Question about Chaeto and Refugium

Subsea · Dec 2, 2020

daboom319 said:
My vision? I just want to have a tank with fish and coral I guess my vision is coming as I go. I want to eventually be able to add both lps and sps. Maybe next year upgrade to a larger tank.

As far as media, just want to know if I am missing anything or what works well in a sump?

Considering your novice experience level, stop thinking SPS until you understand nitrification, denitrification, carbonate & bicarbonate alkalinity, Carbon dosing, nutrient recycling and nutrient export. Equipment will not replace knowledge. Your end goal determines your equipment needs. I suggest you stick with softies & fish and enjoy a low maintenance tank while you learn how to swim before doing triathlon.

Subsea · Dec 2, 2020

PS. Pardon the double post. Wrong button. Here are my two display tanks. Lights on 120G were just turned on for picture. Note no SPS after reefing for 50 years. Just call me a Laissez Faire reefer.

Faccia di Pesce · Dec 2, 2020

Subsea said:
Considering your novice experience level, stop thinking SPS until you understand nitrification, denitrification, carbonate & bicarbonate alkalinity, Carbon dosing, nutrient recycling and nutrient export. Equipment will not replace knowledge. Your end goal determines your equipment needs. I suggest you stick with softies & fish and enjoy a low maintenance tank while you learn how to swim before doing triathlon.

Thanks. That is what I plan on doing. I was speaking long term. So I agree

William Morris · Jan 4, 2021

schuby said:
For my tank of many fish and mostly SPS with a few LPS, my target for phosphate is 0.1-0.2 ppm and my target for Nitrate is 10-20 ppm. I only started running chaeto after regular water-changes didn't keep those values in check. I always ran a skimmer, but it didn't always take much out in the early months.

What you want to be very diligent about is not letting your phosphate (PO4) or nitrate (NO3) levels go to zero. Undesirable things happen to your tank when either of those are zero that can take months to recover. To this point, you shouldn't run chaeto if the effect of it is your phosphate or nitrate get completely removed. A young tank or a lightly-stocked tank doesn't always require every nutrient-export method to be running. If you want to run chaeto with low levels of PO4 and NO3, then just keep the chaeto small. The duration, color, and intensity of the light also affects the growth of chaeto.

Lastly, if your trace levels of Iron go to zero, then the chaeto will die. It may takes months or years (or never) but if your chaeto gets big and grows fast, then it may consume more iron than your water-changes are replacing. This happened to me and it took me 6-8 months to remove all the excess phosphate ( >1.0 ppm) from my system (it binds to your rock and sand). When my chaeto died, it turned grayish-white, thin, and limp. I didn't know at the time what that meant so I try to pass it on to others. It has never died again after I started dosing small amounts of iron, since around 1 1/2 years ago.

When the chaeto died, did your phosphate just gradually increase over time and you missed the connection with the chaeto? How often were you testing for phosphate?

schuby · Jan 4, 2021

I'm sure my phosphate went up immediately. I wasn't testing it very often and I didn't have my Hanna testers yet. Testing phosphate, nitrate, and alkalinity frequently was new for me with this 2nd tank. In my first tank, I mostly only tested salinity and calcium.

If I had been testing phosphate more regularly at an earlier stage, I probably would've figured out that the chaeto was dying. I could have removed it and saved myself this huge set-back. Hindsight is usually 20/20!