Resetting a tank, can I save anything?

[Hardboiled]

Hi folks,

I have a 35g (43g total) aquarium that has gone poorly. While I had a good 3 year run, things started crashing 4-5 months ago and after many ups and downs, has landed in a bad place. All corals are dead sadly, but fish are fine fortunately. Aiptasia is covering the majority of surfaces now as I stopped pushing it back. I've been through dyno, cyano, red slime, multiple hair algae's, one thing just leads to the next. While I could continue to battle for educational purposes, learning to control this and that, I have decided the time investment and money are better spent on a reset. I had a couple questions about what I can save without risking any contamination of my current issues.

The fish will be moved to a temporary tank where I can monitor them for 4 weeks or so while I reset.
The rock flow and anenomes, I assume I can bring them over as well? There is no other sea life I would bring over.

• I have MarinePure blocks and balls in the sump. Can I reset those somehow? Soak for a week in pure vinegar? Or do they run the risk of bringing over nuisance algae or other?
• I have kalkwasser buildup on the gear in the sump and various areas of the sump walls. I plan to put all the gear (pumps, heat, skimmer, etc..) in the sump and fill with vinegar for a multi day bath, then scrub everything with warm water to remove the buildup. Is there a better plan? Will the vinegar hurt the seals on the tank glass?
• Likewise, all of those pump heads are covered in various nuisance algae or aptasia, will the vinegar bath also kill anything that could come over to the new tank?
• I will then use new sand and rock for a fresh start on those components.
• The tank will be cycled and fish added. That will be it for a while (months) so I can monitor any nuisance issues that somehow made it over.

Thanks for any advice on this.

 

[Tired]

Strong enough vinegar will kill just about anything. I don't know if it will hurt the silicone, but I would think probably not.

Rock flower anemones (I assume that's what you meant) shouldn't bring anything over. However, new frags you add will pretty much inevitably introduce pest algae. As can water from other systems, and, heck, pretty sure you can get cyano out of the air. (Not entirely joking.)

The best way you can avoid nuisance issues is to get some really good ocean rock. Get it from a place that doesn't have aiptasia. It's impossible to avoid introducing pest algae to your tank, and the absolute best way to keep it from doing anything, aside from keeping nutrients up (yes, up, low nutrients starves everything but the pests), is to have really established rock. If it's already covered in 10 types of algae fighting each other for space, hair algae and whatnot has nowhere to grow.
Expect a bit of an algae surge at first, even really good live rock gets an ugly stage sometimes. A reasonable cleanup crew, reasonable nutrient levels, and some time will let it all settle back out.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Unless you followed incredibly strict (and costly) protocols, contamination's going to be inherent regardless of what you do.

For the marine pure blocks and balls, if you stick them in a container filled with saltwater somewhere dark, they'll be fine and you'll still have a lively colony of bacteria at the end of it (yay skipping cycles!). If the blocks and balls had stuff on them (aiptasia, etc.), best to just sterilize using hydrogen peroxide. Vinegar could dissolve the blocks/balls. And bleach is simply too deadly in the case of porous materials (it's hard to get it out of them).

Instead of vinegar, try citric acid! There's a good writeup somewhere in the chemistry forum, but the tl;dr is that vinegar can ruin pumps, while citric acid can't. Neither acetic(vinegar) nor citric acid should affect the seals of the tank. If it does, then it's probably time to just reseal the tank...

Said acid bath will kill off all algae and pests, since you'll be doing it in freshwater. Scrub and rinse thoroughly, and it'll be fine.

You can also just buy macroalgae. It's pretty aesthetically pleasing, and only a drawback if you have ravenous herbivorous fish like tangs which will eat it all anyways.