There is a big difference between macroalgae and actual vascular plants. No, I take that back; there are many big differences between them. Plants do most of their transpiration going from roots to leaves, that it, they take in food & water frim their roots and "exhale" through their leaves.
Algaes do not have roots, or leaves, and they don't have a vascular system. They are arranged in such a way as each individual cell is exposed to the outside water for direct interaction. This is a good enough method for it, but it leaves the algae at the mercy of it's environment. When individual cells are exposed to an osmotic pressure significantly different from what they're used to, they will either lose all their fluids or take on so much that the cells rupture. When marine cells are put into freshwater, the fresh water rushes into those cells, bursting them. It doesn't take very long, either.
This is why you can't wash macroalgae in freshwater.
The good news is that it's entirely possible that some survived, and if you break up your cheetobrick so as to expose as much of it to the light as possible, any surviving bits may well spring back and regrow.
Wash your brick, if you still have it, in a bucket of SALT water, and if you have some anti-cyano stuff, use it in a separate container for awhile. Then put any promising looking bits back into your fuge.
That'll take awhile, though, so you might want to just get more chaeto.
By the way, why did you decide to clean out the fuge in the first place? Normally you wouldn't want to touch it. NOW you DO, though, or else you'll just have a cyano problem, so clean it out and RESTART it before adding any new chaeto.
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