What can cheato handle? I need to kill everything else.

[Gordonious]

I have two balls of cheato that different reef club members have handed to me from different systems. I think that one of the owners has several problems with his system currently and in the recent past and the other is a newbie. I would like to put this cheato through the extremes of what it can handle as far as temperature, lighting, and salinity. I would like to kill off everything accept for the cheato itself. So what is the fundamental environmental niche of the common species of cheato kept in the reef aquariums? I would like to avoid chemicals or anything else that could anyway leak back into my system, but will listen to ideas there as well.

Jon

 

[sperry]

Long fresh water dip with lots of swishing around.

 

[Gordonious]

Define long, lol.

 

[Gordonious]

No other input?

 

[rustybucket145]

If you're that worried about it, I would trash the chaeto and find another source.

when you say he has had problems... what exactly do you mean?

 

[Samala]

Right.. are we talking flatworms, Ich, velvet, brook, nuisance algae, Mycobacterium infection, Vibrio?

A freshwater dip for Chaetomorpha can last up to an hour without a major problem. You can dip, quarantine for a few weeks in hyposalinity and dip again before introducing.

>Sarah

 

[Gordonious]

I would probably take the some precautions regardless. I qt for my tank like few others. My tank early on had a crash and ever since then I have not added a lot to it. I have no huge pests or problems even though I don't take care of my tank perfectly. New pests can be introduced by accident so easily to even the most cared over reef tanks and some planktonic form or something or spores could be all over a reef before there are any symptoms.

I posted on another website, I am even aloud to state there is such a thing out there besides reef central?, and we decided that during the qt period it may not be a bad idea to run my UV sterilizer. I already have the thing and it really doesn't do much of anything if I added it to my large system so I might as well use it on a little 2.5-5.5 tank with the cheato.

The one person had had some type of PITA algae they had been dealing with. The other one hasn't been running his tank that long and hasn't been in the hobby to long I don't think so there could be anything in their system.

 

[pjf]

Caulerpa in Chaetomorpha

Caulerpa in Chaetomorpha

I've been very disappointed with "stowaways" in the macroalgae that I have ordered. My gracilaria arrived from Hawaii with aiptasia. Luckily, a mesh screen kept the aiptasia from my main display. My chaetomorpha arrived with caulerpa and I did not recognize it until it had already infested my main display.

Is there anyway of destroying the caulerpa that is intertwined in a batch of chaetomorpha?

 

[Gordonious]

Caulerpa will go sexual in low nutrient water if I'm not mistaken. Try taking it out and placing it fresh water for about 20-25 minutes after that place it in a bucket or container of some sort with freshly mixed salt water and let it sit with no circulation or heat for about a week.

That would my my opinion, but might want to wait for someone else to chime in.

This is the reason I'm going to try to keep the chaeto I have. No matter where I get it something will like come with it.

 

[cmsargent]

I had a fellow reefer give me some cheato back when I was still planning my fuge but hadn't set it up yet. Since I didn't have anywhere to put it I just threw it in a bucket with some tank water. It had no heater and no circulation. It just recieved room light. Plus it went through some big salinity changes, as I'd ignore it for weeks them realize lots of water had evaported and just poor in a bunch of fresh (straight tapwater even). I didn't really care it I killed it so it wasn't exactly treated too well. Anyway it ended up in the bucket for over two months and not only did it survive it went from a fistfull to about half filled a 5g bucket.

This stuff is super hardy. I can't imagine anything else that would have survived that type of neglect.

I know what you mean about stowaways. I was just in the LFS tonight and they had in a new shipment of ulva. I've never seen such bad aptasia infestation. The ulva was covered in it from tiny ones to huge ones. There might have been almost as mcuh volume of aptasia as ulva. I wondered why the store even bothered to keep it. Who is going to buy it like that?

I don't always QT my macro for the full 6 weeks. But I always do a FW dip before QT and again before it goes into my tank. I usually pick through it pretty well looking for unwanted hitchhickers and remove any I find.

 

[Gordonious]

Lol you would be surprised what people would buy. I wouldn't be shocked at all if we heard someone posting about getting these cool looking free glass anemones with there ulva, lol.

Jon