for what i feel is a great price. I dont have all the specs yet and will be going to look at the tank soon to find to more info. It is up and running currently and does have fish in it. My brother who let me know about the tank said it seemed to e a bit neglected and over run with algae.

If i go through with the purchase my I am sure i will have tons more questions but this is what i have now.

How easy would it be to move everything successfully across town. Would it be best to keep everything intact as possible and reuse everything or would i need to start over.( i.e. new water, substrate, live rocks)

As mentioned they tank may have an algae problem. Again wold it be best to try and fight the fight to get rid of it, or would it be better to start over in a sense. If i start over what would i need to do (to spend the minimum amount of money to get it started again.

Please remember there are fish and perhaps some corals that i would like to keep in the process..

Thanks again

[rage]

I assume the system has live rocks and live sands because that's where algae and other undersirables live.
If you put those back in a new tank they will be very hard to fight off. Worse, some of them will die off during the move and can crash your system.

I would put some of the rocks and sand in a small container with the old water that came with the fish, use a little water pump to cycle and areate the water and sustain the fish while you scrub off and clean up the rest of the rocks and sand and get them established in a new setup with new water.
If you have corals, you need to use some lights on that container to keep them alive.

All of the hardware can be cleaned and used.

[PhysicsGuy]

Thanks,

I figured I needed new sand (except a small amount to help seed the new stuff) and I wold need to scrub clean the rest of the rocks.