I've used both. As well as many other products that have come, gone and sit gathering dust on the shelf. The Ultralife product is every bit as effective, but is less volatile. With Chemiclean you MUST do a 20% water change (or greater) within 48 hours of treatment. With Ultralife, it's recommended but your tank won't crash if you don't. I have used the Ultralife product on large tanks, small tanks and with sensitive creatures like Tridacnid clams and finicky SPS with no repercussions.
I will reiterate that *any* chemical 'fix' should be a last resort after all the causes or potential causes have been identified and remedied. Otherwise you will just keep repeating the same thing over and over without solving the problem.
The snail is moving it. It's either pushing it off someplace else or it's becoming suspended in the water column and will settle elsewhere. Nothing eats cyano. Which brings me to something I omitted to mention before - higher flow tends to prevent it from settling, so if you see it accumulating in a particular spot, change up the flow pattern and it will help prevent it from accumulating. Flow alone, is not a cure, however.
The water changes will help export the nutrients that are feeding it so that's good. Shorter photoperiod makes for less time for it to grow, which is also good.
If you look closely, there is likely little, to none, visible, when your lights first come on. By the time your photoperiod is nearly over, it will be at its most dense. When the lights go off, it dies back, and during the lit period, it regrows. The best time for manual removal is at the end of your photoperiod when it's thickest, then you can remove more if it in a shorter time.
It would be a good idea to get a phosphate test kit (I am partical to Seachem - most are good but avoid API, you might as well flush your money down the toilet). Keep an eye on that. 10 PPM isn't horrible, but it's higher than it should be, and there is likely more present, but being bound up by algae and cyano. Still - given the water quality issues you were having just 4 weeks ago, that's a lot better. Also, with the recycled rock you had, if it had become a nutrient sink, there still may be phosphates leaching out. Without a baseline test you won't know what it was to begin with but starting to test now and going forward, the data will be helpful.
Trust the glass thermometer. The sticker is only good for telling the temperature on the outside of the glass. They happen to agree now, but my $1 says that unless you keep your house at 78 in the winter, as the cooler weather sets in, that sticker will make you think the tank is cold.
Good - carry on with that.
I guess it depends on what/whom you consider definitive. I threw in my 2 cents... based on direct experience.
Everybody wants to view their tank. I wouldn't say it was 'insane' - more like a little longer than it needed to be. Happens all the time. If nobody is home during the day, you can also divide your total photoperiod in 2, so you can have light in the morning, and in the evening (for example) if that is when you're home to observe. Plenty of folks do that and it works, the creatures grow accustomed to it and during the day they aren't in the dark when there's ambient room light.
As for the skimmer. AVOID a SeaClone, as tempting as it might be. That's another case of you might as well just flush the money down the toilet. It can be tricky to get a skimmer that isn't too big for a 10 but if you do manage to get something like a Reef Octopus HOB, it will easily go with you up to a 40 gallon, so you only have to spend good money, one time. Once you go larger than that, your best bet would be to go with a reef-ready tank with a sump, so that would necessitate a larger skimmer anyway, either in-sump or in-line. So with your existing setup, a good HOB would be a one-time purchase with room to grow later on.
Jenn
