Chaeto issue

Brew12 · Sep 9, 2017

I had been having problems with nutrient control and wanted to use a fuge with chaeto to help stabilize things. To give myself the best chance at success I got a Kessil H380. For a few days the chaeto was growing nicely and nutrients stabilized quickly. Life is good, right?

Well, it is, but there was a problem. I was changing a filter sock yesterday and noticed my chaeto had stopped growing and was breaking apart. Along the walls and bottom of my fuge was a dense green algae mat. I scraped it out and it looked just like what you would expect to see from a turf scrubber. I'm guessing it had out competed my chaeto.

I really don't mind too much since the results in the DT are fantastic, but the maintenance will be harder compared to harvesting some chaeto every few weeks. Any thoughts on how to get the chaeto to be dominant?

saltyfilmfolks · Sep 9, 2017

Sounds like you mat have scorched the Chato.

Did you test the intensity?

Brew12 · Sep 9, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
Sounds like you mat have scorched the Chato.

Did you test the intensity?

No, but it isn't adjustable, either. And I already have it mounted as high as it will go over my sump. I'll take my PAR meter to it later.

RamsReef · Sep 13, 2017

Lol this is what happened to me in my cheato reactor! I thought it was from dosing algeafix and other reasons. Haha oh @Brew12 I love you, seems our fates our linked.

Thanks @saltyfilmfolks

I've decided to put some cross stitch matting in my reactor and turn it from a cheato into a scrubber lol.

Ashish Patel · Sep 13, 2017

I recently had my first cyano outbreak. Caught me by surprised but it happened when I left for a weekend and added few more rotations on my auto feeder. Long story short phosphates jumped from 0.04 to 0.90. The Cheato turned brown and slimedup. I made a few water changes and wrongly diagnosed the problem to having the 24-7 lighting cycle on the chaeto causing release in po. 1 week later and still having cyano and the pellets dropping out of control I was home last Saturday to my horror in seeing just how many pellets where being dropped. Discontinued auto feeder, removed a lot sand and stirred it. Increased the flow by 30%, removed slime and increased skimming height, increased flow in the refugium and few days later no cyano

4FordFamily · Sep 13, 2017

I couldn't keep chaeto anymore after massively overskimming, I imagine other nutrient export methods would yield the same result. Chaeto worked really well but no matter the light I couldn't get it to keep in my tank anymore. I didn't change anything other than overskimming.

To be honest, chaeto performed just as well!