Originally Posted by
Garf
From personal experience - I used to grow cheato in my sump, both in an immature system and in a mature set-up. I fear that the illusion of cheato reducing N + P is widespread, especially in newish set ups. It is widely accepted that cheato will reduce nutrients but I think the effect is minimal, compared to a waterfall scrubber at least. It is understandable that this illusion is so widespread because new set ups often have undetectable nutrients for a while ( contributed to cheato ), but it is actually just a very low waste organics load. When a system such as mine is fully mature it is quite evident that cheato cannot keep up. This is witnessed by oxygen production through photosynthesis. In a cheato ball, very little oxygen is developed, whereas a fully operation waterfall evolves oxygen at very noticeable rates. I would estimate that ( in my system at least ), photosynthetic growth from cheato was in the region of 5% of that I get from my waterfall.