#1 WHAT IF I TOLD YOU... Ammonia is causing your algae problems?

[MnFish1]

I prefer to work on my own system, I wouldn’t trust for folks with limited knowledge (no offence) to understand something so complicated.

@brandon429 there is no question that 'rip cleaning' will help with algae growth. No one is saying it won't. Looking through the 'work threads' you posted above, What I would like you to do is to go through all of those posts - and figure out what percent of them look the same after 3 years? I mean - if you have algae on your glass - and you clean it - it's clean - great it will not be clean 6 weeks later. You have to have some kind of intervention. I think what @sixty_reefer is trying to do is to show the 'intervention.

 

[MnFish1]

you mean they might not trust you to work their systems? you wouldn't have any trust issues unless it was your tank needing help


it seems a work thread with repeating outcomes using other people's systems is the best way to define knowledge vs luck

SOrry - I meant to reply to you directly - instead of Sixty - the problem with your logic - and your thread you posted above - is that *unless I missed it* - there is no long-term evidence. It's easy to clean a tank and say look here is what it looked like on day 0 and here is what it looked like on day 2 after the cleaning. To me that is next to worthless information - of course if you clean something - its clean lol. The question (and maybe you have the info) - is what percent of those tanks look the same after a year or 2? how did they get the way they were in the first place? I think Sixty is trying to figure out a method to prevent the problem in the first place?

 

[sixty_reefer]

My point was - I think - given all the variables - it’s next to impossible to rid a tank of algae using bacteria. CNP ratios, etc. IMHO - if you rank the importance of all of these things - unless it's an extremely dirty tank, the causes would be 1) Too much free surface area. 2) The lack of natural predators. 3) poor water/maintenence in general - and 4 distantly behind - a certain ratio of CNP. How to prove that? If you take one of those really nice show tanks - covered with SPS, and very little light getting to the rock below - does nuisance algae grow? Not in my experience. It is tanks with 10 small frags - and 100x bare rock where algae is much more of a problem.

Exactly ammonia is not always a problem in fact ammonia is the secret for fast coral growth and in “expert only” circumstances limiting the growth of heterotrophic bacteria by reducing nitrates and phosphates to almost zero will boost the ammonia in a reef causing rapid coral growth.
this can only be done in a nuisance free system with plenty of coral colonies.

we need to take into consideration that all photosynthetic organisms and some bacteria are competing for ammonia and raising the ammonia levels in a immature system with just a few frags and nuisance algae present is just a big mistake.
new tanks with barely any coral should not limit the growth of heterotrophic bacteria.

 

[sixty_reefer]

you mean they might not trust you to work their systems? you wouldn't have any trust issues unless it was your tank needing help


it seems a work thread with repeating outcomes using other people's systems is the best way to define knowledge vs luck

I have no ambition in doing “work threads” there is no way to gain knowledge on it, for example although a “rip clean” may work at removing organic it’s not a effective way to run a reef as it’s not solving a issue, all it’s doing is throwing a plaster on it as one didn’t learn how it got there in the first place. A rip clean every 6 months it’s not a solution in my eyes.

 

[sixty_reefer]

No - thats not what the article says. It says ammonia can be directly incorporated into proteins. It does not say trapping nutrients and converting it to ammonia - with certain C/N parameters. Of course - ammonia has to be produced by 'something', right? probably other bacteria and decomposing 'stuff' or fish waste. But - the point is - if you add heterotrophic bacteria to a tank - as shown in @Dr. Reef 's experiments with ammonia and a PO4 source - the ammonia level drops.

Wend I say trappings is the same as consuming, a analogy that I normally use to describe it is the same as a stake on your dinner plate, if you were to eat the stake, most of the nutrients of that stake would be assimilate by the human body (heterotrophic organisms) in a way trapped in the body mass although if you were to leave the stake on the table it would eventually start to rot and ammonia is the largest nutrient released In decomposition of organic matter. From a MIT professor that I have seen ammonia can be incorporated into protein with the aid of amino acids, I haven seen dr. Reef article

 

[sixty_reefer]

SOrry - I meant to reply to you directly - instead of Sixty - the problem with your logic - and your thread you posted above - is that *unless I missed it* - there is no long-term evidence. It's easy to clean a tank and say look here is what it looked like on day 0 and here is what it looked like on day 2 after the cleaning. To me that is next to worthless information - of course if you clean something - its clean lol. The question (and maybe you have the info) - is what percent of those tanks look the same after a year or 2? how did they get the way they were in the first place? I think Sixty is trying to figure out a method to prevent the problem in the first place?

I agree that rip clean is a useful plaster although not a long therm solution the same can be achieved more efficiently with bacteria, same for Refugium they just a plaster not really resolving the issue from the root cause.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

testing the utility of this thread beyond just theory:

show me ten reef tanks with bad algae before, who fixed algae by managing ammonia in any way.

You should check out my algae filled tank that everyone said was going to be overrun with algae and kill the corals. And then all the algae went away. I have a lot of pictures in it. Is it done by managing ammonia? In a way I think so. I can dose aminos and make the algae grow more or less basically at will. Everything in our aquariums is controlled by what we put into it.

