Advice on Inherited 40g Tank

[5gallonman]

I recently inherited a 40g tank from a buddy who lost interest in the hobby (I haven’t had a tank for a while). The tank was set up for about 4 years or so as a reef tank. Before I inherited it, the tank fell into a state of disarray. I wanted to share the steps I went through to set the tank up, get some feedback on what I did, and see if anyone has any suggestions going forward (questions below)…

When my friend brought the tank over, detritus was on everything, there were only a few snails alive, no fish, coral or crabs. The LR was still in the tank with the sand, but the water had been drained to about 4-6 inches and the coralline had turned white. The tank had all sorts of red and green algae on the glass and was looking a bit rough.

I took all of the LR out and put in a bin in the garage with a power head. I filled the tank with new water from the LFS, hooked up the protein skimmer, hooked up a freshly cleaned Fluval 405, scraped all of the glass and stirred up the sand bed to get all of the detritus into the water column. It took about a day for the water to clear up. Once I could see through the tank, I took a siphon and cleaned all of the sand, which resulted in another very cloudy tank and large water change.

Once the tank cleared up, and it was “clean”, I removed the Fluval (I’m not planning on using this going forward), completely cleaned the protein skimmer since it was now filthy, and hooked it back up. I then added the LR back to the tank, hooked up the lights and chiller.

I’m planning on FOWLR, here are my questions at this point:
1. Was this a good strategy?
2. Should I add bio-bale to the protein skimmer? It seems like there are bubbles making it back to the tank, will the bio-bale help?
3. Should I have replaced the sand instead of cleaning it? I figured there were still beneficial bacteria and creatures living in it.
4. I have not hooked up the refugium, but would like to. Suggestions for contents? Sand bed, LR rubble, macro algae, etc?
5. Do I have enough water turnover? It seems like things are moving around quite a bit.
6. My Ammonia is 0, Nitrite is 0, PH is acceptable, but Nitrate is high 80+ppm. I attribute this to the “sand cleaning” I performed. Any suggestions on reducing this, or do I just wait it out?
7. Should I be concerned with the quality of the MH bulbs, or are they really just for aesthetics at this point?

Any input or suggestions are much appreciated! Here are the specs/equipment list as well:

- 40 gallon breeder tank (glass)
- Standard black stand/canopy
- 2” Sand Bed
- 40+ lbs Fiji Live Rock
- CPR Bak-Pak 2 Protein Skimmer (w/Rio 600)
- CPR HOB Refugium (medium size w/Rio 400)
- 2x150w Metal Halide Retrofit Lights (Hamilton Ballast, generic 14k bulbs)
- AquaEuroUSA 1/10 HP Chiller w/independent return pump (350gph)
- Koralia powerhead 600gph
- Rio 600 powerhead
- 200 watt heater

Thanks everybody! Sorry for the long post!!!

[5gallonman]

Here is a pic of the tank as well: