Going to be trimming the chaeto and since I can't get rid of it, I do not want to just throw away all of the pods stars shrimp and so forth. Would throwing all of the trimmings into RO water drive them out of the chaeto: kind of like a freshwater dip? I am not sure whether anyone even bothers to do this.
I would be afraid it would kill many of them since RO is freshwater.
What I do is take softball sized clumps into a 5 gallon bucket. Separate it out as much as possible
Dunk it vigorously and swirl it around to remove as many as possible into the water.
I do this for several balls of chaeto then replace that water back into the refugium.
I pull the water from the sump to put in the bucket so it is the same water they have been in.
You will not get everything off, but you can save a lot of the little critters. I also dunk and swish it in the refugium before going to the bucket in the first place.
The ball of chaeto in my Refugium could fill a 29g tank. I also have a 29g tank 2/3rds full of chaeto I use as an isolation tank for new fish.
The chaeto in that tank came from my 40g Refugium.
I could not find anyone who wanted it either so I put it there.
Another method is to hold the cheato over a bucket run a siphon out of the display or sump and hose it off. Most gladly "ride" the water out of the cheato. You can do this straight over the sump as well. Just make sure the cheato doesn't have a lot of detritus in it.
no need to get so fancy just shake the snot out of it
no need to get so fancy just shake the snot out of it
Shutting down refugium feed pump and shaking the clumps to be discarded "briskly" gets most of the useful pods and even a fair majority of small snails out. After this culling and shaking process and the refugium settles it can be fired right back up. (My refugium has mud in it so I need to let it settle or I'd have tan cloud invade everything.)
However, if you have beckett or other venturi injectors or sensitive (weak) pumps that your refugium is directly emptying or flowing into? The temporary little pieces coming off can sometimes clog things so the shake method may not be ideal for everyone's system.
My overflows empty into the first chamber of my sump where my chaeto is located. I am going to do a combination of both, running a siphon into a bucket during the water change and shaking them into a smaller bucket.
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