Harvesting chaeto, how often?

[Jonathan Troutt]

hey guys so I just read through an article about nitrate export. It was talking about growing and harvesting macroalgea as well as many other things. I have chaeto in my sump. And since I have got my diy light done the growth has really taken off.

My confusion here is I always thought that I should let the ball get as big as possible...right. The more chaeto the more nitrate that is removed from my water column. But this article made it sound like that you should reduce the size of the chaeto ball every so often.

So can someone clear this up for me?

 

[Crabs McJones]

I trim mine down every couple of weeks. It usually gets about as big as a basket ball and I like to trim mine down to about the size of a baseball. I find that if I leave it to big it doesnt grow back as fast

 

[Chris04]

When I ran a fuge I would wait till it got full and then took out a little more then half. It just depends on what you want to do. Long as it has good flow and light it will keep growing

 

[Larry L]

The more chaeto you have, the more nutrients that get removed from the water - but all those nutrients are still in your system. The chaeto is only sequestering the nitrates and phosphates as it grows, and if it dies off, they will get released back into the tank. The only way to actually export the nutrients from the system is to harvest some of the chaeto at some point.

 

[Jonathan Troutt]

Ok I understand thank you guys. I can Always count on this forum!

 

[Michael A Kurolvech]

I've found that my Nitrates are generally around 2 while my Cheato is actively growing. When the Cheato reaches volleyball size (Max fuge dimensions) my Nitrates begin to rise to around 5. I get off my butt go to the LFS buy copepods and tear out 2/3 the cheato and reseed the display and fuge. Typically this is a 4-6 week cycle.

 

[CarChase]

I remove some every two months, but my growth rate is not that fast. Basically I remove some when the fuge is packed with Cheato.

 

[Gungo]

Monthly. Growth is insane with eBay UFO light.

 

[Gungo]

Monthly. Growth is insane with eBay UFO light.

For example.. today trimmed it

 

[Victor Noda]

I agree! I bought a UFO grow light off of ebay and was a bit skeptical because I could not grow Chaeto for the life of me. I tried chaeto reactors, grow lights, pink and blue led horticulture lights, and then finally figured, what the heck, I'll try this UFO light, with little or no expectations. I was wrong...this sucker in 15 days has my fuge densely packed with chaeto...and now I have to harvest it and send it over to my LFS.