I read maybe the first 3 lines of your response before I gave up. Cheato will not and can not ever out compete algae for nutrients. This is common well know science that can’t be debated. You can reduce nutrients the algae receives but lets use a little logic not even account for algae vs cheato..Nonsense! The sea hare might be able to do it! If not, I'll get another one!
This is a 0 water change tank with a chaeto refugium. What I've found is that if you don't get enough chaeto it won't really take off and absorb nutrients any faster than the hair algae in your display, or in the refugium for that matter. So partly it's on me cheaping out on chaeto...I thought it would grow faster than it did. I think it takes a while for chaeto to adjust to the tank's water before it actually grows.
It's a pretty ambitious plan for a newbie, though at least I have some freshwater experience. The good thing is, if I'm successful I will have eliminated water changes with virtually no drawbacks. In fact, the plus will be that you will have algae eaters eating for free!
Part of what I'm hoping with the algae eaters, such as the sea hare, is that if they keep the algae in the display low, the nutrients might get picked up more by the chaeto in the fuge. I'm not sure how much I'm gonna need to combat the algae with critters though. It might be silly if I need 4 sea hares to keep the hair algae down, but I do like sea hares!
Let’s say you have a tank with cheato in the display and cheato in a fuge.. day one starting out same size.. all things equal. You have a display running 30-40-50 times turn over per hour vs a sump getting 3-4x and a fuge within that sump getting maybe 1-2x per hour.
Which do you think is going to have a greater chance to receive more nutrients?
Let’s look from another view of same setup. You have a main display blasting 100’s of par for corals all day while a fuge is receiving at best the same time amount of light but maybe 1/2 the par if you bought the best of the best for everything for it..
Which is going to better be able to utilize those nutrients?
You can’t use a mild growing macro algae to getting at best 1/10th the lighting and nutrients as a fast growing hair algae with better lighting and more nutrients.
Want proof? Do a search for algae turf scrubber vs cheato fuge.. there is many documented allocations of the fact that algae grows faster under same conditions.
You didn’t solve this with cheato and a few cuc.. you solved this by getting your input under control and more balanced perameters which combines with cheato starved the algae that wasn’t eaten. FYI.. the algea is still in your tank it’s just floating in the water domante waiting for when you make another mistake.. you never get rid of algea onky it’s vids me presence on surfaces..