So a couple days after the Chaeto going in the tank, I noticed something that looked a flower petal floating at the surface of the fuge. I said, "Hey, you look interesting." And scooped it out. Upon further inspection, we realized it was a baby starfish!
The new baby.
How I found him floating around.
At first, we weren't sure if it was alive or not, but we placed it in the display tank and decided to observe it over the next couple of hours. Luckily, the little guy was alive and now is making his home on our rocks. Husband was very excited by all of this and has claimed the starfish as his.
After some research, we've come to the determination that the starfish is an Asterina starfish who may or may not eat our Coraline algae. Apparently, the internet jury is still out as to whether they are dangerous to reef tanks. We figured we'll give him a chance and only get rid of him if he begins to harm our Coraline algae we've been trying to grow.
Speaking of harmful critters, the hermits have seemed to developed a taste for feather dusters. :( We have not seen our dusters out for a couple of days now. We are still hopeful they were not eaten.
As I said in a previous post concerning my nitrate levels, some of the difficulty may be from artificial filter materials. So, on Saturday hubby and I went to our favorite LFS, ReefCulture and bought some Chaeto algae (read more here on Chaeto Algae).
A side from that, we also bought about a pound of live rock rubble. The rubble will go into the bottom of the fuge to act as more biological filtration like its larger intact cousins in the display tank.
Here you can see the rubble at the bottom. The squiggly stuff is the algae.
After coming home, I immediately chucked the old stuff since I already modded the AC70 for the purpose of housing algae (here).
Chucking the old stuff.
And here is our new set up:
The bag is full of carbon and is the only artificial filtration in the tank.
I'm going to let it go for a couple weeks before testing my nitrate levels. We'll see how the Chaeto does. My next challenge however, is lighting.
LIGHTING CHAETO ALGAE
Lighting the algae isn't too specialist. However, I thought I'd make a quick little blurb about it.
From what I have read, Chaeto algae needs to be on a reverse lighting schedule. When you display tank's lights are off, your Chaeto needs to be on. This ensures that your algae is working 24/7 sucking nitrates and all the nasty stuff out. It'll still be growing during the day as well if it catches over flow lighting from the display like mine will.
Chaeto does not need specialized lighting, however my Rio Mini Suns may not be powerful enough to penetrate to the bottom. So, we're toying with the idea of a compact reading lamp. Like I said, it doesn't need any specialized lighting to grow so I'm not concerned with needing extra aquarium lighting.
I think this is the last catch up post for all of the
events in the last month. Essentially
this is just a fun post. So, we thought
the fish were healthy and then on night the larger fish was nose down. I though “Oh no, I’ve killed it” and then it
started swimming normally again. After
some googling, my fish was sleeping. Now
please enjoy this video as they dream their fishy dreams.
Shortly after getting the crabs, we noticed something
odd on the shells. It was a strange
white wormy formation. We kept it under
close observation and finally the worm grew large enough to reveal it was in fact
three feather dusters.
Shortly after that we found another one on a rock and
yesterday (December 6th) we have found yet another duster. I am super excited. They are supposedly good for the tank and
filtering and will reproduce quickly. I
think they are really fun to watch. You might too so you should watch. He put himself in hard spot to video tape, but you can see him coming in and out of his tube to feed.
We’ve been dosing the tank with Elemental from Brightwell
Aquatics to help with the growth of coralline algae. We have spots all over the rocks, it looks like
cotton candy exploded on them. Elemental
is essentially concentrated calcium and feather dusters build their casings out
of calcium. Since we started regularly
dosing, one of the feather dusters has doubled in size. Unfortunately, two riding on the hermit crab
I believe have died due to hermit crabby activities. I am hoping more pop up.
A while back, my cleanup crew consisted of ten snails
and three hermit crabs. Now, they
consist of five snails and maybe two hermit crabs.
What happened to the others?
We are assuming starvation. When we went to the LFS and read various
articles, all states one snail per 1 gallon of water. This seemed high to use we went the safer
route with ten instead of twenty snails.
Here is the important thing:
RESEARCH YOUR SPECIES. I have
turbo snails in the tank which are a larger variety. The reason I am out ten dollars now is
because after doing research when the deaths began, I have learned only one
turbo snail per ten gallons of water.
This may seem cruel, but I decided to let the tank
balance itself out despite husband’s idea to just remove snails. The tank seems to have stabilized at five
snails. I am happy to report there have
been no deaths in the last two weeks.
Yay!
