Study says fish don't like the smell of seaweed, is my refugium causing my fish stress due to odor?

[UCReefer]

Young corals, fish turned off by smell of damaged habitats ? Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

This is a really interesting experiment done by georgia tech that suggests fish and coral larvea can smell the difference between living corals and dieing corals as well as the difference between healthy hearty corals and healthy finicky corals like acros.


It also says that fish choose not to swim in water that has traces of seaweed. Even though my refugium only has cheato in it i'm worried that it may be making the water "smell" bad to my fish, in turn making them more stressed. I would be even more worried if i had a more diverse fuge but i think there is prob enough cheato to have an effect.


Another question this makes me think of is if fish choose to swim in water with acros over hearty corals does that mean that the fish dont like the smell of faster growing corals or just that they prefer the smell of acros? I have guiltily allowed my fast growing corals "claim" large parts of my tank would this have an adverse effect on my fish?


Even with regular water changes these "smells" build up to much higher levels than in the ocean. The only thing to do other than removing the fuge would be to get carbon.


But ya just some thoughts feel free to chime in.

 

[UCReefer]

Bump

 

[ritter6788]

Lots of people have macroalgae in their tanks with no stress to the fish. There may be certain types of algae fish don't like but many fish seek out algae to eat or for shelter. I didn't read the whole article but it looks like they used sargassum. The sargassum itself may have a chemical defense that turns fish and coral larvae away but most common macro we keep in our tanks don't, (maybe they do but it's not well documented that I know of).

 

[Daniel@R2R]

In reading the article, I get the impression that it is the decay of the dying coral (something that leads to algae growth as they feed on the decay) that repulses fish. In a healthy reef, I don't think seaweed is an issue since it is coral dominated (something the article mentions as well).