Got pics? Scale of the problem would be good to see. I understand exactly where you're coming from as I was in the same situation this winter, but I left my tank to a professional maintenance company. My tank is also in what I consider poor shape, but it sounds much, much milder than your issues. My first plan of attack while doing a 15% waterchange was to use a turkey baster to blast any detritus off the rocks and use gravel vacuum to clean the sand. I have a shallow sandbed...you can't just vacuum a deep sandbed out of nowhere like that. A couple days later I replaced the carbon with fresh stuff. A couple days after that I replaced the GFO with fresh stuff. A few days after that the tank was ready for its weekly 10% waterchange where I thoroughly cleaned the sand and rocks again. My tank perked up in a couple weeks.
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~ Mindy
SPS fanatic.
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