Best way to start over

[JohnK]

If you definately are going to do a complete restart, one suggestion - Before the tear down get at least the nitrate and phosphate test kits and check those levels.

Then, assuming you do get fairly high numbers, take some of the rock, blow/shake off as much detritis as possible and scrub off as much of the algae as you can, then put that rock in clean saltwater for a couple of days and then test that water for phosphate. If you find that the rocks are giving off a notable amount of phosphate then it is likely that the rocks have a good amount of phosphate bound to their surfaces.

If you do find that the rocks are leaching off phosphate into the water, and you are going to kill the rock anyway, you might want to look into/research doing an acid soak to dissolve off the bound up phosphate.

I'm not saying you should automatically do an acid soak, but I do suggest evaluating the rock and go from there. If there is a good amount of bound up phosphate on the rock and you put it back into clean water (even after a bleach soak) then the rock is going to be leaching off phosphate for quite sometime and that will set you up with a phosphate problem before you do anything at all.

Bleach soak = kill everything
Acid soak = dissolve the outermost layer of the rock, taking bound up phosphate with it.

 

[mchartier]

Just another option, seeing its a small amount of rock you could cook the rock (looks like a 29 gallon tank according to the other thread). Basically store the rock in a clean container with no light (Brute can), once a week do a water change, and dunk and swish the rocks in clean water before putting them back in the Brute. This will keep the bacteria alive so you do not have to recycle the tank. Also you are taking away one of the requirements of algae (light) so that will all die off to (hence the water changes). I did this when I had bryopsis and it worked out really well, its been almost 2 years and not a sign of it since.

 

[daves-reef]

+ 1 on cooking the rock. Google cooking live rock there is a lot of information on the process. Depending on how bad the algae and other nutrients are, you may need to do multiple water changes.
I just rebuilt my system and had all the rock in covered garbage cans for over two months running with a power head. Tank has been back up and running for about 3 months and happy with results so far. I should note that I did not have super bad algae problem per say. Had other nutrient issues though. What I did have for algae and other issues was cleaned up by the process.

 

[ReefKeeper1699]

I can tell you what I did when I had a bloom in my 29gal nano. I took a few half full buckets of salt water and mixed In a 1:5 ratio of hydrogen peroxide. I then took out all of my rocks and soaked them in the buckets for 20 mins. I tried to keep some of the coral sticking out. After this I dipped the rocks in another bucket of saltwater and pulled off all the dead algae. Tank has been clean since and I mean my tank was bad!!!

I liked my method because I didn't have to kill everything. It did wipe out my Coraline but that will come back quick. I still have beneficial bacteria in the rocks and all my corals are wide open again. Only ones effected were my candycanes.

Frogspawn, troad stools, Duncan's and mushrooms not even bothered.