Taking down my tank tomorrow

[Billan]

I have finally made the hard decision to take down my tank . I have been battling with a major hair algae breakout and complete overtaking of bubble algae in my tank. The bubble algae was always an issue when it hitchhiked into my tank on a rock with a coral on it. The hair algae I have had since June. I have tried many suggestions to fix the problem but have decided to give up. My lack of time with work does not afford me the ability to devote time to my tank like I used to. My question is I am going to give the few fish that I have had over the life of my tank back to the LFS where I bought them. I have 70lbs of live rock in the tank. I am going to get rid of the base rock and the sand, but is there any thing I can do with the live rock. No one will want it because it is covered in hair algae and bubble algae. I am planning to do another tank in the next couple of years when my schedule settles down. Can I scrub the rock and let it "die" and use it for base rock in my next tank? Or should I just get rid of it? What corals I have left are softies that are attached to the same rocks that are covered in algae. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thank You.

 

[Anonymous]

I'd keep if I were you. You could store in buckets of saltwater. If kept in the dark for a while the algea will all die. Then you could try to keep the benefical bacteria and coraline alive by rigging some minimal materflow and some lighting.

Or you could just throw it in your yard and reuse a few years from now as base rock. It will quickly become live again once your new tank is seeded with some new rock.

Louey

 

[tstone]

I would keep the rock and maybe you could frag the softies off it and sell or give them to a fellow reefer

 

[ChrisIsBored]

DEFINATELY keep the rock if you plan on doing another tank down the road. I've got about 60-70 lbs. of old LR that's now dry (other than todays rain 8) ).

There's no point in speding that much more money on LR if you have all that base rock sitting there.