Giving up on Cheato

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BRS
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Wow!! So many solutions to work through. I'm taking this all in and will work slowly to try and solve the problem. I have extra dosing heads so perhaps I'll just set up dosing for the Cheto Gro. Sounds reasonable to me. Wish all the YouTube video's on Cheato had mentioned the possibility of using a fertilizer or iron dosing to keep cheato growing. Seems like only half the story is generally being told. I'm still learning and thank all of you for your ideas and input.
Merv
 
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Wow!! So many solutions to work through. I'm taking this all in and will work slowly to try and solve the problem. I have extra dosing heads so perhaps I'll just set up dosing for the Cheto Gro. Sounds reasonable to me. Wish all the YouTube video's on Cheato had mentioned the possibility of using a fertilizer or iron dosing to keep cheato growing. Seems like only half the story is generally being told. I'm still learning and thank all of you for your ideas and input.
 
Just make sure you pic one avenue at a time.

Work through the course of it and see what happens.

Don't try more than one thing at once or give up after a short while when you don't see results. Ping Ponging is the worst thing you can do.

And, as always, HAVE FUN!
 
Deltec
If you are having to add nutrients is that not defeating the whole purpose of the algae anyways? If your tank is fine without it doesn’t that mean you don’t need it? Keep it simple. I tossed my macro almost a year ago. Too much of a PITA, for most it only makes up for lack of adequate skimming. I know there are other benefits but no way in hell would I add fertilizer to a tank to grow a ball of green string.
 
Not actually adding nutrients per se. Targeted ferts that give the chaeto fuel to consume the nutrients in the tank. Think of it like your stomach acid. If you had none, you wouldn't be able to digest your intake and you would die. Ferts do the same thing. Sort of.
 
Softhammer said:
If you are having to add nutrients is that not defeating the whole purpose of the algae anyways? If you tank is fine without it doesn’t that mean you don’t need it? Keep it simple. I tossed my macro almost a year ago. Too much of a PITA, for most it only makes up for lack of adequate skimming. I know there are other benefits but no way in hell would I add fertilizer to a tank to grow a ball of green string.
Click to expand...
I like your thoughts on this. I'm taking this real slow. There is only dieing cheato in my sump right now and I'm getting rid of it. Next I'm going to ween my tank off NoPox leaving only the ceramic blocks and live rock. If I don't see any adverse effects then I may do as you and never put cheato back in the sump but I'm looking at everything. Thanks
 
All these additive aren’t necessary. I use none and my 180 is wall to wall sps. Plus tanks can’t crash if you don’t screw with them. Slow and simple never fails.
 
As others have mentioned, adding nutrients just for the sake of growing Chaeto seems counter intuitive. That said, there are other elements that plants used to empower them to synthesize and uptake the nutrients for growth. In my old planted tanks, just because you had nutrients didn't mean you could grow nice plants (nuisance algae would take over). But if you added potassium, as an example, it was the limiting factor. With potassium added, the plants grew and outgrew the nuisance algae. Food for thought - pun intended.
 
Believe iron gets consumed very fast abd its best to dose daily to maintain a min reading. an ICP to rule.out any deficiencies that could be causing cheato to struggle would help
 
Nutramar Foods
When healthy- beneficial it is. When going down, is a smelly clump of waste.
Good lighting is a must and a dose occasionally or iron and manganese
 
WWC
I had a brutal time for many years growing chaeto as well. All types of lights, flow, whatever. I just couldn't get it right. I eventually build a whole new system and whatever voodoo was cursing me was gone. However I did pick up one useful trick during those years of losing the chaeto battle.

In the spirit of easy, cheap, and effective I would offer this. Get some mangrove pods. Shouldn't be more than 5-10 bucks for a few. With the lights you have and your nutrient levels they would certainly thrive. Flow is a non-issue for them. It doesn't matter how much you have. Less is likely better anyhow for surface contact time. They won't leach back as long as you don't let them die and decay and they can really pull out nutrients pretty quickly. Just need to clean the leaves of salt and watch you Mg levels. They are easy and once going very cool to have mini-trees in your sump.

I'm a big fan of doing what nature does. Not a lot of ceramic blocks in use cleaning our most pristine dive spots :)
(just kidding around of course. It's Florida humor and it doesn't always work. lol)
 
Where are you getting the chaeto from? If you are getting it from large facilitates, I would try a individual. I’ve heard chaeto from big operation usually grown under lighting that we keep on our main display then when we throw it in the sump it’s not getting near enough light as it was used too.... trying a Clip in light and flood light from Lowe’s and turn it on 24/7 and get a good size ball from someone with similar lighting.... you might be over complicating/ thinking this.
 
I had a similar problem. Chaeto would grow to a certain point and stop, no matter how heavy I feed and try to add nutrients. I also would grow hair algae in the chaeto.

I dumped the fuge and switched to a bio pellet reactor. No algae after 3 months. It also eliminated a plug on the power strip which is nice.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
Bugsy_Barboza said:
Where are you getting the chaeto from? If you are getting it from large facilitates, I would try a individual. I’ve heard chaeto from big operation usually grown under lighting that we keep on our main display then when we throw it in the sump it’s not getting near enough light as it was used too.... trying a Clip in light and flood light from Lowe’s and turn it on 24/7 and get a good size ball from someone with similar lighting.... you might be over complicating/ thinking this.
Click to expand...
Got a Kessil H380 which is more than adequate. I’ve got my cheato from numerous sources but the end result hasn’t changed.
 
Deltec
Merv49 said:
There is good flow through the sump. The chaeto just turns brown and gets very soft as it melts. I thought the H380 might just be to strong so i’ve put an H80 on the sump and in two weeks with another batch of good cheato it began to melt also.
Click to expand...

I used a kessil h380 on a 200 mixed reef tank with a trigger 36 sump with great results, i also was pulling out a basketball size clump of cheato every ten days, so after i sold the 200 gallon tank and downsized to a deep blue 80 pro with a trigger 34 sump i decided to run a ufo 150 led light from amazon at $42, it grew cheato like a beast also, only problem was the light rusted very badly within a couple months, so I purchased a kessil h380 and it fried all my cheato, i had trouble growing cheato for almost 6 months until I purchased another 150 watt ufo, in closing I learned several things, one the kessil h380 is a very powerful and effective light but it must be hung at least 10 inches above the cheato or it will fry it! Second if you run a ufo led light they are great and effective, but you must do maintenance on it so it doesn’t get salt creep! I am thinking the kessil is frying your cheato because its either too close to it or your running it to long, but honestly the amazon ufo works just as well at only 42
 
Merv49 said:
Got a Kessil H380 which is more than adequate. I’ve got my cheato from numerous sources but the end result hasn’t changed.
Click to expand...
It seems to be a common problem.
What spectrum setting have you set the Kessil on?
Have you tried changing the spectrum setting at all?
 
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