[Reefmack]

Laurent: Yes - as Rue said - a featherduster - good to see you finding life on the rock! Good to hear that directing the flow upwards from one of the powerheads helped break up the surface film.

On that additional back fan - have you popped out that piece of plastic in the hood (behind the skimmer compartment) meant for the chiller access? If not, that should improve the cooling since the hot air will have a place to exit.

I think using the turkey blaster frequently for a while to get that dead & decaying stuff from the rock out of the tank will go a long way to get your cycle completed. Be sure to clean the white pad frequently too - the buildup of crap blown off the rock will generate a lot of nitrates too. On the good side, having all those nitrates indicates that you have the right bacteria types working for you now.

When you pull the hood, you may as well pull the pumps too and remove the bio-media and carbon (if you have them in) and rinse them out in some siphoned tank water - that'll help clean out any nitrate generating gunk that may have built up on those. Use tank water, not tap water, so you don't kill any of the good bacteria you want to keep. If you haven't been doing any water changes it might be a good idea to start a change of about 10% at least weekly to get the nitrate level reduced.

Looks like the timer replacement will be a hassle - just take your time and based on the feedback I got earlier on what's involved in replacing the fans be sure not to strip (or lose) any of the plastic screws, etc.

Rue - I didn't realize you were on dial-up. That does make things like the pics take a while to load. I usually try to reduce the file size on my pictures to 640x480 or whatever before I upload them to photobucket, so that they load faster in the threads.