I just scraped my tank with a razor blade. I had a scraper with a long handle and a metal blade but it did not work very well. Upon dapettit's advice at the Saturday meeting, I tried a single edge razor blade. That worked extremely well. I cleaned almost all of the pink off the sides and back and only got nibbled on twice. It looks much better.
Over the 4th, I am gonna do a water change and some other basic maintenance. I might begin removing the CC bed a little at a time. I figure if I remove about 4 cups of CC at a time, I just might be able to avoid cycling.