Chaeto: at my wits' end

[AlgaeBarn]

Great to hear! I’m waiting on my ulva from @AlgaeBarn . Wish me luck!

Thanks for choosing AlgaeBarn! Let us know if you have any questions about sea lettuce

 

[haitian_reefer]

It arrived on Thursday. Looking forward to have the same success as you

 

[Freenow54]

I'm hoping someone can point out something I'm not seeing here. Main problem is the same as many other threads about chaeto dying, but I'm starting to think the reason is something that I don't/can't test for and dose/remove.

Any chaeto I put in my RSR 170 DT sump consistently dies a slow death, first turning white/clear in spots and then into a soft brown goopy mess. I'm running Triton, though the daily dosage is small since my corals are still small. Tank is around 1 year old and nitrate and phosphate are stable ~10ppm and ~0.1ppm respectively, tested with Red Sea Nitrate Pro and Hanna ULR. I've tried dosing chaetogro. I've tried dosing iodine. I've tried adding a small powerhead in the fuge for more flow, and removing it for less flow. I've tried an 18w red/blue Luxbird grow light, a 75 watt 5k flood, a 120 watt 5k flood, and a Kessil H380. I've tried 6h, 8h, and 12h photoperiods on each. Result is always the same, chaeto dies slowly.

Recent ICP tests have shown somewhat elevated tin and low iodine, but otherwise nothing strange. Been doing weekly 15% water changes for the tin, and dosing iodine did nothing for the problem, as I mentioned above.

However, I throw the same exact chaeto in a 5gal bucket, no flow, no water changes, no chaetogro/iodine dosing, simple 18w red/blue grow light or 75 watt 5k and it will grow fine as long as I periodically dose nitrate and phosphate. Sometimes I even forget to top off the bucket for a week and it's all good...

Any idea what's going on? Chaeto is by far the hardest organism to keep alive that I've ever kept in a reef tank, and I feel like that shouldn't be the case...

Ok so have not read answers yet. I have the same problem. However on a maybe related maybe not. There is a thread where the member had elevated Tin, and was experiencing way worse things. They did VERY extensive tests and eliminated things one by one until they found that the flexible PVC they were using was the problem, Apparently tin is used to make PVC flexible

 

[Freenow54]

It's funny you should ask, as I was reading the above comments, I started thinking about exactly this. I dosed Vibrant a couple times around 6-8 months ago because of a misguided attempt to solve a different issue. I stopped after getting nervous about the potential problems it can cause and haven't dosed it since. I also dosed Microbacter 7 during initial cycle, a decent amount more than the Vibrant, before I understood later that it possibly contains similar bacteria to Vibrant. However, I also used One and Only and BioSpira to cycle, much more than the Microbacter 7.

From what I understood, the bacteria in Vibrant doesn't stick around and reproduce in reef tank conditions, so I wouldn't expect it to have an effect 6months after the last dose. Is that not true? I do like where you are going with this, since Vibrant is known to knock out macro algae, but I don't know enough about how it works to judge if the chaeto death could be a long term effect of past Vibrant dosing.

There is a huge and ongoing thread about Vibrant. Nasty stuff and someone on it stated Vibrant will kill all algae as it is meant for that purpose. I like the separate container idea at the moment

 

[haitian_reefer]

There is a huge and ongoing thread about Vibrant. Nasty stuff and someone on it stated Vibrant will kill all algae as it is meant for that purpose. I like the separate container idea at the moment

I believe that’s what is causing my issue. I haven’t been able to grow chaeto since. It’s been several months since I used it. I will never use again!