Should I remove my shallow sand bed - issues in tank

[corpusse]

Only another week to go until the fish go back.

I removed some rock. Interestingly the rock itself has some cyano growing on it in a 10g tank with one tiny powerhead. I have continued to dose nopox as if nitrates are greater than 10 although more likely they are 5-10ppm these days. Phosphates tested at 0.03 yesterday which is great but still a tiny bit of cyano on the sandbed. The I have removed some of the sand cleaning the tank weekly or twice a week. Going to try just a few more big water changes then the fish go back.

Looking forward instead of or in additon to bio pellets I am reluctantly going to start replacing my live rock. I'll pick up say 50-75lbs of dry pukani and then cycle / cure it separate and then just start replacing the rock. I'll try and get rid of the clove polyp infested rocks as well as the rocks that grow algae on them however many have corals encrusted. I may have to just break them up and if I lose a few pieces so be it. I know they say nitrates cannot bind to rocks but I really have a hard time beliving that these days. I've changed so much water. removed so much from my skimmer and only fed the tank once in 70 days yet I still have both nitrates and phosphates. They are now at basically acceptable levels but thats without feeding.