Chaeto brown / dying

[tangerine3486]

Hey R2R,
I've searched the forum for my issue and the best I could find is possible low nutrient, however I feed very regularly. Any thoughts? Chaeto is brown, and breaking apart. I have chaeto bits all over my display and I hate that part too. I have a pretty solid light 25/30W LED flood light in reflector.

First it was growing well but still had some slimy issues/some decay, but there was growth.

But now the cheato break apart is very bad and a lot of brown coverage

Sump:

Help needed!

 

[bios]

Are you sure is not a stuff over your chaeto

 

[cbutkos]

What kind of food do you use? I've read that with higher quality frozen or fresh foods it's almost impossible to overfeed, whereas with pellets and flakes being more nutrient dense it's easier to overfeed and build up nutrients, my point being that even though you feed regularly you could still have low nutrients.

I would first try cutting all the dead stuff out and leave a small chunk of nice green chaeto like a golf ball or baseball size. Also if you could remove the egg crate cage and allow the chaeto to move that might hel,p, it may be burning from the proximity to the heat and light. Ideally the chaeto should tumble in the compartment allowing all sides to get access to the light and nutrients.

 

[terri_ann]

Are you rolling it or rotating it? Chaeto also uses iron. Have you tested iron? Also, how often do you harvest it?

 

[tangerine3486]

What do you mean something covering it?

I feed only pellet food, and 3x week zooplan by 2little fishes for my hungry hungry acans.

I do not tumble, but I do agitate twice a week to make sure there is not a bunch of nasty buildup, which causes a significant breakaway. I have havested once in the past two months, and not much. Just stuff that was spilling over.

I do not test for iron. (no test kit, but could aquire)

So kill my makeshift media basket in favor of a tumbling/rolling chaeto section? Just move purigen/chemipure elite to under the filter sock?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

test your no3 and Po4. also you just need flow through the chato, it doesn't "need" to tumble. also low flow, low nutrints and high light aren't good for coral and plants.

 

[tangerine3486]

right now all the flow through the sump passes up through the chaeto.

po4 is ~10ppm

 

[FragCityCorals]

Looks fine to me. Nothing needs to be done lol.

 

[Nick92515]

Looks fine to me. Nothing needs to be done lol.

One week on the forum makes the expert..

Hard to tell though. Do you test for phos? Also could it be detritus buildup?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

right now all the flow through the sump passes up through the chaeto.

po4 is ~10ppm

thats interesting. what are your nitrates at. also what wattage color and type of bulb you have. with high nutrints like that and pretty much any type of light Id expect to see algae growing on most of the stuff in the sump. your looks pretty clean.

 

[Nick92515]

Po4 is at 10ppm?, what test are you using, something tells me that may not be accurate by your sump.

 

[Reef man 89]

One week on the forum makes the expert..

Hard to tell though. Do you test for phos? Also could it be detritus buildup?

Hahahaha I love it. I wonder if it's being burnt from the light?

 

[cbutkos]

What do you mean something covering it?

I feed only pellet food, and 3x week zooplan by 2little fishes for my hungry hungry acans.

I do not tumble, but I do agitate twice a week to make sure there is not a bunch of nasty buildup, which causes a significant breakaway. I have havested once in the past two months, and not much. Just stuff that was spilling over.

I do not test for iron. (no test kit, but could aquire)

So kill my makeshift media basket in favor of a tumbling/rolling chaeto section? Just move purigen/chemipure elite to under the filter sock?

You don't have to take out the media basket if you don't want, it's hard to see from the pictures but it looks like maybe you could move the media down a little or over to give the chaeto more room. My money is on the chaeto getting burnt by the light. You could still keep it in the basket to try to minimize the broken bits getting lost, the chaeto doesn't have to tumble especially if you rotate it every once the in a while.

Cut out the dead, give it a little more room and wait a week, see what it does. If it doesn't do well we'll move on to another.

 

[nervousmonkey]

Is the chaeto brittle? If it is slimy, that's just bacteria coating that consume the polysaccharides (sugars) that the chaeto produces. that's good for your system. If it is brittle, that can be a sign of boron deficiency, which some artificial salt mixes actually have. there's an easy remedy for boron deficiency though, but it's better to test it with a salifert boron test. if 4.4 ppm, that's close to NSW, if lower you need boron. Brittle chaeto is a great indicator of that. You can test with salifert or send out a Triton test to see what your water is lacking that is causing chaeto to turn brittle and break apart. That can be caused by low nutrients as well, but get those tested too to make sure. We don't know enough yet about the biochemistry of our systems to fully understand all the small details that occur, and by my telling you that nitrates and phosphates are the only measurable things to check your system health with, I would be seriously doing you a disservice. I don't know what's happening, but I can tell you what I have experienced... BTW, what salt mix are you using? what corals and are they growing quickly? Coral skeletons are one of the boron sinks in our systems, so that could be a causative factor, but like I said, there are a lot of things that could be happening...

 

[FragCityCorals]

One week on the forum makes the expert..

Hard to tell though. Do you test for phos? Also could it be detritus buildup?

Right and apparently with your 1 year of experience, your still not able to read the post directly above yours that answers your question.. Nice job spamming............

 

[tankstudy]

Maybe try a different light. I had issues with chaeto turning brown/white and breaking up with the IM refugium light but the fragments that broke off in to the Main Display were doing well under the Radions.

 

[terri_ann]

Are you "sure" that your Led Flood Light "in a reflector" is the lighting solution for you? I use a LED Flood Light from HD/Menards but I don't have it in a reflector. The reflector is self-contained. My chaeto has grown for well over a year without issues. I do not tumble mine but rotate it regularly. Good luck.

 

[terri_ann]

Oh, forgot. When you harvest the chaeto, it removes nutrients. You might want to harvest more often. Other reefers may be looking for some [emoji6]

 

[R_C]

From my experience. The same thing was happening to me and posted the same question here. I ended up figuring out that it was low nutrients. I too feed heavy and I do almost every day. At first I was running GFO, biopellets and carbon. I decided to remove the GFO and my chaeto started growing again. It was good until I bought a bigger skimmer and then again it started to die.
In conclusion take into consideration your skimmer, biopellets (if you are running some), GFO and carbon. Remove one or a little at a time and check your progress.

Hope that helps!