Plan to get my tank back in shape

[travis32]

I've noticed, Cyano, HA, and Bubble algae growing in, in multiple locations. I only have one fish in the tank and I feed lightly shrimp to feed that fish and the CUC and keep the tank cycled.

I've been slowly decreasing how much I feed. I also have chaeto in the tank (covered in cyano) and int he sump.

I'm planning on replacing the tank in approximately 1 -2 months with a 125. The equipment is reserved for me, and everything.

So, here's my plan to clean up the rock for the new tank:

Do more water changes and with the WC water, scrub each rock thoroughly 1 rock at a time, removing cyano and HA. I mean Scrubbing THOROUGHLY! Hopefully removing flatworms as well as all the other crappy stuff.

I want to wait to do this until I have RODI water. I will do a series of 20-40% water changes with RODI water to try to clean up the tank of HA and phosphates. I'm thinking of using like a plastic patato scrubber to scrub the crap off the rocks. All the rocks have mushrooms or other soft corals on them, so I'll have to be careful of mushroom toxins (they really reek when POed).

But other than that, will this only extend the inevitable of more cyano outbreaks and HA outbreaks, or could it stem the rising outbreaks and cause a decline in outbreaks? And will scrubbing it like this remove the beneficial bacteria?

Thanks in advance!

 

[BuckeyeTodd]

cook your rocks....search it...I did this when switching from fowlr to reef and it worked great(your not actually heating thme, for whatever reason thats what the process is called)

 

[travis32]

interesting on the cooking the rock. I did some searches and that sounds like a better plan. longer than I like, but relatively simple.

 

[n8ball2013]

cut your lights off completely. algea and cyano are photosynthetic. if you dont have any coral to worry about kill the lights.

 

[BuckeyeTodd]

I forget the amount of time that is recommended(i think they recommend a long time), but I've done it a couple of times between two and three weeks and it worked out great for me...Still scrub your rocks before you start and don't forget to do water change after about a week on the container with the rock

 

[travis32]

They reccomended 2 months of a powerhead for airation and no light. To change from algae processing to bacteria processing of nutrients. The process makes sense. 2 months seems long, plus the a lot of the rock has many muchrooms attached to it.

 

[BuckeyeTodd]

unless you're talking about some superman mushrooms I'd think getting rid of them would be a plus:lmao:

 

[BuckeyeTodd]

and yea I did 2-3 weeks in a trash can with no light, a powerhead, and did a waterchange after the first week...this worked for me, and these rocks had been in a nasty fish only tank for 1-4 years. These rocks were literally green.