[Todd L]

Thanks for the responses here!

I'll do that with the lighting William...thanks!

e_baer...as far as the parameters of the water, all of the levels have always been good, save for higher nitrates than I want. I took the advice of my LFS and have always used the test-strips. I use a tower filter for my water, and have never had issues. My nitrates now are sitting at about 10ppm. Still higher than optimal, but they've sat even higher until I built the small fuge(?) for the back of my tank...they used to be in the 30 range...and have sat that way for the entire almost 3 years I've had the tank. (I'm not doing coral anytime soon, so I'm not going to obsess about it just yet! lol) They're still testing in the *safe* range...

Anyway....I have to assume phosphates and such are removed through the filter I use....an ion-exchange resin tower? Again, never been an issue for 3 years.
The mechanics of my tank are listed on my post, but I use a modified Seaclone 100, and it's been doing an awesome job so far!
As far as fish....I have a pig of a Clarkii clown, a 6-line Wrasse, a scooter blenny, a skunk cleaner shrimp and a sea slug as well as an emerald crab, a small handful of hermies and about a dozen or so snails, including 4 large ceriths. That's it in a 40g, so I don't think the load is excessive...is it??

I feed them a mix of freeze-dried krill, a tiny amount of flake and some of the frozen types (mysis shrimp, omnivore and carnivore formulas) about 3 possibly 4 times a day, and try to limit it to what they eat in a few minutes. (not all of that is fed to them at the same time....just a sample of overall what they eat). I could feed the clown 15 times a day and I swear he'd gobble every time! what a glutton!!

Anyway...thats about it...
I have a cannister filter I have placed LR rubble in per anorther expert opinion here, kept the carbon section and rinse out the mechanical filtration at least every two weeks.

Scratching my head here! The tank has never needed more than an ocassional cleaning of the glass.....it just seems to coincide with te upgrade to the Nova Extreme's this algae has become more noticeable. I just rinsed out the filter and am going to wait until tomorrow to perhaps bring a sample down to my LFS for a more detailed testing to see what they can see.

Thanks for your thoughts here!