Fear not! All two of my fish are still alive. Shortly after the shrimp’s death, I noticed a
disturbing skyrocket in nitrate levels.
They shot up to 100 ppm. FYI,
that is not good.
The fastest way to reduce nitrate levels are water changes. The first day I did a 60% water change and
brought the levels down to 40 ppm. The
next day I decided to be proactive about my nitrate levels since I had been a
little lax. I did an 80% water
change. Still, the nitrates were and are
holding at 40 ppm. I really, really,
really want them below 20. I want the
tanks I see on nano-reef so I need to have this under control.
Once again, I went to Nano-Reef to seek advice on this
problem. The members were helpful in
their suggestions and I will list them here in case someone wants a list of
things to eliminate in their nitrate problems:
1Nitrates in
the new water.
For me, I know this is not the case. When I first started my tank, I had no
nitrates. I also checked my new water
just in case.
2Artificial
Filter Media.
Artificial filter media, like sponges, can be a magnet
for housing debris that in turn creates nitrates. This can be a possible cause for me. I am currently using a sponge in my
AC70. Within the next couple weeks, I am
hoping to replace my artificial media with Chaeto algae which should
drastically reduce nitrates since that is what it intakes to grow.
3Faulty test
kits.
API test kits, like the one I use, do not have the
best reviews. I have been advised to
possible use Salifert for more accurate results. This is another possible cause for me. However, since I was planning on using Chaeto
algae in my filter, I am going to try that first.
Fwah… Have I gotten behind!So we will do this in a series of catch-up posts.
The weekend before Halloween, hubby and I were looking for
something to do and had the idea to go up to Reef Culture just to look at
stuff.Luckily, or unfortunately, they
were having a 20% off all black and orange livestock sale for Halloween.And can you guess what black and orange fish
is a great beginner fish?
Clownfish!
While also investigating, my husband being the deal hunter*
he is, decided we should get a fire shrimp since he would be 18% off.
After spending an amount I’d rather mention, we set off home
with our precious cargo.An hour later,
we were in the process of drip acclimating our first interesting inhabitants
that did not live in a shell.We
acclimated the fish for about forty-five minutes at a rate of one drip per
second, the shrimp we acclimated for one hour also at one drip per second.
All of our animals were well behaved and doing well for the
first two weeks.Then we noticed
something odd.First, the shrimp’s
whisker was shorter.Then, his claw went
missing.Next, his other whisker was shorter.
On closer observation, we realized he was getting well acquainted
with our circulation pumps.I posted my
concerns on Nano-Reef and someone suggested putting panty hose around the pump.We tried that and all was well for a few days
until it looked the panty hose was disintegrating in the tank.I assumed that was probably not healthy.So we did some rearranging, took the
pantyhose off, and closely monitored the shrimp for the following days.All seemed well.He molted and all of his missing appendages
came back.
Poor deceased Shrimp.
On November 5th, my mother in law went by the
house to drop off some chairs while we were at work.She said our shrimp looked nice.She thought it was normal behavior for the
shrimp to hug the pump… The shrimp got to friendly with it, and apparently the
pump did not reciprocate the feeling.So
now we have no shrimp.We are
brainstorming anti-shrimp eating pump tactics for any future purchases.
*= I say deal hunter because I frequently feel we never would have bought what we buy if there was no sale. Therefore, we would have saved money on an item we didn't need if it wasn't on sale. lol
Hello! Last week we got our clean up crew and let me tell you, they don't call them turbo snails for nothing! Those snails had the tank spic and span in two maybe three days time.
We bought our clean up crew from Top of the Reef on our way back from hubby's brother's wedding. Although we were tired and cranky, we wanted those snails because our tank had turned in to the Tank from the Black Lagoon.
We used a drip acclimation set up we built using an airline hose and a drip irrigation nozzle from Ace Hardware.
Drip acclimation set up.
Hermit crab snail mass.
Forty-five minutes later, the crew was ready for the tank!
Tank from the Black Lagoon
In three days with our 10 snail, 3 crab crew our tank went from the above to this:
Like a Boss.
Tell me how awesome that is?
But shortly after this miracle, tragedy struck. Tommy Crab of work group 2 was found dead swirling around the current. His lifeless body brought distress to my heart and immediately I thought of the possible ammonia swing. I had husband pull the body out. But after doing a crab head count, I was shocked! We still had three crabs! Who's body did we have?
Turns out he molted! Two days later, another one molted. I think this says our parameters are good. But I'm not sure.
