Cheato Questions

this kind of freaks me out. this is on the reefcleaners website on the cheato page.
"If you add a large amount of Chaeto into your system, you may be adding nutrients rather than reducing them, and this is to be avoided."
Does anyone have some advise about adding cheato to your system?
Does it really add nutrients rather than reducing them?
HELP
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It's possible that if you added huge amounts it may die off due to lack of nutrients thus releasing nutrients into the water, but I doubt you would see any issues with the standard fist sized ball of chaeto.

 

I started with a very small amount of cheato, and it started growing very fast. So I trim it back regularly. The way I look at it (and I may be wrong) but as the cheato grows it's absorbing nutrients out of the water, so by trimming and disposing of some of the cheato you are getting the nutrients out of your tank. So by adding a very large amount of cheato to your tank you're kind of adding nutrients that has already been absorbed by some other source (like somebody elses tank). Makes sense to me, but again I may be wrong.

 

add a small amount..

 

Eh I've got a dense basketball sized chunk of chaeto in my fuge

 

You have the right idea. The reason you want to trim it is, the chaeto is sucking up all the nasty nutrients and storing some. By trimming it you insure that the chaeto doesn't grow so big that it exhausts resources in the tank, and thus dies releasing the stored nutrients back into the water.

 

cool thanks guys.

 

not sure about that theory. since ive been using chaeto my nuisance algae seems to be slowing greatly. the chaeto physically uses up available nutrients...then occasionaly you can tear a piece of the chaeto off, exporting nutrients from the system.