Has my cheato died

[Toni1984]

Hi there, my cheato has stopped growing and had gone really dark green with and covered in thick algae, it's been like this for a couple of weeks now. Should I take it out and dispose or leave it be and turn the lights up a bit. At the moment I run a 150w ufo light for 10h when the dt light is off.
Many thanks

 

[BertieBones]

Looks alive to me

 

[Toni1984]

Looks alive to me

It's just seems to be a very dark green and started out a nice fresh light green, wasnt sure if that was a bad sign

 

[scriptmonkey]

Are you tumbling it in your fuge?

 

[Toni1984]

It's in my fuge but doesn't swim to tumble very well, how do you get it to tumble, ibdont seem to get a lot of flow in the middle compartment of my sump

 

[sghera64]

It's in my fuge but doesn't swim to tumble very well, how do you get it to tumble, ibdont seem to get a lot of flow in the middle compartment of my sump

I had a similar experience twice.

It came back both times but for different reasons.

I now add iron daily with dosing pump. I manually ‘turn ‘ the chaeto with a stick. I waaaaaay under dose any bacterial supplements (Dr Tim’s, Vibrant, etc). I measure potassium levels 1-2 times per month and find they drop (two weeks ago down to 330 PPM. Maybe macro algae deplete potassium (IDK). But ICP-OES confirms depletion in my system.

I also have Ulva growing with my chaeto. When I harvest, I try to restore balance between the two.

 

[snorklr]

before i got a chiller, my tank got too hot and killed off all the softies....and after that the chaeto looked like yours....dark green and very tight and kinky....it never went back to normal...used to harvest it regularly and it didnt die but just stopped growing....maybe the lighting in the sump is toasting it? or die off of something poisoned it?

 

[scriptmonkey]

I have seen some that use a powerhead to add flow to get it to tumble.

 

[tupes]

To me it looks very alive

I have 2 tanks both running cheato. One is an AIO and I have the cheato in one of the overflows with a cheatomaxx light on the back GROWS DARK GREEN VERY THICK

the other tank is a 10 gallon rimless that I added a hob aquaclear filter with a led from Amazon. do to the brightness of the led it grows a BIT LIGHT GREEN AND THINNER.
(This one I flip once or twice a week because it does not tumble and it get almost white on the side with the light )

I'll tank photos of this tonight.

 

[reelredfisah]

Mine grows to big to tumble. Honestly I know they say it should but I have never been able to keep it tumbling unless I throw 90% of it away. But it’s never caused an issue for me.

 

[tupes]

Here are the photos. 2 are from my 65 aio with the rear chamber and my HOB converted filter to reactor.

Feel free to ask questions