New chaeto turned white, completely dissolved. Not enough light too much light?

[Jorda320]

Hello,

I recently bought a batch of Chaeto from algaebarn and have it arrived looking amazing. I have a small 40 gallon tank with hang on back aquafuge from CPR. It is 4.7 gallons and is about 20 inches long and maybe 12in deep with only being 4 in wide. I use that as a refugium and put the algae in. I use the 11 watt LED strip that came with it and within a few days the top of the algae was turning white. I had the lights on about 8 to 10 hours a day and over the period of about a week or so the entire mass of Chaeto turned white and eventually just dissolved. I tried a second time with chaeto I bought from a LFS and had it dissolve completely I was using a 24-hour lighting schedule.

I've tested my Waters and everything is normal. Temperature is at 78 and at this point my only thought is that the lighting was either too much or not enough. Considering this is only an 11 watt LED strip I'm assuming it is not enough. I just wanted to ask if anyone has had success with the cheaper LEDs and Chaeto or if I should just go right into buying something like the kessil refugium light for this aquafuge? Since these two masses have dissolved my display tank is overrun with hair algae and I would like to get this under control ASAP. Any thoughts or suggestions would be very appreciated.

 

[EmdeReef]

What is your nitrate and phosphate at? Do you dose carbon?

Could be light related but in general IME it’s nutrient or (trace) element related. Cheato also needs potassium and iron to grow and quite frankly is one of the more finicky macroalgae. In some tanks it simply takes off.

You can tinker with the next batch and lower light to ~6 hours, if it dies, I’d move on to another algae like ulva or caulerpa. Too many posts on here of people spending way too much time and energy trying to sustain cheato - kind of defeats the purpose, just my 2c.

 

[JoeD_]

Could've starved?

 

[Katrina71]

I light mine with an opposite light schedule

 

[Jorda320]

My nitrates are usually upper 20s low 30s at Max with phosphate usually being in the lower single digits. I never Dost anything while I was trying to grow this. Since the the hair algae took over my DT I do have carbon and gfo in separate filter bags just rolling around in the refugium. I do plan on keeping those going indefinitely. Right now I am trying my hands at caulpera but I don't feel like I'm getting tremendous growth. And as far as the lighting schedule I usually do try to run it during the night when the DT lights are off.