Can you buy bad Cheato?

NewbReefer

NewbReefer

Reefing newb
well my tanks been up for a year now and my chaeto was in my refugium for nearly all of that time but it has only grown to about 4x the original size. it was in a high flow area with a good light but i still would have thought it would have grown more. Of course i did just get my new refugium going with a better light and slower flow rate so it will be interesting to see what happens to it know. so i was wondering if anyone else has experienced this with there chaeto. I bought mine off ebay so it was shipped to me and i find it hard to believe that it's possible that it's just a bad clump of it. also any tips getting this stuff to grow quickly aside from flow rate and lighting would be awesome.
 
Nutrients in the water that it feeds off of. If your water is already "clean" the chaeto won't grow much because there aren't many nitrates and phosphates for it to feed off of.
 
Im gonna try running my refugium light 24/7 for a week and see what happens, hopefully it'll take off and help my phosphates.
 
I had the same problem a few months ago. I increased the light just a bit and it went from a small ball of macro to filling up the whole fuge. I even ended up removing some of it and putting it in my baffles. Even put a bunch in my hang on filter. So now im running macro instead of carbon in the fiilter lol. It growing like crazy.

24/7 lights will definitely help.
 
Mine grows 4x every three months or so.I agree with Biff,low to no nutrient=slow growth.Some fellow reefer suggested to me awhile back is to give chaeto a haircut every couple of months.The cut ends tend to absorb even more nutrient.Also when you see new growth(lighter green) and old growth(darker green),then cut some of the old growth out with scissors,not just pulling it out.
 
Cthegame, how long would you say you were running your fuge lights before the cheato started growing fast?

I'll have to try that reeffreak, i've kind of torn in so it wasn't such a brick to help open it up and entice new growth to no real great success so i'll try using scissors and maybe cut what i've got into two halves so i've got 2 clumps tumbling around.
 
24/7. I'm using one of those HG bulbs which is only 13 watts but procures high intercity light. Its brighter than my PC's
 
I run my lights 24/7 also. My fuge is so crammed with cheato that I can't even reach in there. I know I should probably trim it more often than once every six months (which is what I do now)...
 
I use a little clamp-on 25w desk light that I bought from the Big Box lumber yard. It's on the refugium for my 5g nano. I started out with a piece of cheato about as big as a softball. That was 3 weeks ago. Today it is cantelope size.

Combine nutrients with light and cheato will grow about 25% per month.

I trim the cheato in my 30g tank back monthly. I have a chunk in the refugium about the size of a volleyball. I trim 25--30% of it every month and toss it in the trash.
 
ok. when i go to my lfs to ask if they have it, how do i pronounce this. i always feel like a jackass cuz i read it and it sounds different in my head
 
Bifferwine said:
Yep. Algae doesn't need any special light to grow. Chaeto is just a type of algae.
Click to expand...

cheato will do fine under almost any light but from everything i've read and heard is it likes the 6500k spectrum the best.

I always tend to pronounce it Chato-Morfa or cheto-morfa but im probably way off, lol.
 

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