What can cheato handle? I need to kill everything else.
I have two balls of cheato that different reef club members have handed to me from different systems. I think that one of the owners has several problems with his system currently and in the recent past and the other is a newbie. I would like to put this cheato through the extremes of what it can handle as far as temperature, lighting, and salinity. I would like to kill off everything accept for the cheato itself. So what is the fundamental environmental niche of the common species of cheato kept in the reef aquariums? I would like to avoid chemicals or anything else that could anyway leak back into my system, but will listen to ideas there as well.
You mean you want to kill off anything living in them?
You could try sticking them in freshwater... same basic principle of doing a fresh water dip with a new fish (which I'm too chicken to ever try). I don't think it would hurt the plant much at all... all its going to try to do is absorb more water (to ease the concentration gradient of salt inside the cells to outside the cells... more salt inside than out means more water going into the cells), and the cell walls will protect them from lysing like animal cells would... and animal cells and bacteria are mostly what you're going to be trying to kill... they should lyse pretty fast.
At least in theory that should work. I don't specifically know much about chaeto, but most plants behave the same way.
I'm starting to like TR more and more. Thank you for that answer. I like to not just here what to do, but why and that all makes perfect sense to me. I asked about this in another forum and someone suggested a quick fresh water dip, but didn't define quick or say why they thought it was safe on the cheato.
i would agree with the fresh water dip as well, for the reasons listed above..
obviously the easy answer is to not use this cheato, but... lets have more fun with this one..
i would setup a small tank, say 5 gallons.. use a UV sterilizer, with low flow.. and high flow in the tank (well high for a small tank)
FW dip the Cheato then get it in the small tank.
the high flow would hopefully keep a lot of stuff in the water column, and the UV (with a slow flow) will kill whatever goes through it.. use this as your QT tank, and let it go with lighting for a few weeks.. and monitor..
this should be a safe way to get rid of any nasties you dont want..
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Having not owned cheato before I suppose I'm not used to trashing or flushing any of it yet, lol. I am also pretty sure they are two different species that I have. One a very dark green and tightly packed the other open a very light. I know their color and grouping(?) changes depending upon on how they are kept, but they are pretty different and have stayed different over a good period of time under the same conditions.
I have a UV sterilizer that is supposed to be part of a VIA Aqua multiskimmer. What do you think of laying that in the aquarium with the power heads inlet near by so it can slowly pull some water through?
for mine it seem the top parts that get the most light and flow go the most, and all the new growth seems to be a more vibrant green color..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordonious
I have a UV sterilizer that is supposed to be part of a VIA Aqua multi skimmer. What do you think of laying that in the aquarium with the power heads inlet near by so it can slowly pull some water through?
yes, running this would be helpful. just remember you are going to be using this an a QT setup, so its important to sterilize it before you put it to another system so you don't transfer any of the stuff you were trying to get out
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