What type of lighting for refugium

Tenaculum · Jul 2, 2015

I have an eshopps refugium 200 filter that I have run for several months. I took some of the crushed coral and rubble from the main tank to seed it. I got a clump of chaeto from a buddy and I was running an led with white and blue lights 24 hours. I cannot get the chaeto to grow while all my friends are blowing up with it. Is the light wrong? Pods are everywhere I just can't grow grass. What's up? Any suggestions? Different light?

rlman41299 · Jul 2, 2015

Your system might not have enough nitrates for the chaeto to export or could be the light. I have used blue with white led before but did not have a lot of success. Right now I am using a cheap par38 led bulb from amazon that is majority red with 2 blue led. So far my growth have doubled since switching to the red led.

gtbarsi · Jul 2, 2015

You want a lot of warm white light, minimum you want to use is a 60 watt CFL as warm as you can get it. Be sure to use some type of reflector with the CFL. Lots of other lighting you can use, the most extreme that I have seen is a guy that grew a softball size of chaeto to a 20+" beach ball of chaeto in 11 days with a 250 watt HPS grow lamp. LEDs can be used but I believe a very warm white, 2700K, 90 CRI would be the optimal LEDs to use with out having to add colors to fill out the spectrum for optimal growth.

I have personally wanted to build my own LED fuge light with one of the Vero LEDs by Bridgelux. The 18 series at 2700K, 90 CRI can put out up to 5300 lumens. The 29 series can put out over 13K lumens at the same color temperature and CRI. It is worth noting that these are maximum outputs and it would be more reasonable to run them at lower levels.

Reefing Madness · Jul 2, 2015

http://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart...-Light-Bulb-2-Pack-ES5M8232TS65KCAN/205388173

Tenaculum · Jul 3, 2015

Thanks for the responses everyone. Madness, I have just switched to the very same thing you sent pics of. About $11 total. Let's see if it works.

WetWhistle · Jul 3, 2015

I use the same thing with a 100 watt equivalent bulb. Works like a charm.

d2mini · Jul 3, 2015

I too was like the OP. Could never get that stuff to grow in previous systems, even with high nutrients.
Now I use a 150 HPS bulb/fixture.
The spectrum can't be more than 2400k, it's orange.
If that's physically too large for your fuge, try one of the red led grow lights.
My tank was brand new with no registering nitrates and really low po4, yet look at the growth I get... video at the bottom of the page.
http://www.everydayreef.com/blog/2015/6/6/chaetomorpha-algae

Lynn52 · Jul 3, 2015

I too use the same thing as Reefing Madness works great.

sars · Jul 5, 2015

rlman41299 said:
Your system might not have enough nitrates for the chaeto to export or could be the light. I have used blue with white led before but did not have a lot of success. Right now I am using a cheap par38 led bulb from amazon that is majority red with 2 blue led. So far my growth have doubled since switching to the red led.

Can you share which bulb you are using?

John Liquorish · Jul 14, 2015

I use just 5 clip on LED lights, 5watts each, and 6500k from our local hardware store to grow lots of Chaeto. My sump and Refugium are just plastic tubs at the moment, but work well until I find out how much chaeto I want to help run my system. At the moment I am over the 100 litre size tub of just Chaeto.
You can see some of my clip-on lights in this photo. There are 5 in total, so only 25 watts total growing all this Chaeto for me.

zemuss · Jul 14, 2015

I have two of the DM- 5e on my ATS and Chaeto.

The newer bulb, I don't understand why Reef Radiance went away from the 2 X 660NM reds to 1 X 660Nm reds.. It was the perfect growing light.

With a growing light you want the red and less blue. ATS I clean weekly now which is lit by the older light with the 2X 660NM LEDs.

Reef_a_holiks · Jul 14, 2015

Keep doing what your doing and just add a bigger portion of cheato. Add double the size you started with. I had the same issue. I tried different lights. more intense, less intense, different kinds of spectrums and nothing. Tried adding iron and again nothing at all. Until, I put in a bigger portion and then it took off and growing like crazy till this day. I believe i might have put to small of portion that it was difficult for it to grow back and thrive again. I dont believe its the lighting in your case, as Ive seen people grow crazy amounts of cheato with simple cfl lights.