Moving a Burnt-out Reef! Need Advanced Help and Opinions Pls!

[taillonjohn]

I've had my reef for the last 3 years, and a fish only salt tank for 2 years before that. I moved my reef 2 years ago, so I know how to do this, thats not my question.

Some crazy mid-life B/S happaned to me this year, and I have totally neglected my tank for the last 6 months, except for occassional feeding and topping off. Miracuously, nothing has died yet

Current state of my 29 G reef is that it is completely overrun with green bubble algae, green hair algae, whiplash algae, cyano, and planeria flatworms. The skimmer was turned off 6 months ago. The carbon in my canister filter has not been changed in 6 months, no machines have been cleaned in 6 months, and of course no water changes. My lightbuld is 9 months old. the sand is 5 years old...

The scenario is that I'm moving at the end of October. I have 30 lbs of DIY rock in various stages of curing.... about 12 lbs in the tiolet that will be ready next month. the rest need to go into the water to start water-curing, so about 6 months.

I see that my options might be like this:
1) quit reefing for now. pack it up when I move
2) use the move as apportunity to re-vitalise the tank. use my DIY rock and buy some new LR, while I spend the next year cooking my current live rock. I would have to replace my 5 year old sand.

I think I would completely kill my bio-filter with option # 2.

Anyway, I love reefing, and I love the knowledge I have gained over the past few years, I just dont know if I can motivate myself to try to bring the tank back to life, cause I'm sure the move will kill everything. besides that, its a lot of work and money that I dont want to invest right now.

Can a burnt out reefer be re-motivated?

anyway, sorry for the long post, but I really do appreaciate any feedback.

[Airwolf75]

You can easily turn any tank around if you want to. But if you are not totally in to it, then it won't work, so just sell off everything to a better home.

[coralnut99]

My gut tells me you should choose door #1.

Sometimes a totally fresh start is the best thing. From your description, and the fact that you have a move coming up, makes me think that cooking the rock would be a bigger pita than it's worth. I think your sandbed wouldn't be worth much to you in any scenario, and wouldn't cost a bundle to replace.

Just my 2 bits, and best of luck.

[Chihuahua6]

You can do option 2 but add some new live rock that's cured, maybe from a fellow reefer's tank, and save some sand to seed a new sand bed. This way you will have some biological activity going on in the new tank. This way you can move and start fresh.

This depends on whether or not you're ready to start over. You may feel better starting over doing what you used to enjoy or you may not want to be bothered until you sort out other things in your life. I totally know where you're coming from here.