Here Myka, check out these pages: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-11/totm/index.php
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30974
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...hreadid=686757

*Somewhere* in there is some details about his self-squeegee'ing skimmer head, and some videos too IIRC. :)

Also, there are some skimmers which employ a spray head which spray down the skimmer neck in an effort to keep it clean. And, I think there are a couple commercial versions of self-cleaning skimmers (Deltec, I think), although they tend to be pretty high-end things.

Powder Blue died
 

I lost my Powder Blue Tang the other night. I only had him for 1 month. No explanation, but he was reduced to a clean skull less than 24 hours since last seeing him alive. I suppose this means that my clean up crew is very good at what they do!

I liked this fish a lot and expect that I'll try again.

I'm really sorry to hear that.

sorry to hear that. it really was a great fish.

Nitrates...
 

While my battle with hair algae is under control, it is very much still there. My one remaining sea hare continues to do a decent job. It could be that this is just where my tank ends up.

In an effort to figure out what is going on, I've purchased a Pinpoint nitrate monitor. $250 later, the official low-range reading on my tank is.... zero ppm

Yes, absolute zero. I then verified the test by diluting the 10ppm calibration fluid 50/50 with aquarium water and got a reading of 5 ppm.

So...what does this mean? I suppose it means that any available nitrate is being used by algae faster than I can detect it. I'm going to theorize that algae needs light to make use of the nitrate. That would suggest that I might be able to detect nitrates in the morning, before the lights come on.

More on this as experimenting continues.

the one remaining sea hare? what happened to the others?

Does photosynthesis actually require the intake of nitrogen? I ask because i dont really know, but i dont think it does... i think. I had always been under the impression that the raw materials for photosynthesis was CO2 and good old H2O. But for all i know nitrogen could be used up in an intermediate step somewhere... regardless, i would definitely be interested in whatever findings you come up with.

The hair algae made such a dramatic reduction that I returned one of my two sea hares to the LFS because I was worried it would starve.

As I understand it, photosynthesis reaction does not use Nitrogen directly, but Nitrogen might be involved. The product of the photosynthesis is glucose + Oxygen. My guess is that it is the conversion of that glucose into algae body where the algae absorbs Nitrate and Phosphate.

Nitrogen is a key component of chlorophyll...so the algae has to absorb N in order to make more chlorphyll.

...but what do I know...I just keep fish in a tank!

Nitrate update
 

After a 12 hour darkness period, (Just a normal night, except that I also turned off the refugium lighting) I still test absolute Zero ppm nitrate.

It is interesting...I refuse to believe that my heavily-fed tank, with it's large fish and hair algae...has no measurable nitrate.

So are you having increasing hair algea problem? or is it a constant onging issue that stays at about the same level?

What do you currently have in your Fuge for nutrient export?

J

It is difficult to say for sure if my hair algae is getting better or if it is just stable. It does seem to be manageable now, which it was NOT before the refugium and the sea hares got involved.

The refugium is filled with Chaeto, and has a 3" fine sand bed. It also had some sort of red algae, but that has begun to die back and the chaeto is taking over. The chaeto is growing such that I have to harvest once in about a month. For the size of my system, the refugium is not very large.