Drain tank and start over? or other options?

[BZMikeH]

Hi all. I've had my 90gallon FOWLR sumpless tank now for a good 10 years with no major issues. It currently has about 100lb of live rock, and I run a aquaclear110 with chemi pure elite, and a reef octopus skimmer.

Due to a family emergency I have really slacked on maintenance over the last year and now have a large amount of GHA to show for it. Now that I have some free time again I would really like to switch out my crushed coral for sand, and try and remove as much of the GHA from the rock that I can. What do you guys think the best plan of attack would be? Do I setup a "hospital tank" for the 4-5 fish I have and completely drain the tank? Whats the best way of cleaning the rock? Any sand recommendations?

Thanks!
Mike

[ROlympia]

I did just the opposite by siphoning out all the sand over 3 or 4 water changes, then took the rocks out and scrubbed everything really good. I left one large piece of rock out that was unclean-able. The I put the rocks back in and added some new, then crushed coral. I didn't remove any of the inhabitants. They seemed to wonder what they hell happened but other than a adapting to the new look, they were fine. I have one powder brown tang, astarry blenny, green chromie, cleaner shrimp and some easier corals.

[Vinny Kreyling]

Remove the rock, pull off the long algae & spray it with peroxide, let it sit for 5 minutes & put it back. Sand can be siphoned out.

[ycnibrc]

U can manually clean as much of the hair algae as you can then buy a bunch of turbo snail so they can finish it off for you. However you need to maintain your water otherwise hair algae will take over again.
If you keep your tank as fish only then the gravel is fine to leave there just vacuumed the detritus. If you change over to a reef tank then take them out.


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[Looper121]

Drain it. And get SCUBA certified and enjoy reef and their habitants where they live naturally.

[smokenax]

Here’s what i did took my old sand out
With a wet vacuum. Have some new water to replace with whatever you water gets removed. Then add live sand wet kind, you can also mix with dry but keep that layer on the bottom.
Then took my rock out later sections at a time. with some tank water in a tub I scrubbed the rock submerged then blasted it with a power head to dislodge
Any ditritus. Important to keep your rock submerged so you don’t loose any beneficial bacteria. Here’s what my tank looks like now



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[cody6766]

It takes a while, but I used Vibrant to knock back a bad algae flare up. I had a massive die off due to an extended winter power outage and am working on starting over. Vibrant didn't kill everything off, but it took care of most of the long algae and bubble algae. I have some harder dark green algae that looks similar to GHA, just more dense, that I've been working out with nutrient control. I've been at it since November and the tank still isn't quite right. The new fish are good to go, but some coral still struggle. I siphoned out my sand over the course of a few water changes and won't be replacing it. I've always had a shallow sand bed, but I think I'm going to like the ease of cleaning I'm getting from bare bottom.

Peroxide works well too. I hit some rocks with that and it killed most of the algae. You can get 12% bottles off of Amazon. Be really careful with it and wear gloves! It's MUCH stronger than the 3% stuff you get at the drug store. I cut it by half with RO/DI water and used a syringe to carefully dribble it on the larger rocks.

Don't expect quick results with anything you do. It's like pushing a big rock...it goes downhill fast, but uphill is a real pain.