Almost free upflow cheato reactor/fuge?

[cilyjr]

I don't know what to call it but in 10 days it grew to needing to harvest. Not sure it's large enough to show any real nutrient export benefits for a my 230g plus system but it was fun to see how fast it grew.

The bucket was free the light I had from another failed project and the plumbing was scraps from other projects. Except the union.

 

[wpeterson]

Awesome!

Chaeto can grow much faster/more effectively for nutrient export with a lot of light/flow than people give it credit for. A reactor is always a good way to force the flow, but you can get 90% of the benefit with high light/flow in your refugium.

 

[cilyjr]

I personally feel that people put refugiums on tanks and they are nice and all but far too small to have any real nutrient export benefit.

I think that one really needs a refugium close to display tank size to get what people are looking for. Otherwise you have a little spot to cultivate pods.

This on the otherhand quadrupled in size in 10 days. So with that in mind I could likely harvest weekly. Maybe there's something to it. It's easier to harvest then an algae scrubber as well. We will see if growth rate keeps up. Right now the sides of the bucket are white which I'm sure helps with light reflection but when they start to grow coral inexpensive will chaeto growth rate suffer? I may wipe the sides weekly

 

[gwdemos]

Call it "Cheato El Cheapo"


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[s_kelley]

Need more details, how is it plumbed? I'm interested, could take the cheato section out of my sump

 

[cilyjr]

It has a 3/8 john guest inlet at the bottom and water enters through it from a manifold I built into my return plumbing. It then fills the 5 g bucket then leaves through the external durso seen in the pic. It's lighted with a led flood light (5000k) that is on the lid. The lid was cut out in the middle then the light fixture secured with 4 drilled holes and zip ties.

Maybe quadrupled in 10 days was generous but it more than doubled

 

[cilyjr]

Call it "Cheato El Cheapo"


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Yes I believe I shall

 

[s_kelley]

So water enters from the bottom of the bucket?

 

[cilyjr]

Yes.

 

[IPWitan]

Shouldn't one calculate the amount exported and not the size of the tank? What does it matter how big the tank is if it is well lighted all the way across. Plus, there has to be a point where the chaeto completely strips the nutrients from the moving water column. I guess I just never assumed that bigger is necessarily better.

Couldn't one simply take the export, dry it, weigh it, and hypothesis that one is exporting that much fish poop. Now, can we correlate fish poop to the amount they are feed. For example, say 50% of food is converted to fish/energy. The rest is inefficiency and/or not consumable. From there, one could at least have an educated guess how much they are exporting compared to what is imported.