Macro that doesn’t deplete oxygen

clownaround4giggles

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Went to my lfs because I wanted to make a refugium in my filter bc I don’t have many copepods (I have a fluval evo 13.5) but the owner told me that if chaeto were to get into the display that oxygen would be depleted in a day and everything would die. Looking for a risk free alternative macro so in case it go’s into my display oxygen won’t deplete. Thank you!
 
Yeah that's not even remotely true. The product of photosynthesis is oxygen, which nearly all photosynthetic organisms release throughout the day. I assume your LFS guy got confused and mixed up CO2 and O2.
Thats my guess it will also raise ph because it's using co2.
 
Chaeto is photosynthetic macroalgae. They release a large amount of oxygen into the water. Chaeto filters the phosphates and nitrates in the water, when it dies it can release the nutrients it has stored up in the algae and create a spike but it definitely won't take Oxygen out of the water
 
Yeah that's not even remotely true. The product of photosynthesis is oxygen, which nearly all photosynthetic organisms release throughout the day. I assume your LFS guy got confused and mixed up CO2 and O2.
No, because he said the lfs guy said " everything will die"

Id run from that place...
 
I never heard of chaeto using oxygen... my sumps full of chaetomorpha. Its often in my display as well.

Odd information.
I also have a plume of dinos in my tank for a while now, would that affect the answer?
 
Ps.... i had my display smothered in dinos, not a smudge, we're talking caked.
20240128_124845.jpg
 
Are these Dino’s btw?
That can be several things, or a combination. Diatoms and/or cyano

Dinoflagellates will turn all stringy. Like in my photo above.

You can take a turkey baster, blast water at the stuff on your sand.

If it blows away as a sheet, cyano
If it breaks apart like dust, diatoms

But, looks mostly like cyano.
 
Which types of dinos (in reef tanks) consume oxygen? Many are photosynthetic.
Theses these types of posts as well. They confuse me, but :thinking-face:
The cells of Osteropsis ovata have a diameter at their largest part, about 40 micro meters, which, if we compare it to the diameter of a cyanobacteria cell (2-3 micro meters), gives us an idea of its relative size. Ostreopsis, like many other harmful dinoflagellates, secretes a large amount of mucus to build extracellular matrices, macroscopically characterized by the presence of strands and filaments, in which oxygen bubbles resulting from photosynthesis are trapped. These matrices settle on any existing substrate, sand, rocks, glasses, etc., suffocating the existing micro fauna.This can be observed, for example, when the aggregates formed on the substratum are siphoned off, revealing areas of sand with a dark gray color, indicating anaerobic bacterial activity, resulting from the depletion of oxygen produced by the layer of dinoflagellates settled on top. The extracellular matrices also serve to immobilize potential predators such as amphipods and copepods.
They steal/deplete oxygen?
 
Went to my lfs because I wanted to make a refugium in my filter bc I don’t have many copepods (I have a fluval evo 13.5) but the owner told me that if chaeto were to get into the display that oxygen would be depleted in a day and everything would die. Looking for a risk free alternative macro so in case it go’s into my display oxygen won’t deplete. Thank you!
This LFS and that guy have no idea what they are talking about. I’d find a new store if I were you
 
Most aquatic plants and macro algae's produce O2 during photosynthesis and consume CO2. At night they stop photosynthesis and consume O2. Typically they produce more O2 then they consume though. There are other factors at work here also like @Garf said. In either case I dont see them killing everything in the tank in a normal situation. Some types of macro can "go sexual" this can cause issues with O2 levels maybe this is what the lfs was worried or talking about? I have kept lots of macro algae's and haven't had this happen yet.
 

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