reviving a marine aquarium. Please help.

[Anomal0caris]

Over the last 3 months, due to family losses and personal health issues, I have let my aquarium slide... about a month and a half ago i discontinued the use of my sump and filters attached, only running a hang on mec/bio filter. I finally got back in the grind a few days ago and purchased an r/o system and uv sterilizer and got the aquarium back up and running.
Before i let the aquarium slip I had a flasher wrasse, royal gramma, saddleback clown, acan, encrusting gorgonian, trumpet coral, and blasto. with hermits, snails, and a sally lightfoot. all thats left is the saddleback. the glass was covered (until today with slime algae and the lr is absolutely covered. i performed a major water change today (50%) and trying to get everything back up and running. when i tested the salinity after my wc, it was <1.032 and the water added was 1.020 bc i knew it was high before hand but didnt even care to test due to the fact that i knew it would be off the charts anyway. i have lowered it down to 1.030 after adding some r/o water to the sump.
I tested the water chemistry after the change and the results are: alk:11 dKH, ammonia: >.25, nitrate 0ppm, nitrite 0 ppm, PO4 0.25, ca 600. I know these numbers are skewed because it was after such a large water change.... The tank is 55G with a 15 G sump, Fluval 305 caaster filter, marine land hang on bio/ mec filter, Corallife skimmer, turbo twist 18w uv sterilizer.

would yall think my LR is dead after being in such a high salinity? my current plan of action is tomorrow lower the salinity to 1.027. on 01/05/13 preform a 5% wc, repeating every other day. in two weeks replace 5 lbs LR and continue over the same interval until all LR is replaced, reducing water changes after a two week period of to twice a week until march.

any advice? does my current plan sound okay?

 

[Josh_84]

If I was in your situation, I would pull out all the rock and scrub it down in a bucket of tank water to remove all the algea and debris. gravel vac the substrate and basically get the whole tank and sump cleaned out. Refill it with fresh saltwater of the correct salinity and let it recycle if it needs to, but I doubt your rock is dead. I would keep the light off for the time being as well to avoid algea growing back. Shouldn't be that hard to get things back in line again.
Good luck!

 

[Anomal0caris]

Thank you. Today I rearranged all the LR and vaccumed up all debris under it. I managed to get the salinity back down to 1.028, and added 10 small nassarius snails to aerate the substrate and consume whatever I missed. Will so the LR tomorrow but the cherry spotted dottyback will be a problem. It is almost always in the rock unless it is checking the gramma out

 

[100%hydrophylic]

I let my tank slide for a good 3 months as well. i know my salinity had risen very high, and i doubt any other parameter was in check. To get it back going, I did a 100% water change, and changed the sand. I would have suggested changing the sand. mine was old to begin with, but it was so rancid i could barely handle the smell.

For the rocks, i left them in dark buckets but powerheads and basically recurred them. i had a nasty GHA problem, and this cleared it up just being in the dark. I am surprised at how much life did survive on the rocks though, i figured they would be dead. Coraline, feather dusters, pods, the occasional zoanthid, etc.

 

[Josh_84]

I thought you said there was only 1 clown fish left in the tank? I would still scrub the rocks off in a bucket of tank water, just make sure before you dump it to check for your fish incase he was in one of the rocks. Adding the nassarius was a good idea. I would still try a gravel vac in the substrate to help remove debris. I was amazed at what came out of mine and now I do it about once a month and notice a difference with the water quality.