Should I clean my hang on back refugium?

[Zpmada]

I have alot of algae growing in my hang on back refugium. Should I clean it?

The chaeto is now growing out the water. Should I throw half away?

Thankfully the display tank looks pretty good with minimal algae (only growing on the heater power cable)

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I have alot of algae growing in my hang on back refugium. Should I clean it?

The chaeto is now growing out the water. Should I throw half away?

Thankfully the display tank looks pretty good with minimal algae (only growing on the heater power cable)

Yes, you need to harvest some of the chaeto. Throw it in the garden.

The main purpose of growing cheato is to control the the level of po4 & no3 (inorganic nutrients) in the water.

the chaeto does this by assimilating the nutrients as a fertiliser during photosynthesis.

The nutrients become part of the plant matter. So removing some chaeto also permanently removes the nutrients from the system.

With the remaining half, tease it out so that it occupies all of the surface area of the compartment its growing in.

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Agreed. Chaeto is your export medium. You need to remove (export) some occasionally to export the bound-up nutrients it has taken up. Sorta like a skimmer cup. If you were to leave it in, and it melts down, it dumps all those bound-up nutrients back into your system.