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View Full Version : How big can a chaeto ball get?


whatcaneyedo
06-26-2009, 06:48 PM
I've been growing chaetomorpha for the last few months in my refugium under two 23W 6500K CF bulbs. Previously I grew caulerpa and then gracilaria. The Chaeto seems to have grown nearly to the size of a basketball and then stopped growing. I have more room for it to grow larger but it doesnt seem to want to get any bigger so I removed a handfull the other day. After doing some reading I also switched to two 20W 4100K CF floodlights. Does anyone get theirs to grow larger than that or does it just max out at that size? When I used to grow caulerpa it could grow large enough to fill the entire section that it was in.

I've been thinking that maybe I should give it even more light so I've been considering upgrading to MH over my fuge but that seems like it would be a little excessive.

Salinity 1.025
Phosphate 0.01 (elos)
Nitrate <1 (elos)
Constantly tumbling in a 20gal area with +/- 700gph of flow

michika
06-26-2009, 06:55 PM
Mine kind of naturally maxes out at about something like that. I find that eventually a significant change either in its size, pruning, or a nose dive in water quality, will get it growing again.

Myka
06-26-2009, 06:58 PM
I've never had mine max out, but I find it does better with lower flow. I always run refugiums around 100-200 gph...just trickling. The chaeto seems to prefer this too, and supposedly a slower flow helps the chaeto to absorb the nutrients from the water.

karazy
06-26-2009, 09:58 PM
not sure what the max size is, but ive seen cheato the size of a fat full grown cat.

parkinsn
06-26-2009, 10:37 PM
well not sure of max size but this is a big one

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=53124

FitoPharmer
06-29-2009, 12:24 AM
i used to throw out more then 1/2 a garbage bag of cheato every few months from my 125g sump in its hayday.