Made mistake in Fuge. Need chaeto bad

[stlouisguy]

Cleared all my plants out of my fuge to make room for a softball size cheato. Worried about doing it but heard and read many places to not mix plants.

sooooooo


Now I am seeing the beginning of some red slime and it seems it cant handle the amount of nutrients my tank has, as I am also having to use the magnet on my glass about 3x as much

So I will take any chaeto anyone has. Glad to pay for it also. Need quite a bit

Thanks in advance

[TWINPEAKS]

I have some you can have,just come and get it.

[DARKSILENTTYPE]

OK what is cheato?

[Shooter7]

macroalgae used for nutrient export

[DARKSILENTTYPE]

pic please and how do I get some

[inwall75]

It looks like a green brillo pad.

It is not as efficient as Caulerpa but it requires less lighting and doesn't go asexual like caulerpas do.

Most people get it by trading with other reef members but you can also buy it online.

[DARKSILENTTYPE]

Ok i have this very hard almost brillo feeling straight hair algea that is growing in my tank on a peice of hard coral that has past on it is long strans of green hair like algea except its very hard feels like neptunes brush but not as compart as it can this be chaeto ? and if it is should I move it to the sump ?

[Letmegrow]

Originally posted by inwall75
It is not as efficient as Caulerpa but it requires less lighting and doesn't go asexual like caulerpas do.


I think Chaeto is just as efficient.
Do you have any studies or articles that were done on it ?
I think its interesting.

[inwall75]

I at one time had studies regarding Chaeto on a computer long dead. It is on the low end of efficiency (particularly if the flow in the refugium is not quick enough). However, you don't even need to do fancy scientific testing. Throw the same mass of chaeto and caulerpa in your refugium, wait 1 or two weeks. Assuming sufficient nutrients in the tank, the caulerpa will have grown substantially and the chaeto will have barely grown or stayed the same. I have personally done this.

Here's some other interesting info for curious minds.

Originally Posted by mojoreef
In order to make a meaningful comparison, we need some standardized measure of growth, however, because a "stalk" of one alga and another may be quite different. The most common measure is "specific growth rate" in which the growth is measured in mg per gram of algal body weight per day, or percentage increase. So, to compare the specific growth rates of some of the more common species that I can find data for, the maximum growth rates appear to be something like this:

Halimeda: ~2% / day (10-20 mg/g/d)
Dictyota: ~ 10% (50-100 mg/g/d)
Padina: ~ 10% (75-100 mg/g/d)
Caulerpa: ~ 10% (50-100 mg/g/d)
Thalassia: ~1.5% (10-15 mg/g/d)
Palmaria: ~15% (doubled in 1 week)
Enteromorpha: 20% (7 fold increase in 1 month)
Gracilaria: 6-10% / day

However, if you want to maximize the nutrient export, the clear winner in field experiments is the cyanobacteria Lyngbya, which grows at a rate of roughly 5 times that of any of the common macroalgae in the trade, and adds an average of about 35% (300-400 mg/g/d) of it's weight per day! But it would be a pain to remove and looks like hell....

So, obviously there is a bit of a trade-off that we have to take into account when we talk about nutrient export. We want something that grows fairly quickly to remove nutrients, but also you want something that is easily controlled, harvested, and doesn't make your tank look like a cesspool. The other consideration is that most of the common algae on the reef (e.g., Dictyota, Padina, Caulerpa) are often highly chemically defended (otherwise they are eaten by herbivorous fishes), and most people seemt to be trying to avoid such species in their tanks. So you have to balance the specific growth rate against the suite of secondary chemicals which these species release and the ability to harvest them for nutrient export. So, taking all of this into account (growth, ease of removal, chemical defenses, probability of overgrowth, appearance, etc.), my favorite choices for macroalgae in my own tanks is typically Halimeda or Ochtodes if included in the main display tank, and Enteromorpha, or Graciliaria, if included in a refugium or a sump....

[inwall75]

Originally posted by DARKSILENTTYPE
Ok i have this very hard almost brillo feeling straight hair algea that is growing in my tank on a peice of hard coral that has past on it is long strans of green hair like algea except its very hard feels like neptunes brush but not as compart as it can this be chaeto ? and if it is should I move it to the sump ?

That sounds like bryopsis which is a royal pain because most fish nor crabs nor snails will eat it. If you can pull out the frag temporarily, manually remove it. I.e. Don't do it in the tank as it reproduces through fragmentation. Pulling it in the tank is just asking to have it elsewhere in the tank where the fragments land.

[Letmegrow]

Curt,

I do not understand how the "specific growth rate" unit of measurement can be applied as a factor in deciding which is more efficient.

Can you assume that just because it grows faster and weighs more, that it took in more nutrients out of the water ?

I will try to use a analogy:
Car 1 is a gas guzzling car, it gets you 9 miles to the gallon.
Car 2 is a gas/electric hybrid, it gets you 30 mile to the gallon.

So just for an example 'not a conclusion',
Alga 1 is Chaeto = Gas guzzling
Alga 2 is Caulerpa = Gas/electric hybrid

Chaeto did not grow as much but used more fuel,
Caulerpa grew like crazy but used little fuel.

[inwall75]

Can you assume that just because it grows faster and weighs more, that it took in more nutrients out of the water ?

Somewhat. You can assume one of three things. That it is absorbing more nutrients or it is more efficient with photosynthesis or both. An important scientific priniciple is to only leave one variable to be tested. I.e. "all else being equal".

Without scientific testing you can only make estimations. I no longer have my personal testing nor links that prove my point due to a dead computer. However, I've run tests with strictly one or the other and have run tests mixed. They have proven the superiority (nutrientwise) of caulerpas but I'm also well aware of their own built in issues.

Pretend that you are locked down in building that has Anthrax running through the air ducts and the government is knowingly aware of two chemicals that can bind said toxin.

Chemical A is able to bind Anthrax at a rate of 5 CC/minute. It stays active for a long time.

Chemical B is able to bind Anthrax at a rate of 100 CC/minute. However, because of it's efficiency, you must keep removing and replacing it so it doesn't fill up and become useless.

The government takes a poll of what chemical the of the people locked down in said building want. With this information available, what do you think the results of the poll will be?

Again, if you don't believe me, when your main concern is removing as much toxin as possible, which would you rather have. A chemical that has very little mass increase (indicating very little absortion of toxins) or one that has a lot of mass increase?

This is obviously a flawed example in a similar manner to your example. I no longer have the scientific data...just personal experience.

Caulerpas are self-limiting which is their advantage in softy tanks and their downfall at the same time. Once they effectively reduce nutrients too much, they start to starve and will go asexual to ensure it's continuation. (I swear...if I hear someone say their macros went 'sexual', I'll pull my hair out and I can't afford to lose anymore.)

[Letmegrow]

Curt - awesome info THANKS.


I personally would die amused if I was introduced to anthrax,
it is found in the non-lethal form in nature, inside the stomaches of roly pollies and termites. The stuff inside the gut of a bug, when altered in a lab, can kill me.