Thread 'Can you grow acros in a new tank?'
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/can-you-grow-acros-in-a-new-tank.951734/

I too would love to see what your rip cleaned aquariums look like 2 weeks and a month after. This would give a lot more information on what happens after a rip clean. If the problem that caused the rip clean in the first place isn’t resolved then it’ll just happen again right?

i agree with a lot of what op wrote about algae. People over react and don’t understand it.

 

[MnFish1]

Exactly ammonia is not always a problem in fact ammonia is the secret for fast coral growth and in “expert only” circumstances limiting the growth of heterotrophic bacteria by reducing nitrates and phosphates to almost zero will boost the ammonia in a reef causing rapid coral growth.
this can only be done in a nuisance free system with plenty of coral colonies.

we need to take into consideration that all photosynthetic organisms and some bacteria are competing for ammonia and raising the ammonia levels in a immature system with just a few frags and nuisance algae present is just a big mistake.
new tanks with barely any coral should not limit the growth of heterotrophic bacteria.

This Is what I was trying to say - there are too many variables to make a conclusion

 

[sixty_reefer]

This Is what I was trying to say - there are too many variables to make a conclusion

Most variables are vastly reduced if one was to concentrate on the nitrogen group of nutrients to resolve and adjust a system, nitrogen has so many forms and we only seem to debate around nitrates.
I’ve come to conclude that having 1ppm residual nitrates or 100ppm residual nitrates makes no difference

 

[MnFish1]

Most variables are vastly reduced if one was to concentrate on the nitrogen group of nutrients to resolve and adjust a system, nitrogen has so many forms and we only seem to debate around nitrates.
I’ve come to conclude that having 1ppm residual nitrates or 100ppm residual nitrates makes no difference

If one was to - are the key words:)

 

[sixty_reefer]

If one was to - are the key words:)

Many folks prefer the blue pill, that’s just how life is :)

 

[MnFish1]

Many folks prefer the blue pill, that’s just how life is :)

We're not talking about the blue pill instead reef aquariums - and what is best therefor

 

[brandon429]

we're building long term evidence, I'm out to year 8 on mass feedback on rip cleans from multiple forums


nano-reef.com has been getting this torture since 2002 heh thanks Chris for not banning me iduring the rough sales portion.

why don't my critics ever keep work threads running 8 years, with happy folks, its easy? :)

in order to get old evidence, you have to generate some vs always evaluate from the sidelines. You dang sure have stepped up recently on that MN that's for sure, nice research forum work.

if you can discern patterns that apply to other people's reef tanks without handling (by proxy) other people's reef tanks that will be a good study to see.

Its nearly impossible for me to hear critiques on sandbed science when they don't come with handling threads that let me discern luck vs skill off the patterns, I accept a work thread no matter how old it is, I just want to see something

 

[MnFish1]

You're building nothing.. No one will resend - or a couple people.

 

[MnFish1]

we're building long term evidence, I'm out to year 8 on mass feedback on rip cleans from multiple forums


nano-reef.com has been getting this torture since 2002 heh thanks Chris for not banning me iduring the rough sales portion.

why don't my critics ever keep work threads running 8 years, with happy folks, its easy? :)

in order to get old evidence, you have to generate some vs always evaluate from the sidelines. You dang sure have stepped up recently on that MN that's for sure, nice research forum work.

if you can discern patterns that apply to other people's reef tanks without handling (by proxy) other people's reef tanks that will be a good study to see.

Its nearly impossible for me to hear critiques on sandbed science when they don't come with handling threads that let me discern luck vs skill off the patterns, I accept a work thread no matter how old it is, I just want to see something

If I had a site - the was acquiring critiques since multiple years ago - I would re-analyze

 

[brandon429]

Its not like every single reef tank we worked stayed alive all eight years to track perfectly, anecdotal pattern only gives us snippets of truth but in bulk

it just means that in eight years of really pressing for the jobs across forums, my inboxes have no 'you wrecked my tank threads' it's all affirming posts regarding tank safety, effectiveness on target is high enough I haven't ditched the method for another one yet. what we do is so blatantly opposite of the common rule I figure no reported tank losses, that's zero in eight years here and none since 2002 elsewhere means we lucked onto a vein of science at some point.

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Its not like every single reef tank we worked stayed alive all eight years to track perfectly, anecdotal pattern only gives us snippets of truth but in bulk

it just means that in eight years of really pressing for the jobs across forums, my inbox has no 'you wrecked my tank threads' it's all affirming posts regarding tank safety, effectiveness on target is high enough I haven't ditched the method for another one yet.

Really so every job has gone 100% perfect. That’s impressive. Almost unbelievable.

 

[MnFish1]

If I had a site - the was acquiring critiques since multiple years ago - I would re-analyze

you're misreading. I never said anything about 100% success, etc. I said - If you did xxxxx on day 1 and took a picture on day 2 - what would it be on day 365,