Hey Don, thanks for checking in. I forgot about answering that post so I appreciate that!
You didn't mention the sordid history behind why it's called "Chinese Hand"
Oh well, too much to go into in a reef thread anyway.
Thanks for the tips on the xenia guys. I actually have some that is melting down in the tank and want to get that out. The biggest issue is that is is mostly lower in the tank at the bottom, so getting kalk paste to it is tough. On a side note, I have seen Sherman's sailfin taking bites out of it!
And Tom, I am glad I finally made a move on the sand. What I did was take the refugium offline anyways, so had there been something foul in it, it would never have made it into the main system. We turned off the fuge's flow, siphoned out the water, and then pulled the rock and sand out. The shop-vac finished it off. Then we put the bigger pieces of rock with macro back in.
BTW, we found an interesting shrimp in there which must have come in with the "peppermints" I have bought. It is larger than the average peppermint, orange in color, has small claws, but with spikey hair on them. It's in the display overflow for now, until I can figure out what to do with it. I have all along suspected that when I purchased a large quantity of peppermints, that I actually got some kind of look-alike shrimps, because they never touched the aiptasia.
Right now I am leaning heavily to zero sand in the system and planting a colorful wall-to-wall zoanthid carpet on the tank bottom.