Thoughts on hypo in this situation:

[btldreef]

My little Fu Manchu Lionfish is in my 14G at the moment to get him converted to frozen. The only other fish that have ever been with him are a few mollies here and there for him to eat, because in the beginning he was being a real a$$ about eating anything else, since this was all he was fed at the LFS.
Anyways, there's two pieces of live rock in the tank and a 1" sand bed. The sand is garbage, I don't care about it at all, it's solely there for him to chill out on and for aesthetic purposes, NOT for any help to the filtration in the tank. It was bagged live sand, so it's not really "live" anyways.
Well, he has ich, at least I'm fairly certain he does. I really don't feel like going through the hassle of remove all this sand. Honestly, in the middle of moving, I'm just not up for this.
Do you think removing the rock and running hypo will work with the sand still in there?

 

[tangs rule]

I would remove as much of it as you can, for the following reasons:
1. There are probably thousands of tiny pods/worms and critters in the sand that hypo will kill off, causing issues with maintaining PH and keeping ammonia/trites/trates down. This die off will happen over weeks, so it'll be an ongoing problem
2. If hypo fails to work by itself, and sometime later on during hypo - you have to combine some treatment methods and add a little copper or formalin, that sand & rock will cause alot of problems with absorbsion and make maintaining a stable daily ppm dosage of meds more difficult.
I'd just remove as much as possible, go the coffee cup and/or pvc routine for decorations, start hypo and hope for the best.....And since your moving - be DARN sure you don't cross-contaminate his tank with one of your nice big ones! All nets/buckets/powerheads/heaters/HYDROMETERS & PIPPETTS/ect. that touch/see any of the qtine tank water - be sure to stearlize in HOT tap for several minutes before using on another system.

 

[btldreef]

This tank is new, there are little to no pods in it, so that doesn't worry me. When I run hypo, I keep a TON of extra water on hand. I'm going to remove the rocks and place fake decorations and PVC in there though. There's only 10lbs or so in there now, so we're not talking about a crazy amount. I will NOT do copper or Formalin on this guy in this tank, if it comes to that, I'll be buying a different tank. The 14 does not get medications in it, ever. I'm just in the middle of moving and my QT tank is full with other things so I'm sort of stuck. I don't want to buy another tank in the middle of moving everything else. Honestly, I think this guy is going to die, he's refused to eat all week.