Cheato completely died off

[LilysDad]

Had my system for 4 months now and introduced cheato the 2nd month and was thriving. And I started to get algae in the refugium the past 2 weeks and killed all of my cheato.
How can I prevent this from happening again

temp 78.4
dkh 1.25
Calcium 435
Magnesium 1440
Ph 7.9
Nitrate 5.6
Pho4 0.05

 

[john92708]

Had my system for 4 months now and introduced cheato the 2nd month and was thriving. And I started to get algae in the refugium the past 2 weeks and killed all of my cheato.
How can I prevent this from happening again

temp 78.4
dkh 1.25
Calcium 435
Magnesium 1440
Ph 7.9
Nitrate 5.6
Pho4 0.05

same thing happened to me so I end up just growing GHA in a small chamber on the back of my AIO. works every well at keeping GHA and other algae out of the display

 

[Dburr1014]

I find cheato doesn't do well until the system is more mature. 4 months is kinda early yet.

 

[jda]

Chaeto can quickly deplete iron, which needs to be added via water changes or supplement. However, low iron usually stalls growth and does not cause death.

Did you use vibrant or some other chemical?

 

[REEFER-RICK]

What lighting are you using my never grew till I put in a grow lux bulb in after I had a big algae bloom and went total black out for 3 days seems fine now but not growing that fast ,my dragons growing like a weed kelnin is 7500

 

[karamreef117]

I find cheato doesn't do well until the system is more mature. 4 months is kinda early yet.

I agree on this as it just is too early to start getting that nasty stuff out of the water. Plus parameters seem pretty good if anything I would keep my eye out on those nitrates so they dont dip down too low.

But what I think is cleaning your cheato probably those low nitrates and phosphates.
different algae can strive under different parameters as well. so this could be why as well.

 

[ectoaesthetics]

I find cheato doesn't do well until the system is more mature. 4 months is kinda early yet.

Yup. Another in agreement with this.

You will need some decent levels of consistent nutrients before it will really thrive. Then start the lighting lower 75 ish par and ramp up from there. This at least has worked for me on several tanks. I have an absurd amount of chaeto in a fuge for a 4.5 gallon display. It is easy to strip nutrients or minerals out of the water in a tank as small as mine. I find that it will happily strip the tank of nutrients way faster than minerals. It would take a while to do that -from my experience.

in a tank this young -if it were me- and would focus on loading up biodiversity of the bio plaques. And worry about nutrient control at month 4+. Just my 2 cents