what conditions does chaeto need: lighting etc?

I'm gonna test my nitrates this weekend!

How long did it take from when you added the chaeto to see a drop in your nitrates?

 

2-3 weeks.

 

Great idea! I'll test mine too, and then we can have a small "I lowered my nitrate naturally" party!...... just kidding!
But seriously, let's do this, I'm going to test today and in a week, we see what we get.

We'll call it the "Nitrate Club"!! Just another one of those silly jokes, we don't have to call it anything..... Nitrathon? LOL !!!

I amuse myself in an economical way these days

I'll post my results tonight.

- Mag.

 

Well, I know it's been a couple of days since I said I was going to post my Nitrates results. I did test them, just forgot I said I'd post them. So here they are:
tested on 3/26 my Nitrate reading was 20 (pretty high) I'll do a water change today, and that should help as well. Can't leave it all to the chaeto, specially when the count is so high.

- Mag.

 

Ok, I've been running 2 of those 23w spiral bulbs (6700k) in my old incandescent canopy & it's been growing pretty good. If it was tumbling I'd probably have even better growth too.

I'm setting up a second tank with a sealife sump & then I'll get a clamp light with that flood light (I looked at lowes and only found the 2700k so will buy them from that online site.) I have a real sump now so the overflow will come in strong and I can adjust the flow between the first and second chambers so 700gph should tumble that algae and It'll take off (hopefully.) My chaeto was the typical sandwich bag size you get online everywhere and now it's spread across the surface of a ten gallon sump (I spread it out so it gets the most light across the top.) I hardly have any nutrients as there's only a couple hermit crabs currently so the chaeto has probably been eating some red algae that promptly died and actually I wasn't even running the overflow because I haven't been home much lately and didn't want any flooding. I had a small whisper filter for a 10gal so there hasn't even been much flow in there at all. Today I turned on the overflow pump and we will see how that goes.

 

took mine a few weeks to start reducing nitrates in my refugium. i started with a spare T8 full spectrum bulb that i had lying around from a old tank. then i read that 6500K was the target for chaeto/mangroves so i swapped out the T8 fixture that sat over my refugium with a clip lamp (T8 wouldnt have worked long term as the mangroves would have no where to grow upward)

last week i accidentally BUMPED the clip lamp and it fell into the friggin refugium and blew up. very noob mistake, make sure that clip is darn secure!

so im currently using a little dual PC 10000K light that came with my original FUGE. im not sure why they gave me such high output lighting for a fuge originally, but hey its a useable fixture.

 

That sucks!!! Hope your breakers kicked on time! Deep fried fish anyone?
Glad nothing bad happened other than a spoiled bulb.

- Mag.

PS: My Nitrates have constantly been at 0 for a few weeks. Love my chaeto!