Everyone was so relieved that no crab murders had happened that the snails threw a wicked party where they showed off their favorite hobby: Snail swinging! I'm only sorry I didn't get a longer clip. I had trouble finding my phone.
So, after sickness, work, school and a wedding this post is a little late in coming. Anyways, this a exciting post with a vendor review, two product reviews and my diatoms from last week!
Last weekend dear husband and I decided to take a lovely jaunt (aka 40+ minute drive) to some local fish stores to get an idea of their prices. We went to a fish store that claimed to have Mandarin Dragonets on prepared food. If I get a Mandarin, I really want it on prepared foods since my tank is not large enough to hold a self sustaining supply of copepods. So, this is important.
We had been to Top of the Reef before but this time we had specific things we were looking for. Top of the Reef is an LFS with flair. The interior is themed in a way that is both interesting and practical. The entire interior of the store is filled with sand. Not only does it give you a more "reefy" feel but it also avoids any potential hazards caused by wet floors. The front half is dedicated to supplies with display tanks showcasing some of their pricier fish and coral. The back half is where the live stock is kept.
One of the really cool things about Top of the Reef's set up is each tank is individually maintained. No tank is connected to the same water source. This greatly reduces the chance of sickness like ich. If one tank gets contaminated, it is limited to that one tank and does not compromise the rest of the stock.
Another cool thing about Top of the Reef is its liverock. Most liverock comes from either living reefs or, like the rock in my tank, from ancient fossilized reefs. The rock from Top of the Reef is completely man made and was created by the store's owner, Tony Saprano (I know, awesome name right?).
Tony is also a real hands on kind of dude. All three times we have been to the store, he was our guide through his products and livestock. He is extremely knowledgeable and is the type of hobbyist I love. He is in it for the animals, education, and ability for man to recreate a semi-natural ecosystem. A lot of people who own home aquariums are in it mainly because the fish are pretty. Tony is in it because he loves the ocean like I do.
While at Reef Culture buying our live rock, a store associate recommended we put in some good bacteria to help the tank along and establish a good biological filter. Unfortunately, they were out of stock at that time. We traveled to three of the closest LFS to Reef Culture looking for this bacteria only to be told multiple times it was a silly thought and doesn't exist. From our impressions, Reef Culture seemed to be the most top notch LFS in that area so we were fairly confident it did exist and the store associates were not aware. Our suspicions were confirmed at Top of the Reef.
PRODUCTS
The almighty MicroBacter7
The product is called Microbacter7. It is amazing! Microbacter7 is produced by Brightwell Aquatics. As the story was told by Tony, the founder of Brightwell Aquatics was a co-founder of the earlier established Kent Marine. However, the founder disagreed with some of Kent Marine's ideas and thought he could do better. So he left the company and started his own.
Before MicroBacter7, our nitrites were off the charts. We added 15 mL the first day to the tank and after 12 hours, the nitrites had dropped to .25 ppm (parts per million) by a full 24 hours, the nitrites had dropped to 0 ppm. I believe that should be enough said about this product. Husband and I are thoroughly impressed. Nitrites have been at zero ever since.
Aqueon Pro 100. Fits nice and snug next to the AC70's in take tube.
The next product review is the Aqueon Pro 100 heater. From a previous post, you know our tank temperature suddenly dropped and we had to buy a heater. This heater is fully submersible and be mounted vertically or horizontally. We decided to stick it out of the way next to the AC70 intake tube. I've said before we want to keep the main display as clutter free as possible.
What I like about this heater is it actually tells you what temperature you've set it to. The Neptune 50 watt we had does not. It only has a more or less heat knob. I have the heater set to maintain 77 degrees and so far it's done a fine job of doing so.
DIATOM UPDATE
As of last week, the diatoms are having a party in the tank. The tank is completely covered in the icky brown stuff and these photos taken last weekend, do not do the tank justice by what it looked like at the beginning of this past weekend. It was definitely time for a clean up crew.
Which shrimp do you think should go into our tank?
Our tank is almost done cycling. So here are the fun posts! Tell us what you think should go into our
tank. Anyone can comment without
registering, so have at it!
The CUC (clean up crew) is the first thing to go into a
freshly cycled tank. These are animals
that clean poo, algae, and uneaten food. Examples of
these critters are shrimp, snails, and crabs. We will have all three.
There are many varieties of shrimp and here are photos and
profiles of a few that we think would be interesting to go into our tank. We can’t have them all, so tell us what your
favorites are!
These little dudes are must.
They are non-negotiable. Not pretty critters, but our tank will have at
least one of them. They eat Aipstasia which is a nasty little pest that’s pretty until it takes over your tank. So, we think one of these little guys would be good to have on hand.
