"Mark Henry" wrote in message
...
Thanks for all the pointers. It's slow going, but the tank is coming
clean. I've blown all the buildup off the rock and suctioned that out of
the tank, as well as scraped the sides down. I used a small fish net to
sift the cyano off the top layer of sand.

I did a 10g water change yesterday (it's a 65g tank) and will do another
10g today. Water parameters were whacked out yesterday morning, but are
more inline today with the replacement of media bags, cleaning of detrius
filters and addition of trace elements. Calcium is low, but I've added
some kalkwasser and will test again tomorrow.

All of the coral colonies are dead or nearly so. There's a couple button
polyps still left and one lonely mushroom, but that's it - a loss of about
$500. I hesitate to add any cleaup crew (shrimp or crabs) until the tank
settles bak in.

Thanks again for your help.

mark h

Myself I would try for at least one pretty large change
50% or so
It's not my clam
But you really want to dilute this water pretty seriously
It is going to be loaded with organics
and depleted of traces