Effectiveness of chaeto
 

So, I setup a refugium/Sump for my tank, and moved my chaeto that had been in my display tank to the it. within 24 hours I discovered that I had made 1 small error in the design of the overflow as it is to high thanks to the hood (overflow box that sits in a groove of the hood box, that has a removable top).

Needless to say the sump has been disconnected for now until I have a chance to fix it, (probs this weekend) and since then I have had an algea growth in my display, glass, rocks, everywhere. I have moved the cheato to the display tank for now, and lets see if that helps.

Any other advice would be great, currently I am watching my snails chow down on the algae like its lunch (which to them, it is!).

Also it is a brown algea, cyano perhaps? not sure on ID.

Xen

not sure on the brown algae part but cyano is not algae, rather it is a form of bacteria. if phospates arent your problem, then how many Kelvins is your bulb? some pretty funky stuff can grow at a low kelvin rating just one place you might want to look.

Brown algae...where? On the sand mostly? Probably diatoms. They are the first sign of a nutrient problem moving in. No matter what test kits say, if there is algae there are nitrate and phosphate in the tank and the algae is feeding off it. Cyano is dark red and slimy/stringy and often has "air" bubbles in it.

The original question, how effective is Chaeto? It can be very effective when employed properly, but most people don't set it up very well.

Care to elaborate on this? Are you referring to a minimum mass of chaeto relative to the system size or a means of tumbling the chaeto? Curious because I'll be doing the chaeto thing shortly myself.

Right now I have a ery small amount of chaeto, that has been in the tank since day 1. It has grown maybe a little but not much.


Once I get the hood fixed (lower the level of the external overflow) I will be running the chaeto in a reverse light cycle in the refugium/Sump just to remove nitrate (if any pods make it up to the top via the pump, yay! if not, oh well.)


Till then, it is brown algea, and since I just added my 2 clows a week or 10 days ago, and when I removed the cheato to the sump and it failed the diatoms exploded thereafter, so before that perhaps my cheato was gobbling everything up nicely.

For now it is a minimal amount, but I am hoping it will grow!

Xen