Too Much Chaeto?

[csababubbles]

a little side topic but if your macro ball is loaded with detritus and pods, wouldn't shaking out the detritus in a separate bucket also lead to losing a large population of the critters? is it still worth it to shake and clear out all the debris from the ball?

 

[Jobiwan]

LOL Actually Don, what you are looking at is 12 pounds of Walt Smith Fiji Mud mixed in with 200 pounds of oolitic in my 3 week old fuge, if I were lucky enough to have detritus and stuff rotting in there I would have a sand bed mature enough to support my Seagrass setup. You could also be referring to the thin film of detritus on the surface of the sand, I vaccuumed that out of one of my established tanks and threw it in there for bacterial seeding purposes. I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would plumb their system to have dirty tank water going into their fuge for all the previous reasons discused unless they wanted to justify the whole rolling ball thing, I guess the thing I have been beating to death is that to me a properly plumbed static chaeto fuge provides both nutrient export and fuge functions, which you wouldn't have with the rolling ball setup.

As for the shaking out the ball thing the whole point of the rolling ball is to not have any detritus in it, so theoretically shaking aint necessary, even if you did there won't be too many critters in it. Removal of chaeto from the static system loses some critters, but there are so many and they multiply so fast it just doesn't matter...

 

[Reeferdude]

Exactly! If your tank can't meet it's demand to supply a big ball with food, then it will die-off which is why I said it would probably be a much safer bet to go with a smaller ball and have it continuously grow fast and be trimmed, then to go with a huge ball and not be able to meet it's needs and have it die-off and add nutrients back into the water. Remember we are trying to get rid of excess nutrients in our systems not add them to our system. Just my 2 cents

I'm sure I've not seen Chaeto die off. I have seen it stop growing or slow. Maybe someone else will pipe in who has actually had it die from a lack of light or nutrients. Now Calupra is a different story. That stuff won't stay alive in my fuges after it reaches a certain size it dies, turns white, expels and turns the water green. Yuk!