The biology of dosing amino acid suspensions to a reef aquarium

[scotty]

Id like some clarification on the matter from any experts, I have some biology questions so I can understand the process better.

1. when natural proteins breakdown in the system, are there any essential amino acids missing from the water table that the dosing bottles make-up? I was under the impression that the breakdown of foodstuffs natural to the reef environment would yield for collection the entire spectrum of amino acids that organisms up the food chain need to construct new proteins. was seeking clarification on how adding extra amino acids is diffferent than the normal complement found in aged tank water.

2. Is there a broad spectrum recommendation to add amino acid suspensions to every reef for benefit, or just ULNS ones that are protein-restricted?

thanks
scotty

 

[minhvu]

I wouldn't add any aa unless running a ulns. I'm running full zeo and still only does a very low doses cause of my bioload. Dosing aa can cause a bad outbreak in algea and a spike in nitrate

 

[greg 45]

I have tryed these suppliments and all I got out of it was algea.
Dont wast your money.

 

[scotty]

im trying to see how the marine aquarium additive industry differs a whole lot from the exercise industry on the matter. fully reduced steak, potatoes and parsely are exactly the same if not better amino acid sources than any term-laden amino acid additive and especially ones that concentrate a certain acid such as increased carnitine etc. Each protein has a specific number of times this group will be used and excesses can be stored actually as fat in the human body if leftovers are present after glycogen loading in muscles.

then again, the additives really are amino acids in the $65 dollar tub so its not like they are harmful and pretty much anything you intake minus extra fats while exercising will make an Adonis out of you, when i purchase the weight gainers its because willingly I like to pay for the placebo effect lol


in counterpoint there are many amino-acid specific, medically-accepted uses for single amino acid preps;for example arthritis prevention, l-dopa in the psychotropic industry in working with schizophrenia and parkinson's etc. Correcting genetic deficiencies of amino acid balances in the body is a whole other matter to me, so thats why I asked what deficit the producers of marine amino acid products were addressing. Its not suprising if a bioload bloom followed abundance seeing as nitrogen is the backbone of the entire product.

so I can't write it off totally but until shown otherwise it seems fair to think these should only be used for highly specific approaches like specific coloration controlling if some amino group is found to impact that. even regarding ULNS systems it seems counterproductive but I could be wrong... am open to clarification on any new approach. I read ULNS are about 1. coagulating food items for natural marine snow, effectively taking nitrogen into the coral animal via heterotrophy or out from the skimmer rather than into the water column as bacterial degredation, and 2. using element specific dosing to impact metabolism and deposition in the coral animal as specific coloration enhancements. I was wondering if simply leaving some of the extra natural systemic protein in the aquarium to degrade rather than stripping it out so thoroughly would accomplish the same thing as sterilizing the water then adding back a tiny portion of protein subunits.

Just rantin
b

 

[cparka23]

Question 1 is more biology-related. I'll leave question 2 to the aquarists who have experience with dosing AA.

While you are correct that proteins are composed of amino acids, this doesn't mean that proteins will easily break down to their components. Think about it this way. When you eat something, organs break down the food with a series of acids and proteolytic (protein-cutting) enzymes. What we call digestion is the breaking down of proteins into their components and is a part of catabolism. So the proteins in the water column don't simply break down into amino acids without a bit of work.

I don't know what kind of ability corals possess in terms of digesting proteins into its amino acids, but all living things are able to put amino acids together to form proteins (anabolism). Supplying corals with amino acids is one way to ensure that they get the necessary building blocks they need to grow. You could provide chopped meat, but it's not a guarantee that your corals will be able to break the food down very much. Remember, corals have a very simple digestive system compared to vertebrates. They may be able to extract some necessary nutrients, but there will also be undigested waste. I think the point of dosing is to cut down on feeding chopped seafood and to supply some amino acids in their raw form (but I'm not experienced with this method of reefkeeping, so others may say otherwise).

As for which amino acids are necessary, that's not something that I can say too much. It all depends on the makeup of the proteins that are synthesized for use. I'd be surprised if there's an actual study out there that broke down what proteins are most constructed by corals. For people wanting to build muscle, we know what proteins make up muscle fibers, so it's a different story.

 

[scotty]

nice

great response well written man. I was thinking that bacterial action directly in the water table would degrade the whole particles, whereas nitrogen liberation into the water is the absolute last final step as even the amino acids are broken down by either direct chemical or physical reactions from the light or by simple decay. cool process to consider thats for sure.

that made me think about adding the large particles for degredation to yield the amino acids...I was just meaning our natural feeding and leftover waste seems like it would eventually -have- to breakdown to its single most constituents as only strong chemical bonds or life activity keeps large chain molecules together like that...seems like we already get free amino acid dosing but what you wrote about the exact group being available at the exact moment a coral is trying to sequester it out of the water was really smart, that makes sense it's not all degraded at the same time to a level the coral can actively diffuse into it's bodymass. nicely done Sir, that's a good argument for the side of careful dosing to ensure a range of available amino acids.
b

 

[noobreef408]

Nice im taking a Bioclass on r2r!

