Major refugium issues-help please!

I've been having cyno issues for quit some time in my fuge. Not a real biggy until now as I'm trying to maintain a decent pod population and my cheato won't grow.
I messed it up a long time ago by adding a heavy dose of salt trying to raise my salinity. Stupid move I know. Wound up killing everything off. Anyways....it hasn't been right since.
Today I took my intake pump off to clean it, fuge had no flow for a couple of hours at the most. Scraped some cyno off the fuge walls too. Well just now 2:30am I take a look see and all the cyno is dead, along with a bunch of amphipods and very inactive bristle worms. WTH?
Question is...do I tear it down, completely clean it out and add new sand and LR/cheato. Something just isn't right with it. I'm afraid it's going to start affecting my DT.

I do have a lil canister filter hooked up an running some carbon in the DT/ChemiPure elite, just in case.

 

Mine goes through stretches of no growth too. If there aren't nutrients, it won't grow. Are you sure you're seeing dead pods or their shells. They molt 12 times or so in their life cycle. Cyano is common in a fuge.

 

A ton of dead amphipods?? I've had a similar experience happen a few times with mine when I cleaned it out, things seemed to rebound just fine in a few days. I'd say relax, its just getting its new bearings, IMO

 

Did you stir up the sand in the fuge? I have a bit of cyano in mine too which has not spread to the DT. My Cheato seems to grow in cycles too. Im sure its a nutrient issue.

 

I'm sure of the dead pods-haven't stirred the sand bed and now looking this a.m. all the pineapple sponge seems to have expired as well, it is completely gone. This I will attribute to coming into contact with air while I was cleaning the pump.

Problem with this type of HOB fuge, is any time I turn off the intake pump the water level drops in the fuge, almost totally emptying it. Which happened yesterday for several hours.

Do you not think I should at least vacuum out the dead stuff?

 

I think its always a good idea to remove dead stuff. Less ammonia issues to deal with. How deep is your sand bed in the refugium? Is it possible that it is leaking something out? I assume having a deep sanded in the refugium can cause some of the same issues that they do in display tanks. What is your flow like through the refugium? Other than these things I'm kinda stumped, but I'm also not anything close to an expert!!!

 

Sand bed, which is actually pink aragonite, is about 2" Got good flow, using an mj400.

I think I killed a lot yesterday by having no flow for several hours

 

my huge has almost no flow and my pods thrive. What kind of huge do you have that it almost empties out when ya turn the pump off? I'd look at problem solving that issue

 

She has has an HOB type. The water level will normalize with the tank when the pump goes off.

 

Yeah, but I have a hob CPR huge and I only lose about 2 inches out of mine when the pump gets unplugged, just thinking maybe a mod would be in order to prevent it from emptying that much of the fuge out to prevent problems from it emptying mostly out.