Why can't I grow chaeto??

I was under the assumption that chaeto wa an easy macro to grow in a sump / refugium but for some reason I cannot seem to get it to take off at all! I have had success with caulerpa, mangroves, halimeda, and gracilaria and have tried numerous times to grow chaeto with no luck. Every time I get some I just place in my refuge under 6500k lighting and within a week or 2 it gets loaded with what looks like cyano, yellow bubbly slime, and then just withers away to nothing and I wind up removing the pile of rot.

Am I missing something here? Do I need better flow aimed towards the chaeto or something?

Thanks!

 

I have the same problem it seems to all become brittle and there are pieces of it all over my fuge. It is seeming to keep my nitrates down though lol

 

I keep mine flattened out. When it gets cyano on it I turn it over. I don't let it get gunked up. My cheato grows pretty slow. I have low nitrates.

 

My chaeto is growing, not crazy but just did a harvest yesterday. My phosphates are close to zero but my nitrates are still really high. Its best to rinse it in your water change water before you pour it out every time you do a w/c. Sometimes chaeto gets denser, which is also growth and spreading it out some or splitting it may help with light penetration. I use the reverse lighting period. The off time allows for growth.

 

Mine grows good although I do need to flip it over every few days to keep growing nicely. I have a drain line from my dt that dumps right into a large mat of it and it is doing very well. I am actually going to take it out today and thin it out so I can trade some at the lfs for some credit. Every two months I go from a baseball size chunk to a about a basketball size chunk. I then fill sandwich bags with it and take them to the lfs for credit. He gives me $2.50 a bag, I take in 10 bags or so every few months.

 

My thinking is, if you have one, two or all of the above mentioned Marco in there, the Chaeto may be at the lower rung of the feeding ladder and starving out. It is one of the least macro in the phylum. If you have all the above and are having waste problems I think you should focus in another direction like bio load and excessive nutrients.

 

Good point but not having any major nutrient issues. I only have mangroves in my fuge at this time with a dsb and LR. In the past I had caluerpa and it made its way into the display and was a ***** getting rid of so I wanted to try the chaeto route but just not having any success. I am going to try others tips by spreading it a little / flipping etc. and see what happens. Thanks for the info and do agree that chaeto may be lower on the feeding scale so something else to keep in mind especially because my mangroves are growing like mad. Thanks!

 

UPDATE

I decided to do a little reading and saw that someone was using an old power filter to grow chaeto. It made sense that if this macro loves flow this could be a solution to get it to grow. Well anyway I placed a small ball in the empty chamber of an old aquaclear off the side of my refuge and within a week the chaeto has TRIPLED in size and is beginning to grow out of the filter now (think i need to trim some tonight when I get home)!!

I didn't do any other changes, light cycle is the same (opposite DT) so flow must have been the issue!!

Just thought I'd share 8)

 

thanks for the info fazool.