You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.
These are some awesome looking shrimp. That's mainly why we're looking at them. Most of the fun of a reef tank is having variety of species and a variety of looks. Some of these shrimp lend themselves very well to that.
These are small shrimp reaching a max length of 1" and we would probably buy them in a pair.
You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.
Why is the Sexy Shrimp sexy? Because it dances! It sways it's lower abdomen back and forth when it walks like a sexy women. These shrimp usually host anemones in the wild or home aquarium but will also host coral and rocks when anemones are not available. These too are small shrimp at about 1" to 1 1/2".
You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria and here's a video of the sexy dance!
Now, this is a type of shrimp we want. The Fire Shrimp is a cleaner shrimp. What is a cleaner shrimp? Think of Jacque from Finding Nemo. The shrimp will perch on a piece of a live rock and fish will come to be cleaned. Large species of fish will even open their mouths for it.
You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria and here's a video of a Fire Shrimp in cleaning mode.
Sorry for the absence. School has started and the rocks did not come in when they were suppose to. But as of last weekend, our tank was born!
The water was still a little cloudy. but the aqua scape looks good!
We got our order of rocks from Reef Cleaners. We ordered 15 pounds of dry Florida reef rock and put in the description the type of tank we had and the aquascape we were looking at doing. We were thoroughly impressed with the product but not the shipping time. We paid eight dollars for standard shipping which is fine but they did not offer any expedited shipping which would have been nice. Regardless, the customer service is fantastic and the product is fantastic so we will definitely order from them again. :)
Please enjoy a slide show of our many aquascaping ideas. We measured out the tank and craftily marked out the borders with a book, a nickle and a pair of scissors. On my day off from work, I pretended to do homework while I was really playing with rocks and watching Inuyasha. It is actually a really good show. The first dry rock runs ended up being the scape we tried to build.
A quick note when aquascaping: It will be difficult to replicate your structure in the tank... Apparently glass is slippery.
LIVE ROCK
We bought five pounds of live rock from Reef Culturein Tempe, AZ where we also bought a digital thermometer. The rocks are very pretty with some variation in magenta and deep purple Coraline algea. I am very excited for the colors.
A good view of all three rocks from the "back" or kitchen side of the tank.
CYCLING
We ran the tank for a day while debating on how to kick start the cycle. When doing all LR, you typically just sit back and wait for it to start. However, since we only had five pounds of the stuff, we were wondering if it would be enough to effectively start the cycle in what we considered a timely manner.
There are three manners of cycling I found while researching.
One is the fish cycle which I disagree with. You drop in a hardy fish like a clown or damsel and let that fish's waste be the kick starter. However, due to the potential high levels of toxin this is very stressful and potentially deadly to the fish.
The other two methods are fishless cycles. A fishless cycle is exactly what the name describes, a cycle without a fish. There are two (actually three) common methods I found.
The Dead Shrimp Cycle: You take a peice of shrimp harvested for human consumption, put it in your tank, and let it decompose. While this is effective for getting your cycle started, it is also effective for letting deadly bacteria grow in your tank. This is why the method is debated. It is great for some people and deadly for others. Deadly for their future fish, not the owners.
The Pure Ammonia Cycle: This is the method I use. It requires taking regular, non scented, house hold ammonia (like janitorial strength ammonia from Ace Hardware) and adding it to your tank. The drawbacks are the large concentrated amounts of ammonia and the effect it will have on your live rock, you may experience some algae die off. Always research how much will be safe for your tank. I put a teaspoon of ammonia in for 20 gallons.
The third/non practical cycle: I added this as a sort of third because it is not practical for first time hobbyists unless you have friends. This method requires taking filter media from an established tank and putting it into your own tank to kick start cycling.
So How Is Your Tank Doing?
Just great! Thanks for asking :)
We started cycling on October 2nd. It is now October 8th and we have our first diatom bloom! If you don't know what diatoms are, feel free to reference my Proposed Set Up post and the videos from IPSF on setting up a tank. In a nutshell though, diatoms are produced when there are high nitrate levels in a tank. Nitrate is a product of nitrifying bacteria (the production of which is the whole point of cycling) processing the ammonia.
Blurry pic of diatoms. A better view is in the video.
My tests have followed a good path of high ammonia=low nitrates=no diatoms and the moment my ammonia started decreasing, bam! low ammonia=high nitrates=diatoms. So I will continue to monitor my levels.
