Yeah, scrap the whole thing...and that was a "constructive comment". He has a substrate he doesn't want, not enough live rock, and too high a bioload for his tank. So, my advice would be to remove the livestock and see if he can either sell or return to store for credit. Pull the rock and substrate he's got, replace the substrate as he wants to do already, put the correct amount of live rock in the tank, let it cycle as it's supposed to and meanwhile make sure he has adequate flow in the tank and perhaps pick up an Aqua C Remora or SuperSkimmer to hang on it, and finally once all the parameters are as they should be, slowly restock as the tank should be. For a 29 gal tank, it's not that big a deal. Now, if this were a 120 gal or 200 gal or whatever, obviously one could not take this approach lightly. But in this case if I really wanted to trade out that substrate and get the rest of the tank within the confines of where it should be, then I'd do it in a heartbeat...and it wouldn't really cost anything extra other than the new substrate and rock that he would be needing anyway. Guess it depends on what your definition of scrapping the whole tank is. Didn't say to throw it all away, just decide a major overhaul of the whole thing is in order.
