I did get some writing done, amid all the chaos, Lynn’s been working on Joomla! through two serious personal crises and says she’s really close to testing; we got the bug fixed and I ousted 2 spammers from our midst. If your user name is ILoseWeightAskMe, you’re toast.

Fighting a real battle with algae in the pond, but it’s just summer. I have to clean the filter often to give the UV light enough flow-through (speed of water movement) to get the job done. When I take the filter out it’s 5 pounds heavier than when I put it back in.

And we are fighting another battle with the heating and the new light on the marine tank—but I think we have got it now. Setting the heater is an art form. No tank heater ever made has an accurate thermostat that I have ever found: you set it under what you want but higher than disaster, let the lights run, and then see if you’re still in the safety zone: the metal halide lamp we use in the marine tank is so intense you cannot safely look at it, and it is hot. I’ve been running a 13,000 and went back to a 10,000k, and it’s hotter, by considerable, so it screwed up our heat budget: it’s dangerous if corals get to 85 degrees, and Jane caught it at 84.3. We floated bags of ice in the sump, turned off the lights, cooled it down slowly, and then started up again. I think I had a heater going screwy, combined with the change in the lighting.