All my cheato is dead, need replacement

[nbsdsailor]

I started running GFO in a reactor recently and now all my cheato in my refugium has slowly died off. I am guessing the lower PO4 is the thing that killed it. Before the reactor, I had to prune it once every 2 weeks or so. The really bad thing is my tank used to be swarming with pods, but now I never see any. And I know my fish loved them. Anyone know of another good weed that I can put in my refugium that can sustain in a lower PO4 environment?

 

[HanoverFist]

Sidestepping the phosphate issue here...one of the best ideas i've seen around here for this is the "pod condo". Basically some live rock rubble in a mesh bag. Info can be found on forums but basically you just place several of these in your sump and the pods breed there, then you transfer one to the main tank. Every week or so you swap condos between the sump and DT. Always have a few growing pods in a safe area, always a fresh one in DT and a few of them going in case one condo doesn't perform too well one week. Brilliant!!

Or you could just pile up some rubble in a few spots in the main tank, or sump, and call it good.

Either way, from what I understand, chaeto isn't a necessity for pod breeding. They just need safe places to hide and breed.

 

[nbsdsailor]

While that pod condo does sound like a good idea, I am to lazy to keep up on that to make it effective. I really don't feel like filling my entire 40b refugium with rubble. The chaeto gave a lot of surface area for the pods to reproduce on. I have rock in the fuge already and the population has pretty much crashed. The 40b was almost entirely full of chaeto with millions of pods. And I still would like a macro algae in the fuge to decrease NO2 & NO3.

 

[aleonn]

HanoverFist, I've never heard of that idea before but I really like it! nbsdsailor, it looks like your GFO is doing too good of a job, which is good. Since the pod condo idea would take more maintenance, I'd just put another relatively larger piece of LR or two in the fuge area to provide more shelter.