Tank Maintenance

We did quite a bit of tank maintenance, today.  The skimmer was emptied out, which is usually done every two weeks.  I then washed all the filter socks, and put a clean one in place afterwards.  I then cleaned off all the salt creep that formed on the lights, as it was greatly impeding the light supplementation.  As well, I cleaned off all the algae from the glass.  

Then, I linked together the return pump and the bio pellet pump, so they can be shut on/off concurrently by remote control, whenever I need to feed the tank.

Perhaps the biggest chore was cleaning my Tunze powerheads, which was long overdue.  They had become so encrusted with coraline algae that they were barely pushing any water.  This is a big issue, considering that the two of them alone are not sufficient enough for my tank, when they are working at 100%.  Here is an image of it before the cleaning:

After soaking for a few hours in a 50/50 solution of vinegar and boiling water, combined with a little bit of elbow grease, the result was the following:

To prevent the Tunze pumps from clogging so heavily again, I will try and clean them once a month.  As well, I will be getting Vortech MP40's in the near future to replace these pumps.