Growing Cheato

[wrfreeman]

I thought I would post this short video of how I'm growing my cheato, but R2R doesn't allow videos I guess. I've been pretty successful with it so far. I just trimmed it back to a baseball sized ball. It was three times that size yesterday which was two week's growth of the size it is now. If I let it go a month, then it almost completely fills the center of the sump and gets tangled on everything to where it stops tumbling. I believe that's the key to growing cheato. It has to tumble. To achieve this, I placed a small Cobalt power head at the bottom of the sump directed straight out or slightly downward. This causes a circular crosscurrent in the water moving across the sump. This causes the cheato to stay suspended in the water column and just tumble continuously. I use a clip-on shop light from Home Depot with a 6500K fluorescent bulb which I run from 7 pm until 10 am. This provides some pH balancing during the night when the DT lights turn off. All that tumbling current in the sump also keeps the detritus from settling. I hope this helps!

PS: If anyone knows a way to post a video here, please let me know:)

 

[wrfreeman]

@Engloid
@egilmore

 

[CastAway]

To post a video, if you're using Tapatalk on your phone, switch to web view, then paste the link from somewhere like YouTube.

 

[wrfreeman]

Thanks Jeff. I need to start using Tapatalk. What I need for this post is to upload my own video. I suppose I could upload the video to YouTube and then link it. I may try that tonight.

 

[Engloid]

The ball of chaeto I got from you is in my 20g and I'm trying to keep it tumbling. It keeps getting stuck on stuff. I may just clean the entire tank out and leave nothing in it but the chaeto...but I'm sure it will then get sucked up onto the side of the powerhead.

 

[wrfreeman]

Hmmm. I had to keep playing with the location of the power head and the direction it shoots out until I got it where it was causing a circular flow. Mine does get stuck on stuff when it get bigger or if it drifts out of the eddy.