sooo about to just give up on my tank :(

[Gilraen Took]

Since I moved it and put up the post about having weird water parameters I haven't gotten rid of the algae in the thing. . . It's been covered in hair algae for a looong time now I've still been wondering what to do when we move next May, and I think I'm going to just downgrade the tank instead of trying to get it back in shape and then having to tear it apart and go through this again in 6 months or so(plus I have a mold outbreak behind my bed that I am worried will make me and the bird sick, and the only way to move the bed is to put it where the tanks are. . . Which means moving the tank again, and since that got me an algae outbreak the first time >.<) I found a build on RC for a 5.5 AIO system that looks amazing, and am thinking about doing that with mine instead of keeping it as is. I've got a 5 gallon mini-bow that I can use for it(really would rather have the 5.5 like he did, but since I already have a 5 mini-bow and can't seem to sell it even for cheap with all the parts, why not just use it, right?), get a 36 watt Coralife PC(should be plenty of light, right?) and use my 160 gph powerhead from my current tank on it. My montipora died(got knocked over again and I didn't realise it until it'd bleached out and it just never came back again) so all I've got is my zoas, one rock with rics, a small rock with GSP and a few LPS frags.

But what to do with the rock? All I really need is CLEAN rock to make the rock wall with(well, besides figuring out how to make the overflow area/return since I don't have a good way to drill the acrylic for the inside of it. Wonder if Home Depot or Lowe's will for me. . .) I'm going to take out anything from my 10 gallon that doesn't have coral growing on it and just keep up with the 10 trying to rid it of algae(I hope?) until then. (gonna try a different brand of distilled water, maybe that'll help. . .) How can I clean the rock though? Can I just(think I asked this here before) soak it in fresh(distilled) water until it isn't leeching ammonia anymore? That's really all I need, since it'll have to be dried out completely to make the rock wall and I don't really want to bother with cycling it after I make the wall and needing to re-cycle it when we move. I figer if that works, I can just get it to quit leeching and then not need to keep up two tanks and worry about less die-off when we leave, if that makes sense?

Is there some way to keep a lot of the life on it in my tank? I think I read of a way a long time ago about a way to get hitchhikers out of your rock and into a bucket so you can see what you do and don't want to keep to put back in the tank, but can't find that anymore. If I could get the critters(pods, worms and mini-stars) out into the tank somehow I'd really like that. Any ideas?

[OneDummHikk]

Take your 5 gallon tank and fill it about half full of salt water. Then, remove the rocks from your 10 to create the rockscape you would want in the 5 gallon tank. After you figure out what rocks you want to use in the 5, put them in a 5 gallon bucket with enough water to cover them. Place a powerhead in the bucket with them. Put a lid on it. Once a week, do a water change on the bucket. 100% water change. Swish the rocks around to get the die off off of them. When you stop seeing die off, repeat it a few more weeks. Then start setting your 5 gallon up. Until then, anything you remove from the 10 and put in the 5 gallon tank is just transferring the problem from one tank to another.

Bu, have you tried running phosban in your filter to see if you could get the algae under control?

And remember, a 5 gallon tank is going to be about 5 times as hard to maintain as a 10 gallon is. The smaller, the faster the parameters in them will spike and change.

[Gilraen Took]

I've been just doing extra water changes. It would be easier to move a smaller tank though, especially if I figure it out(I still think I just kicked up something when I moved it that hasn't gotten changed out yet) since I don't know how much space we'd have.

Problem with cycling the rock is that I need to smash it and have it completely out of water for at least a few days to make a rock/foam wall. So even if I cure it, I have to kill any life to dry it and re-cure it anyway. Doesn't make any sense to me to cycle something to kill it so I can have to cycle it again. Or to waste the salt curing it if I'm going to have another huge ammonia spike at least once no matter what I do with it.

[OneDummHikk]

Mix up 15 gallons of ASW. Fill the 5 half full. Take a 5 gallon bucket about half full of water and remove the rocks from your 10 that have corals on them. Swish them around in the 5 gallon bucket to get debris off of them. If there is any hair algae on them, scrape as much as possible off the rocks, rinse. When the water in the bucket gets too dirty, replace it. After you have all the rocks out with corals on them, rinse the rocks left in the 10 and place them in a container. After you have all the rocks rinsed out, siphon all the water out of the 10. If it has a sand bed, remove the sandbed. Clean the tank good. Leave it bare bottom and put the corals back in it, along with new ASW. Then put your power head where it blows at the bottom of the tank so that nothing can settle. Then, next trip to your LFS, get some phosphate pads. They aren't super but they do slowly remove some P from the water. Then start keeping up with water changes in the 10.

With just the rocks with corals on them in the 10, with no sandbed, you will be way ahead of the curve trying to get rid of the algae. Then, if you want to build a styrofoam/rock display for the 5, you can let the rocks from the 10 dry out na duse them without having to break down the 10.

That will give you from now until moving time to get the 5 setup and running. Just don't put any creatures in it until you are ready to move. That will let the new rockwork display cure and settle in. When you move, no matter what tank, it will go through a mini-cycle. Its part of the moving process. But, when you move, you could simply move the 5 with the corals and go from there.