Just a quick reminder that as the weather gets colder it is a good time to do a general cleaning of your critical equipment. I got an emergency call last night that the return pump had failed on a mature tank. When I got over there the tank was pretty cold (since the heater is in the sump). Turns out that I was able to get the pump back up and running with a good cleaning. I advised that since the pump is rather old it be replaced with a new one and to keep the old one as a backup. However while I was there I took the time to inspect the rest of the equipment and found the skimmer not working properly due to small snails having gotten into the pump so I took that apart and cleaned it as well. In addition I inspected the reactor and gave that a good cleaning to improve the flow. So please take an hour or so and inspect, clean, repair or replace any vital equipment so that the unexpected hopefully doesn't happen. Also remember that with the colder weather and the heat now on evaporation occurs at a much faster rate.