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[MedicineMan]

I have a 40 gallon breeder, 400 watt MH with 2 X 96 watt PCs. There is an "aftermarket" overflow built into the tank. The guy I bought the tank from used a sponge over the overflow pipe. Since his tank looked so good, I've left it on for over 13 months, cleaning it a couple of times a week to weekly.
I started getting a hair algae outbreak but wasn't too concerned as that provided some good breeding grounds for copepods for my mandarin. Since then, the mandarin died in a freak powerhead accident [img]images/smiles/icon_sad.gif[/img] and the hair algae had taken to growing long, stringy, brown stuff with bubbles in it.
I tried removing as much as possible manually and with a 60 cc catheter syringe to no avail. Finally, in desperation, I took off the sponge, wondering whether it had colonized with denitrifying bacteria and was producing lots of nitrate.
Three days later, the brown slimy stuff is mostly gone and the hair algae seems to be receding. Why didn't I listen to you guys in the first place regarding mechanical filtration?? [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]