Chaeto reactor not doing so well. Any suggestions?

What I learned:


If you have issues with diatoms or cyano in your tank, then your chaeto will get covered in it in a few days. Once you get the nitrates under control you will not have my issue.

Iron did definitely help. I got great growth but then it slowed to a crawl and began to fade and die. I am guessing because it is only a 20 gal system that has gone without a waterchange for a month that the chaeto used up all the trace elements that it needs (iodine, magnesium etc...)

I did a water change, will update with what happens.
 
It sounds like you're having some luck!

Also keep in mind that as your nutrients get under control, there will be less for your chaeto, so you may want to prune it down, in essence, making it a smaller mouth to feed.
 
So.... even with frequent water changes, dosing iron, rinsing the chaeto every few days, plenty of nutrients... i can't seem to get it to grow for more than a week. It will fill up the tube, i will thin it out, then it will stop growing and turn white slowly.
 
The LED strips pictured at the beginning of the thread. The lights might not be ideal but the should be able to row cheato. This exact aame reactor and light combo os aold by marine depo and many people use it with great success. I do not know what curse i have. Incredibly frustrating : (
 
The key to your problem may be that you don't light your tank. Right now the only place for algae to grow in is in your reactor. So it's not surprising your chaeto gets covered in muck. Try putting your display light on a timer opposite your reactor's light cycle. This should help spread the algae around. If you're worried about algae in your display, you could add a fast growing macro like ulva.
 
Any shell rot issues at 40 nitrate? I actually keep mine in a reef. It leans heavily towards the blue spectrum to try and reflect the proper depth.

I run a turbo scrubber on my system, 18 hour light cycle on the scrubber.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Micheal- Running opposite is what i do by default now and I resort to just rinsing the chaeto. The Chaeto still will stop growing and slowly lose color.



Jlentz- This is a O. havanensis tank at the moment, a species not prone to shell rot. The nitrates themselves can be harmful to them, however.
 
Well, if it's not growing, it's either a lack of light or nutrients. Since it sounds like you have plenty of the major nutrients, it could be a minor one, like iron. Iron can often be a limiting nutrient in aquariums because it gets depleted quickly in a closed system. Try adding iron. It won't hurt anything in your tank. It comes in a very diluted form, since it is considered a trace element. It really colored up my macros nicely. Hope this helps.
 
Michael Hoaster said:
Well, if it's not growing, it's either a lack of light or nutrients. Since it sounds like you have plenty of the major nutrients, it could be a minor one, like iron. Iron can often be a limiting nutrient in aquariums because it gets depleted quickly in a closed system. Try adding iron. It won't hurt anything in your tank. It comes in a very diluted form, since it is considered a trace element. It really colored up my macros nicely. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help dude, but i did state earlier that I have been dosing iron. This did seem to help at one time but now the chaeto will turn white after a week. I am going to try to use higher flow and see how that works.
 
Micheal - It is not the LEDs as this is a very common setup and even a guy in this thread has these lights. They grow chaeto just fine.

Diana - And I have watched that! It helped me quite a lot and that channel is AMAZING. Very good idea linking that to me even though i have seen it.


The only thing i can think of is a lack of flow as it has a pretty wimpy pump. I just put on a slightly more powerful pump and will update.
 
My money is on the weak pump if everything else is showing itself to be in good balance. It could very well be starving the chaeto?

Sounds as though you can eliminate the lights being an issue and besides the iron (which I'm not sure how fast it depletes itself) that only leaves competing algae or lack of nutrients which could happen with flow?

If that doesn't turn out to be the culprit then the only thing left would be to check all of your tests (post them)?
 
Same thing happened with the faster pump. Another 7$ ball of chaeto down. This was 2 weeks ago and I have given up for now. I have no idea how i have failed while having the EXACT same pump/reactor/lightstrip as many others who have great success.

Could my LED's be running brighter than others because of the wattage being delivered to it is different from that of other people's setups?

I set up a 20gal refugium/sump under my 40 breeder with some blue/red LED strips wrapped around it. I will prolly get a more powerful overhead light. I am done with reactors for now until I have another eureka moment.
 
scuzy said:
What's you're phosphate level in tank?
Click to expand...

I don't test for phosphate since I am not running reef tanks and I simply use nitrate as an indicator of other pollutants. The reactor has been tested across two tanks. The reason I tested two tanks is because the first tank houses a peacock mantis shrimp only and the foods he eats (live crabs, clams, frozen food soaked in selcon) might be lacking the necessary levels of phostphate that a prepared fish food might have. So, I moved the reactor to a fowler tank containing a melanurus wrasse, royal gramma, damsel, and a havanensis mantis shrimp. Same outcome.


One thing that I am thinking about in hindsight... Maybe my light strip really was running brighter than everyone elses? There is no power brick to regulate that so maybe the voltage was higher from my wall than it needed to be.

Also it is a rather small reactor and the lightstrip would sometimes sag and create a higher density wrap towards the bottom of the tube. Maybe all that light in one area contributed to the issue occasionally.

Maybe both? I do not know.
 
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