I had tried going a day without the lights, but I have some suffering RBTAs in there at the momebt (hot pink instead of read... been like that for months) and I decided against other things suffering.
I'm doing the vodka dose thing according to a "Reefkeeping" article. I am no where near pushing the limit of dose and am maintaining a conservative vodka dose. From what I've read, the vodka simply acts as a source of carbon for bacteria that could conceivably process more N and P, but lack the C to do so. I haven't noticed any ill effects so I'll maintain current dosage.
I manually picked out ALOT of hair algae, and I'm trying to be smart about the algae problem, by solving the problem rather than masking the symptoms.
A LFS guy mentioned that "flake food is so highly processed that once it hits the water and goes uneatern, it's basically ready to enter the water column as dissolved organics, but whole foods like frozen mysis, if not eaten will stick around for a while and be eaten by scavenger" so I'm thinking that is helping me out.
Also, I had chaeto in my sump, but I had it in a chamber with low light, I've moved it to a higher light area so taht it can consume more nutrients.
Also, I'm cleaning my skimmer more than once a month now...basically, I know that a neglected tank is an ugly tank, and an ugly tank soon becomes a neglected tank...so my approach is to be more proactive about it.
V