Chaeto mortality?

[Safir]

I don't know how i did it, but i killed all th chaeto in my 'fuge for the 46... went away for a week and when i returned it didn't look "right" was still green (dark green) but looked much denser than normal - i grabbed it to flip it over and it was soft and started to fall apart in my hands. Needless to say i thew it out, but id like to figure out what happened before I get mroe and lose it too. It lives under a "daylight" spiral CF bulb, the same bulb is on my 4G and the little bit of chaeto that got in there went nuts during the same time period.

any thoughts?

 

[wds21921]

Safir I get that also if I don't occasionally flip over my chaeto.

Ideally there's suppose to be enough turnover in your sump to allow it to tumble and allowing it to get general light all over.

I've got good flow but not that much, if you can retrieve what's left simply turn it over and it'll be fine usually.

 

[jdieck]

I use a lot stronger lighting than that (MH 175) turn it over once a week and after harvesting I rinse the remining on fresh water to remove detritus of the algae. It seems to stay healthy and groing fine.

 

[MadTownMax]

I'm suspecting water-turnover too - any comparison between the 4g and the new refugium?

Also - was the cheato the same distance from the lamp - PC's can loose a lot of intensity with more than 4" or so between the cheato and the bulb?

Intensity - I agree w/ Jdieck (even though my avatar isn't nearly as cool ) that when using cheato to remove nutrients, the more light the better - however, I did successfully grow some in my old mantis tank (6-gallon with only a 100 gph powerhead - very weak water movement), and that only had a 13W PC bulb - very yellow though - definately a 6500k.

I have tried to grow cheato under a 10K 55W PC bulb in a previous refugium and utterly failed - a 6.5K bulb over the same tank showed better results ...

FWIW - HTH

 

[jdieck]

MadTown... Monkey say...:thumbsup:

 

[Safir]

4G gets ~300(?) GPH from a fluval 303 - the chaeto in there came in accidentally as tiny pieces with the rock an got stuck on the intake to the filter and some xenia living in there - it filled up the area i hoped to put that green leather while we were away

the 'fuge is probably about 8G and gets ~200GPH - it gets everything from my MAG5 that my ~300gph overflow can't handle (see previous thread "stupid overflow")

the light on the 'fuge is further away (any closer and i cant get my hands in the stand) but is in a MUCH better reflector.

i remved as much of the "bad" algae from teh fuge and moved a few strings from teh 4G into there.. we'll see what happens in the next week.

 

[MadTownMax]

FWIW - another comparison - my friend uses a penguin biowheel (the double-sided model - 330 gph) on the back of his tank as a refugium, over that he has a 9W PC bulb about 2" above the surface of the water and his cheato doubles in size about every 3 weeks - it would probably grow faster, but the cheato on top blocks out the light to that underneith.