So I've had my tank up for nearly 2 years. My refugium has been incredibly hit and miss. I read posts about people needing to harvest weekly or byweekly. I think i've actually trimmed my cheato maybe twice in its life span. I started my cheato in a eggcrate box which I flip every other day. Without it the chaeto floats on the top and is only partially submerged. As far as flow goes my turn over rate is extremely high. 1.5 inch intake is completely open and there is still flow coming through the secondary intake using a herbie style overflow. I've tried putting in a powerhead but no matter where i put it in the fuge it gets clogged up in a day or two.
So a quick recap, I treated my tank with reeflux a few weeks ago and i think it completely halted a big portion of the photosynthesis in the corals and chaeto. I've stopped treatment a few days ago and added carbon to remove the medication as well as phosguard to remove the excess phosphate. Im currently sitting at 36ppm Nitrate and .07 phosphate. I've never been able to drop nitrates under 20 even with a 24/7 light cycle. Im using a Kessil A360x Refigum at about 3/4 intensity. I was using a h380 but I suspect that light was just too strong for the height i could mount it at ~ 14 inches. Current light is mounted 8 inches above.
Anywho, last night I finally saw less of a dip at night in PH. Currently the refugium is on 20 hours a day until i can get the nitrates to drop down to my "normal" levels.
Here is a photo showing what my chaeto looks like currently after a complete lighting cycle. Does this look normal? The growth looks brown and I always seem to get this floating goop that develops. It does look like good growth is happening due to the PH increases im seeing. Does this look similar to you others growing chaeto?
Here are the PH swings for the week. You can see last night the drop was much less and its currently at 8.24 and the display isn't even lit yet. So clearly there is some heavy photosynthesis happening. Same light schedule, same dosing, no windows were open to explain the increase in PH other than strong photosynthesis. You can see the night before it dropped pretty heavily.
So a quick recap, I treated my tank with reeflux a few weeks ago and i think it completely halted a big portion of the photosynthesis in the corals and chaeto. I've stopped treatment a few days ago and added carbon to remove the medication as well as phosguard to remove the excess phosphate. Im currently sitting at 36ppm Nitrate and .07 phosphate. I've never been able to drop nitrates under 20 even with a 24/7 light cycle. Im using a Kessil A360x Refigum at about 3/4 intensity. I was using a h380 but I suspect that light was just too strong for the height i could mount it at ~ 14 inches. Current light is mounted 8 inches above.
Anywho, last night I finally saw less of a dip at night in PH. Currently the refugium is on 20 hours a day until i can get the nitrates to drop down to my "normal" levels.
Here is a photo showing what my chaeto looks like currently after a complete lighting cycle. Does this look normal? The growth looks brown and I always seem to get this floating goop that develops. It does look like good growth is happening due to the PH increases im seeing. Does this look similar to you others growing chaeto?
Here are the PH swings for the week. You can see last night the drop was much less and its currently at 8.24 and the display isn't even lit yet. So clearly there is some heavy photosynthesis happening. Same light schedule, same dosing, no windows were open to explain the increase in PH other than strong photosynthesis. You can see the night before it dropped pretty heavily.
