If I were you I'd do water change after water change, you need to get all that gunk out of the water before the tank can return to "normal". You don't want any of it settling out and rotting on the sandbed, possibly suffocating it. I'd do at least 4-5 water changes (or more) and then leave the tank just to recouperate for a couple weeks before you make any major additions. Chances are not only the corals croaked in that tank, some of the sandbed probably died due to less oxygen in the water from the die off/increased temperature. Oh and run some carbon if you have it handy.:biggrin:

Yeah.. as I said I am going to do more water changes once I'm home from work. I only had time for 2 yesterday, I just got back from camping and had a lot of things to get done last night. Is it just me , and it probably is but doesn't it seem wrong to change out 2g, replace it, then take another 2g out and replace it? Wouldn't the "correct" way of doing this be to just change out the whole amount (whatever that may be, probably another 8g in my case) and replace it all? Seems like this would be more effective?

I have nothing in there that it can further harm really (coral wise) . I don't have any carbon unfortunately.. I'll turn on my AC500 and stick the foam insert in for a bit though . I'll try to get some carbon today .

I also will turkey baste all the rocks and sand... hell, I may even remove my sand bed ... it's just full of crap and it's not doing my tank any good these days.

I like Bev's idea about cooking your rock now while you have the chance.
Might as well get rid of the nuisance algae and start fresh. :wink:

What a bummer..

Hmm.. how long does rock cooking take? I read a few articles about it a few months back but can't really remember all that much.

I could do that, but then my fish have no rocks. Also, I have a few remaining zoanthid colonies alive.

Yeah, doing 2 gallon water changes won't really get you far. Imagine having pitcher full of koolaid, take out a glassful and add a glassful of water, its still got tons of koolaid in it right (and tastes like it too :razz:)? Larger water changes are really warranted here. As well you have some (albeit small) mixing of water that is infused into your rock and sandbed, so you'd want to still maintain the larger water changes to get that out as well.

I don't really know what the foam insert will do for your tank unless there are large particulates you need to get out of the water, besides it will just trap gunk which will break down even further causing more problems for your tank. Definitely try to get some carbon in there to help break down and remove some of the water impurities.

I agree with Bev and Muck, definitely a good time to be cooking that rock. You don't want that crap leaching out later causing you all sort of problems down the line.

I am doing 8g water changes, not 2g . I do 4g at a time (I only have 2 - 2g buckets) Just so that's cleared up :)

I fully understand that I need to be doing larger water changes right now, as I am.. 8g at a time is a decent amount on a 20g . I plan on doing at least 10g tonight.

I guess the foam insert would be used when I baste my rocks and sand, all the gunk comes up and is collected in the foam. I never run the foam for more than a day. Then it's rinsed and stored away. I know they collect crap easily. Carbon would help me out quite a bit right now so I'll definitely try to get some. '

So again, how is rock cooking done and exactly how long does it take? I still have fish alive, and a few good corals alive as well.. so I dunno what I'd do about them, or the fish anyhow.

Yeah I knew you were doing the 8g water changes, I was just agreeing with you that a 2G would be a waste of time unless it were a really small tank.

So rock cooking is easy and doesn't involve any actual "cooking"
.
Basically you'd remove the rock from the tank, scrub it and rinse it in saltwater, then place it in a rubbermaid container with new saltwater, a heater and a powerhead and put the lid on. Then every once in awhile (say weekly/biweekly) siphon out all the crud from the bottom and whatever has settled on the rock. Swish the rocks around in the water (and scrub if needed), remove the rocks, dump out the water and add new saltwater with the rocks. This continues on for a few months. I only cooked mine for about a few weeks but man I couldn't believe the amount of crap that came off my rock.

Ahh okay gotcha.

I guess the rock cooking idea doesn't sound too bad.. does the algae slowly start to diminsh on it's own after a couple weeks? Seems easy and simple enough... but a few months is a little too long for my liking. Can it be done successfully for a shorter period of time?? I don't have that much rock, would that make a difference?

Ahh.. at the same time, getting new rock sounds just as easy :razz: But I can't really afford that.. I will cook the rock if the algae is definitely going to go away. Otherwise, I mine as well save future headaches and try new rock or something.

What do you use to scrub your rocks with ??

Basically you're letting the algae run out of nutrients as well as giving them no light to thrive. Its mostly the no light thing that gets rid of it, I found putting a handful of hermits in there as well got the job done as they had nothing else to eat but the algae.

Yeah it is a pain in the arse doing it for more than couple of months, I found that it depends on how much algae you have and the type of algae, browns seem to die off more quickly than say, green hair algae. For GHA it took a minimum of 6-8 weeks (this was on another batch of rock I "cooked" mostly I just didn't want to use it and was going to take it back to the store but never got around to it. It lived in a rubbermaid tote for about 8 months). At the time I cooked my rock I really really hated my tank and never spent more than a few minutes topping up the FW and feeding the fish. So really not looking so critically at the tank helped in my case :wink:

It certainly can't hurt just doing it short term although you won't see the full benefits. If nothing else it will at least leach out any gack into a different water source other than your tank. I doubt the algae will diminish much though, it can live for quite awhile without any light before it finally kicks off.