I've been tracking my nitrogen cycle according to this chart:
As you can see, my tank is accelerated. This because using the pure ammonia method put me at day ten on day one. It took a few days for my nitrates to catch up which is to be expected. Now I am waiting for the nitrate drop. I do not have the test kit for Nitrites yet (in the mail from Amazon) so I do not know what my levels are.
When the cycle is done or close to done, I will post a similar chart with my specific data. I've been recording all of my tests and keeping notes of any changes in a log on Excel.
Final Thoughts:
Here is the break down what the tank specs are: Tank size: 20 gallon long (30x13x13) Lighting: one AI Sol Super Blue Filtration: modified Aqua Clear 70 Power Filter Waterflow: two 600 Maxi Jet Pro Circulation Pumps Heater: Well, interesting story. We live in Arizona and it is, well, hot. So I did not think I would need a heater for another month. Thanks to Murphey's Law, our tank temperature alarm went off at 5:45 am saying the water was 75.4 degrees. Before the unexpected cold front, it was sustaining 77.5 all night. So, I am getting ready to install the heater I got in my free deal. I don't really like it so we were planning on upgrading next month. We borrowed from next month's budget and a Aqueon Pro 100 watt heater is on its way.
Be a geek! And they definitely made one of me. The people at Reef Geek were awesome to work with and I'm excited my first review gets to be on their awesome service.
We ordered an AI Sol Super Blue with a hanging kit and controller and two Marineland Maxi-jet Pro circulation pumps on Labor day weekend. We did not receive our items however until this past Tuesday. That is not the fault of Reef Geek though. AI did not ship their new orders of controllers on time and we were told that before hand.
During Labor day weekend we were internet window shopping on different lights and found an awesome deal on the AI Sol at aquacave. However, after spending an hour or so doing vendor research some of the Aquacave reviews were quite terrifying and made us feel uneasy investing such a large amount of money.
So, I went on Nano-Reef and did a quick search to find out where other reefers were getting their AIs from. That's where I came across Reef Geek and many people singing the praises of a man named George.
Hubby and I decided to look into ReefGeek but, unfortunately, the price was too high. Then we decided that it couldn't hurt to ask for a price match. After all, the worse they could say was no.
We sent an e-mail to George, who is the sales manager, and he came back with the response of, "We can beat AquaCave's $610 at $600." And we bought the lights! Then we threw in the two Maxi-jets not only because we were so pleased with their service, but also because they had the cheapest price for the Maxi-Jets.
They also did not charge the card until our items were ready to be shipped and when they arrived, they also included this sweet bumper sticker:
I don't like bumper stickers on my car. So it's in the window on suction cups instead.
In summary, I would definitely order from Reef Geek again and I too am singing the praises of George. They were so easy and lovely to work with. I look forward to my future purchases with them!
This weekend hubby and I were productive and busy little bees on the tank. The lights are hung, cords are managed, and the refugium is glued. Here are the photos of our progress!
AQUA ILLUMINATION SOL SUPER BLUE LEDS
The hanging brackets. We found out that a stud is above one of the brackets and so we used a sheet metal screw instead of the toggle bolt that came with the kit. The other one did not have a stud behind it so we used the original toggle bolt.
There was a ton of excess wire from the hanging kit and we didn't want to cut it because we plan to move in the near future. Hubby thought of this creative way of weaving the wire through the mounting rails. We later secured them with zip ties which you can see in the lower photos.
Once we took care of the hanging, the next dilemma was cord management. This was solved by using white electrical tape to make the cords much less conspicuous and running them down the walls.
The make the turns crisp and clean, we nailed in small wire nails. You can barely see the head in the photo.
Another example of the nails.
This is how it looked before the white tape.
After the white tape.
So, there is an extra cord in our set up that looks really ugly because we didn't try to hide it. The cord is the data cord connecting to the AI controller. The reason we didn't photograph it or hide it is because we have a wireless adapter coming in three months so we just temporarily made it a little on the ugly side and kept these photos since this is more to the idea of what we'll have with the wireless adapter.
REFUGIUM MOD
I did my refugium mod based off of these directions by El Fab at Nano-Reef. I skipped the directions for modding the intake tube since my tank is not a pico tank.
The materials I used were:
DAP Household Sealant
an Xacto knife
Scissors
Toothpicks
AquaClear 50 powerfilter (or higher, I used 70)
DAP Household Sealant bought at Ace Hardware
photo from the top of modded refugium
The divider. Make sure the tips are facing away from the algae. It'll make clean up easier. I ended up cutting those tips off.
