Algae Reactor - chaeto melt

[Letterkenny]

I’m a couple weeks into my new tank and am running a Tunze algae reactor that I seeded with chaeto from algae barn. I compressed the ball down about a week ago since it wasn’t spinning in the reactor and since then I have got it to spin. However, I checked it today and it seems to be dying off. The ball seems quite smaller and not staying in its ball with many strands going through the sump into the DT. Any ideas?

I have been having about 7.5ppm nitrates (skimmer has been pulling out a lot of crap) but haven’t had phosphates until I did a reefroids feeding then I registered 0.04ppm. I also noticed some muck in the chaeto when I pulled it from the reactor so I assume it has nutrients to grow.

 

[HairyGary]

I’m a couple weeks into my new tank and am running a Tunze algae reactor that I seeded with chaeto from algae barn. I compressed the ball down about a week ago since it wasn’t spinning in the reactor and since then I have got it to spin. However, I checked it today and it seems to be dying off. The ball seems quite smaller and not staying in its ball with many strands going through the sump into the DT. Any ideas?

I have been having about 7.5ppm nitrates (skimmer has been pulling out a lot of crap) but haven’t had phosphates until I did a reefroids feeding then I registered 0.04ppm. I also noticed some muck in the chaeto when I pulled it from the reactor so I assume it has nutrients to grow.

I would shut off the reactor. Your chaeto does not have enough nutrients to live. Nitrates at 7.5 is a good level and let PO4 climb some from 0.

 

[Letterkenny]

I would shut off the reactor. Your chaeto does not have enough nutrients to live. Nitrates at 7.5 is a good level and let PO4 climb some from 0.

I’ll test PO4 again but it was at .04 as of Sunday.

 

[HairyGary]

That's a good spot. You tank is basically a newborn. I would just let your skimmer do the work at this point. I had an algae reactor once on established tank and I still had to dose nitrates even though I had nitrates in the tank. They can be finicky but like I mentioned, your tank is really new, and it needs time to mature.