Tank overrun by majano

I'm not sure if this question was aimed at me but I currently have cc in my tank and dont plan on rinsing it or anything like that. If I were to take it out, I would go with sand in the future.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean that you should buy a new tank but if it was me, I'd sell my fish or find somebody to hold them for me, empty the tank and clean the hell out of it and start over with dead rock and sand. If it was warmer out, you could do a rock/diluted bleach soak outside to sterilize your rock rather than buying new. The bleach soaking method was posted here a few years back by Otty if you want to look it up.

 

No need to apologize. I know thats not what you meant. I'm going to wait until summer, take my tank outside, and scrub it until its new. I'll reference the Otty thread at that time and just do more frequent water changes (5 gals per week) until then, to battle my algae issues. Thank you everyone for your help.

 

One more quick question, I think I figured out what Corailline meant, she was referring to how to get out all of the old sand - not rinse to reuse...you keep referring to cc - what is that? A type of sand?

 

CC is crushed coral, another type of substrate.

 

I just finished my re-start for the same reason. My fish are back in, and everything is doing fine so far.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/total-tank-re-start-after-4-years-142680.html

 

Just read your thread...good luck with the re-established tank!

 

Now that its warm outside, I am finally able to do a complete breakdown/rebuild of my tank. I ordered 30lbs of new dry rock from BRS and it will be here tomorrow. I will cycle the dry rock in my little 12gal tank for a couple weeks, move fish to that, then breakdown/clean the 29gal that I'm rebuilding.

Here is my question...what is the most effective way to clean & sterilize my 29gal biocube? I want absolutely no chance of anything living through this cleaning. Should I use a certain ratio of water:bleach mixture, or something else? I'm going to buy some kind of long-handled brush for scraping all of the majano and other stuff out of the back chambers, because I can't fit my arms in there too well. Detailed instructions would be greatly appreciated, because I have no experience sanitizing tanks