Issues bleaching rockwork.

[Dbigfish]

Story time. I have a 20 long stocked with a clownfish cleaner shrimp and 3 nerite snails. The tank had long since battled bubble algae for over a year. I would remove rocks individually to get large clusters off the rockwork. I used a length of tubing and would siphon out bubble algae in the tank to reduce the spreading of spore. I even tried a 3 month treatment of vibrant marine 1ml per week. The algae would stay down and then explode again. I finally had enough and since there were no corals in this system I decided I would bleach the rock work and start clean. Never had and buble algae in the sump so I left the ceramics in that way I wasn't worried about losing all my good bacteria.
So I removed the rocks put them in a 20 gallon container added 15 gallons of water 1 gallon of 100% no additives bleach and let it sit for a week outside. While the tank was empty I painstakingly removed every speck of buble algae for the substrate.
After the week I removed the rocks and sprayed each one down with a garden hose spending a few minutes on each rock.
I then took the rocks and placed them in a 5 gallon bucket and filled it with warm water and added 200ml of prime dechlorinator.
Satisfied I arranged the rockwork into the tank and within 10 minutes I found my clownfish upside-down on the overflow grate gasping.
I mixed some new saltwater and removed the clownfish and did a 70% ( all the water I had) water change on the tank added a bag of carbon and a bag of chemipure. Protien skimmer was pulling a full collection cup every couple hours of chemical smelling grey water. Clownfish is fine the rest didnt make it.
Not sure where I went wrong but obviously I did it very very wrong. Not worth the price of no bubble algae

 

[Sniperhank]

Well, for starters there should have been a much more intense rinsing of the rocks. I would have done heavy rinses for several days and air drying on the patio before going back into my system.
The other issue at hand here will be that you'd have to recycle the tank after this process. All the beneficial bacteria is dead and gone.

 

[bribo12]

Like hank said the rocks can leach bleach for a while if not aerated and cleaned properly afterwards. When I bleached mine after breaking my tanks down it took several fw soaks with prime and days for the bleach smell to go away.

 

[Dbigfish]

Luckily I think enough of the bacteria survived and I even see pods in the substrate. No rise in ammonia and a slightly increase in nitrate since the large water change. I'm going to do a few more large changes i was just holding off to see if the nitrate would increase.