Mangroves in a reef tank

[corpusse]

I use more then 100 in my frag tank which has about 50 gallons of water. They work great in there. My little remora skimmer which I just ran because I had it lying around stopped skimming. There are no fish (although I will qt fish in there) and a minimal bioload, but they work great for filtration in there.

I also run 2 in my 2 gallon pico, they certainly help but are not quite as effective. IMO if you are running 1.5-2+ per gallon they make a hell of a difference, but if you're just putting a few in. Even say a dozen or 20 in a 100 gallon system you will not notice a difference.

I'm far from an expert on mangroves but I think the big reason people say they don't work as effectively as cheato or other macro algaes as nutrient export is they are using far too few of them. You need a lot of them and they will work.