Photo of the front and overflow screen.
So, that is what we did this weekend. We also put in an order for 15 pounds of Florida base reef rock from ReefCleaners.org and will be getting live rock next weekend from our LFS (local fish store). In short, we're planning to begin cycling next weekend! So look forward to that and probably a demo of the lights since we'll most likely be taking video. Oh, and we decided to hold off on the algae until putting in the clean up crew which we will probably also order from ReefCleaners.
I made up this spread sheet to show the value of Craigs listing and being aware that people might want to get rid of stuff for free, oh and I forgot to add on the liverock, sand and tank, but I'm sure you get the idea without that stuff:
The lights of the century have arrived! DH (Dear Husband) will be hanging them this weekend. Then we will be ordering our base rock.
Right now this is the plan:
For the initial set up of a now 20 gallon long tank, we will be spreading the costs over some weeks. Right now this is $40 a week so you can see if you want to take longer setting up your tank it can conceivably be done. We have determined that $40 seems to be the sweet price for all of the equipment.
We also ordered an Aquaclear 70 powerfilter.
That will be converted into a mini sump and refugium.
The above image is approximately what my refugium will look like. In addition to the Chaeto algea (apparently pronounced "kay-toe" but I still call it a "cheeto"), my powerfilter will also house my tank heater and thermometer, a carbon filter, and a Mini Rio Sun led light from my Craigslist purchase . I want to put my ammonia detector in there as well, but I don't think I would be able to see it clearly. So that has yet to be determined. I want to keep out as much equipment as possible in the display tank.
For all of you who are new to the hobby, you may be wondering, "What is a sump, a refugium, and Chaeto algea?"
"Won't it turn it orange?" on the topic of adding Chaeto before or after cycling at NanoReef.com
What is a sump?
A sump is a secondary source of water for your tank. Traditionally it sits in, lets say, a 10 gallon or larger tank beneath the main system. This secondary tank connected via pumps and pipe to your display tank increases the volume of water, filtration, and aeration. Therefore logic also dictates it can allow you to have a larger bioload. But please don't overcrowd your fishies.
A sump also allows you to have an out of the way space for your filtration media. Things like carbon filters, a refugium with Chaeto algea and more liverock, all of that can be put into the sump. It can also house your heater, thermometer, protein skimmer, calcium reactor, all of the things you don't want in the tank people will see. So it's pretty beneficial.
My Aquaclear power filter will only provide an extra 2.5 gallons. I do not want a larger sump because of the extra expense and space. But it will serve its purpose.
What is a refugium?
Webster describes a refugium as an area where an organism can survive through undesirable conditions. Like a house when a hurricane is coming through can be deemed a "refugium".
This definition holds true to a reef tank as well.
A refugium is a body of water separated from the display tank. It is used to house organisms that would not survive in the tank. For example, I also plan on breeding copepods to one day get a Mandarin Dragonet. If the copepods were in the main tank, their numbers would be decimate by, not only the Dragonet, but by the other fish and crustaceans as well. So, I need to have a breeding colony set aside to feed my fish.
A Mandarin Dragonet. Hard to keep in smaller tanks due to feeding requirements.
A refugium also houses algae that are beneficial in natural filtration. Chaeto algae is on of those. Additionally the Chaeto acts a food source for copepods. So, it's doubly beneficial to the tank.
What is Chaeto algae?
Cheato algea (Chaetomorpha linum) is a free floating fibrous algae that sucks nitrates and phosphates from a tank. Nitrates and phosphates are killers in a system and need to be kept in check.The algae is an active growing algae and can be kept on a reverse lighting schedule. This means when my tank lights are off, my fuge light will be on. This will stimulate growth in the algae and reduce the nightly pH fluctuations associated with reef tanks.
Chaeto algae
Can Chaeto algae be added while the tank is cycling?
This is a hot topic question. The only conclusive answer is there is no conclusive answer. Some people have had the algae live through the cycling and make it milder, others have had it just up and die off. I will be putting mine in at the start of the cycle. We'll see what happens. It's about $5, so not too bad of a price if it dies. If it does not make it, I'd probably just buy another ball of it. But we haven't ordered the Chaeto yet, so we may change our minds.
Here are some links regarding sumps, refugiums, and Chaeto algae:
http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/bcorsettingup/a/aa020298sumps.htm
http://rettalbot.suite101.com/what-is-a-refugium-a40610
http://www.reefchaeto.com/
Look forward to the start of the tank set up! Plus a vendor review of ReefGeek!