 

[scotty]

--

hey me too thats again what I like about forums, you can check for consistencies in a lot of responses to really get the up-to-date information as I see it...and the tech types will hammer each other if it's inaccurate I really prefer these chem forums more than any book or webpage actually for the live time feedback with point-counterpoint to hone it down.

this is a basic preparation for a concept article I want to write about truly needed reef supplements and how far down one can distill the myriad products into some regimen that will guarantee chemical stability within nano and pico reefs...this place is great to test idea flexibilities ya'll chime in some more

 

[CoralBandit]

Question 1 is more biology-related. I'll leave question 2 to the aquarists who have experience with dosing AA.

While you are correct that proteins are composed of amino acids, this doesn't mean that proteins will easily break down to their components. Think about it this way. When you eat something, organs break down the food with a series of acids and proteolytic (protein-cutting) enzymes. What we call digestion is the breaking down of proteins into their components and is a part of catabolism. So the proteins in the water column don't simply break down into amino acids without a bit of work.

I don't know what kind of ability corals possess in terms of digesting proteins into its amino acids, but all living things are able to put amino acids together to form proteins (anabolism). Supplying corals with amino acids is one way to ensure that they get the necessary building blocks they need to grow. You could provide chopped meat, but it's not a guarantee that your corals will be able to break the food down very much. Remember, corals have a very simple digestive system compared to vertebrates. They may be able to extract some necessary nutrients, but there will also be undigested waste. I think the point of dosing is to cut down on feeding chopped seafood and to supply some amino acids in their raw form (but I'm not experienced with this method of reefkeeping, so others may say otherwise).

As for which amino acids are necessary, that's not something that I can say too much. It all depends on the makeup of the proteins that are synthesized for use. I'd be surprised if there's an actual study out there that broke down what proteins are most constructed by corals. For people wanting to build muscle, we know what proteins make up muscle fibers, so it's a different story.

What this guy said + the reason dosing AA is better than the other way around is your targeting the coral with a concentrated dose of specific AA's right to their head its not just randomly floating in a lower concentration i.e. the water column.

Also letting anything degrade in your tank will take way longer than you may think, I think Chymtrypsin which digests proetein in the small intestine works @ 1million reactions/second.... without an ezyme things move really really slow. Also if the excess protein degrades without adequate skimming and bacterial filtration it will contribute to nitrates (ALL AA have N in them)

 

[CoralBandit]

To #2 - Certain organisms can make their own AA upon demand. However, there are a few essential AA that most multicellular organisms need to acquire from feeding because there cells cannot synthesize the AA from smaller carbon sources. So yes you want to eliminate the waste of dosing random AA sources like large proteins and target dose specific AA. Finally, anything thats alive uses proteins so define "protein restricted"

 

[scotty]

--

When you squirt AA solutions into a submerged animal, how do you know it's grabbing any of it? I would tend to think some amount of time is needed, longer than a liquid cloud would hang around a polyp in a high current system right? seems to me the opposite of what you wrote would be at work, the low level aa's floating in the water column are there long enough to hopefully get uptaken by a coral before even the aa's are broken down. Youd be very suprised how powerful simple light is in cleaving/breaking organic molecules- its actually legitimately debateable how long aa's stay together floating in solution, where free oxygen and a host of other insults are involved.



The "LN" of ULNS is what I was meaning by low to no systemic protein floating around because the action of the flocculant chemical additions aggregates free floating proteins in the water into clumps of bacteria/protein/fragments where the corals can 'eat' them better and the skimmer/mech filter has a better affinity to pull them out of water in this state, so the articles say...


whether or not retail amino acids are better than broken down parts of food-originated proteins, or more readily available to the coral vs the naturally degraded products, is the heart of the debate. I spent some time discussing this with a few high level posters at the zeovit forum (hopefully a good source of ULNS info) and none of them recommend doing a low nutrient system *without* adding these basic units back to the water, for more supporting ideas about the need to add these subunits by necessity when doing specialized nutrient approaches. check out that forum its got a lot of great colored sps that at least is not up for debate lol

it just seemed counterproductive to make a system where as many proteins are stripped as possible then you add back the building blocks of the original proteins stripped from the water. my point is simply leaving some of the protein in the system to naturally degrade should yield the exact same results? but not if the rate of decay is inconsistent, that was a great counterpoint I thought.

 

[scotty]

hey I just had a brainstorm question for you man...just hit me and I was wondering. Since amino acids are not dosed directly to the ocean, they simply have to be coming from whole protein degredation there's no other source right? That means there is some element of consistency to natural decay rates by the fact oceans provide it, but now we need to press further and consider that action in the captive reef and how it may be different.

another brainstorm: the food networks in a real reef setting are so precisely matched to the needs of these corals its possible corals don't shop for free-floating amino acids, they get them by the floc, whole animals like copepods, bacterial coatings in the mucus or marine snow they get to actually eat. I wonder if any studies have been done to measure free-floating amino acids in a natural setting and the nature of the ones measured.

so that leads me back to the original thought...if these ULNS systems are making this floc now, in-tank marine snow...would that be enough to support the corals (but the resounding anecdotal answer is no)