I work a USXpress, but my office is at the airport. Where do you work because I am going to be out tomorrow evening anyway and can meet you somewhere when you get off work with a fat bag of cheato filled with pods. You can use the cheato in your refugium or shake the pods out of it into a bucket of water and toss the algae or put it in another farm tank to keep you in pods. Personally I reccommend the refugium approach unless you want to shake some of the pods out to feed something right away. Can't get em all out if you tied anyway.
Cheato is Cheatomorpha, a macroalgae like calurpa that people use in refugiums to suck up nutients that would otherwise feed bad algae in the tank.... it's also a great media for growing pods if you have a refugium. At risk of starting a war.... many people argue about whether cheato or calurpa is the better macroalgae for a refugium. Calurpa can be invasive and move into your main tank and make itself at home in your rocks. It's also got some toxicity issues to some fish I've heard. I have a little calurpa and lots of cheato in my fuge and I have noticed that the calurpa that makes it into the display tank on occasion is not exactly digested by the fish well if you now what I mean. Cheato on the other hand gets sucked up by my tang like a treat without producing dangling undigested poop "vines". I've pretty much decide to stick with cheato despite the advice of some calurpa fans after I did some more reading and after I saw the digestion problems with calurpa in my tang. They are both nutient exports... they suck up bad stuff and store it inside itself and you prune it and toss it and it takes the bad stuff with it. Which really does a better job on phospahtes and nitrates I don't know for sure but I do know both of those levels are pretty darn good in my tank and the amount of calurpa I have is insignificant compared to the cheato I have.
A true refugium is exactly that... a refuge. Usually it's a refuge for pods and things like that to breed. Lately the trend is to use it as a filter as opposed to the old style wet dry filters which caused as much trouble as they solved. (nowdays you'll see alot of wet dry tanks with bioballs removed and filled with water and macroalgae as people recycle the trickle filters for refugiums)
Cheato looks like thick tightly curly hair that is green. If I shake the cheato in my refugium lots of pods run through my pump.... if I am lucky some live to make it to the display tank if not my fish love life and dine like kings. Some people arrange refugiums so the water doesn't have to go through the pump after passing through the macroalgae. This method is great as some pods can migrate to the main tank on a regular basis without the spin cycle of a pump impeller. basically it involve your refugium being slightly higher than the tank... usually haging on the back with a little pump running water up into the refugium which then flows through and out into the tank. I should probably do a little one myself someday.
Anyway, I'll take a bag with me tomorrow and expect to catch up with you after you get off work.
