GHA choking cheato in refugium

Tray333 · Sep 25, 2017

I am sure this topic has been covered over and over, but I still want to ask for advice. I am still new to the hobby and just want to make sure i am not screwing up. I have a new tank, cycled for about 3 month now. Started with a lot of dry rock and about 6 fish doing well. I set up the refugium with a big clump of cheato with a kessile h380 beaming on all the time. First I had a large outbreak of gha in display at the top close to the lights. Added cuc, and Sea hare in display, along with me taking out as much as I could manually, it seemed to stop growing in display. However, my refugium is full of gha now. It looks like it is choking the cheato out. It's completely covered , and looks like a stagnant cow pasture pond from the top. Sometimes I see air bubbles on top of it. So my question is should I remove it , and the cheato and try to start over?

SashimiTurtle · Sep 25, 2017

Remove the GHA and save as much chaeto that isn't covered. Reduce your H380 to 12 hours. 24 will burn up the chaeto, especially with that monster of a fugue light.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 25, 2017

In my case, where I had the same experience when I first set up a refugium, dosing iron helped chaeto relative to hair algae. Someone suggested it to me long ago and it worked.

Tray333 · Sep 25, 2017

Randy,
I could only find the 65 mg tablets, is that what you used for the recipe you recommend?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Sep 26, 2017

This is what I used:

http://www.cvs.com/drug/fergon/oral-tablet/27mg

Take 1 tablet and dissolve in 100 mL RO/DI (overnight soak). Let the solids settle out and use the liquid. Then I dose about 1-5 mL to my 200 gallons (dose is not critical) occasionally.