I know practically everyone will insist that chaeto will outperform mangroves when it comes to nutrient export...however, I'm starting to doubt that and here is why.

I've had a bunch of chaeto in my fuge for a while and everything was going fine. I added several mangroves and over a period of a several weeks the chaeto ball has pretty much disappeared and the mangroves are putting on leaves and long roots. What started as a basketball size piece of chaeto is now almost nothing at all...maybe a ping-pong ball size.

Sure chaeto grows fast but the composition is mostly water as opposed to mangroves which are a solid composition. So if you look at it in terms of material mass (say dehydrated matter) I'm not so sure that chaeto really is pulling out more bad stuff.

What I know for sure is that I added a bunch of mangroves and the chaeto vanished. Refugium lighting is two Kessil A150s, one is the Amazon sun 6700k spectrum and the other is the kessil sky blue 10,000k spectrum.

I know of others that have observed this same thing and I'm just looking for others thoughts.

I could be totally wrong in this theory...

Randy