Refugium lighting help

[scubasteve80]

I had a major refugium failure (my fault) and lost my chaeto mass and my lighting set on fire. Fun times, but what I get for a $20 light. Anyways, I bought a new trigger sump and a kessil h80 tuna flora. I've had both for about 5 months now and I cannot get cheato to grow. The $20 fire hazard light grew cheato so fast I couldn't believe it. Now II have hair algae growing in the sump and display and the cheato is again shrinking. Any ideas? I do have higher than usual nitrates as I figure out this new sump. I've tried the light on bloom and got only hair algae, tried different intensities and no luck.

 

[Doctorgori]

I had my sump lit by two of the Kessil cans but admittedly some cheap Amazon LED’s did just as well…
I guess sump fixture choice is governed by rust and fire tolerance,,,honestly almost any light works…..
I’d stick with that Kessil and perhaps try iron additives or chaeto grow or similar
What does the DT front glass look like? you scraping off the soft brown, olive or green stuff, or is it the hard green stuff that’s difficult to remove?
or is it just pink/purple coralline dots?
If you are scraping algae off the glass in the DT daily, then the tanks can obviously grow algae and I wouldn’t add more ferts …
BTW anecdotally it appears some tanks can grow caulerpra and or Ulva but not chaeto…no clue why of if that’s even a valid thing

 

[scubasteve80]

Ya I get soft green coating the sides and back more, but I think that's due to light reflecting off the walls since the dt is in a recessed space. I did a major hair algae and detritus cleanup today, and a 30% WC to reduce nitrates. Also sped up the feed on the floss roll, hopefully that helps reduce nitrates so my snails don't die and can keep algae in tank under control letting the macro algae eat better.

 

[Koh23]

Try to lower light intensity/duration....

My chaeto grows great under plain 10w flood led reflector, for nutrient export i tried same reflector, but 20w, and in few days my chaeto got thinner, starts to get white color......

Changed back to 10w light... it took some time, week or so, but then it start to grow again, now i had maybe not maximum growth, but, from hand size ball it takes month to fill whole chaeto area of sump, wich is 40x25x25cm, or roughly 25l of volume.... not bad, considering i only have 4 small fish, and no matter how i feed nitrates stays below 1, po4 undetectable....

So..... go one step back, and see what happens, better is not always better

 

[scubasteve80]

Try to lower light intensity/duration....

My chaeto grows great under plain 10w flood led reflector, for nutrient export i tried same reflector, but 20w, and in few days my chaeto got thinner, starts to get white color......

Changed back to 10w light... it took some time, week or so, but then it start to grow again, now i had maybe not maximum growth, but, from hand size ball it takes month to fill whole chaeto area of sump, wich is 40x25x25cm, or roughly 25l of volume.... not bad, considering i only have 4 small fish, and no matter how i feed nitrates stays below 1, po4 undetectable....

So..... go one step back, and see what happens, better is not always better

Thanks, I'll give that a shot

 

[Doctorgori]

eitherway, no pressure. If it can’t grow chaeto so what, try a different type. Even caulerpra, I’ve kept it without it going sexual, besides that varies by type anyway. Ulva works and so do reactors… If nothing works and the tank just can5 grow algae, then that’s a win also

 

[reeferpat137]

What was the light the caught fire. I have a 24$ amazon light. I just wanna make sure