Aquabiomics tests before and after adding Eco-balance

[brandon429]

On whether or not caribsea live sand has ammonia reducing bacteria:

Tarichas testing, that says it reduced ammonia quite well








the sellers have the highest bar for accuracy vs common web opining.


When you make a wrong call it seems like boosting up sales still happens. If GlassMunky made a wrong call I would just ignore him, but I wouldn’t think he’s trying to steer people into something for cost it would just be two 20yr online reefers still butting heads.


substrate that you’ve verified for cost matters if the claim that bagged sand couldn't reduce ammonia was made.

I get the constant hint that only your testing is valid



I think you’re on the starting wave of the most powerful testing for reef tank biota we might ever see.

In a few years we will be able to use it to make sustained and real changes in reef tanks, the utility between the test readout and how hobbyists make sustained improvements will be high

in my opinion the utility is being oversold currently but in no way do I think it’s not the spear tip of a revolutionary industry coming about

yours was the first I knew of doing the tests for reef tanks at home




as a seller account, throngs of people believe anything you say about bacteria. They don’t know of those on field conflicts.

I thought you came into the hobby fast then tried to change up some stuff I'm not sure is polished and ready yet.

 

[telegraham]

the tank had UV run from its start to its end. it actually was a brand new UV unit, brand new bulb everything was new, so it was fully operable. it was a Pentair 40W SMart UV running at about 200 Gph.

This was the same tank 6 months earlier. almost no Pelagibaceraceae

As a career electrical maintainer of things, from airborne lasers to lyophilizers, I very much accept that gear doesn't always work when new, but if you say it was pulling 40W, then it was pulling 40W. Happy to accept that.

Why do you think the pelagi was so heavy? I have guesses, but maybe you have a test to share after Jan 2021? I ask because I'd be doing the happy dance if my pelagi came back at a fraction of your Jan result.

Thanks in advance.

 

[GlassMunky]

As a career electrical maintainer of things, from airborne lasers to lyophilizers, I very much accept that gear doesn't always work when new, but if you say it was pulling 40W, then it was pulling 40W. Happy to accept that.

Why do you think the pelagi was so heavy? I have guesses, but maybe you have a test to share after Jan 2021? I ask because I'd be doing the happy dance if my pelagi came back at a fraction of your Jan result.

Thanks in advance.

i have no idea why the tank went the way it did. honestly that whole tank was a terrible endeavour. it was shut down not long afterwards. The entire tank was just sooo out of whack all around..... crazy uglies that stayed fro months, no corals would stay alive, vermetids and aiptasia went crazy and overtook everything. ive got like 6 months or so worth oof data showing where it started and how it changed over tije to ending up as what you saw.

I blame it on starting with dry rock and using only bottled bacteria, vs starting with actual liverock. and because of that i think things were able to take hold that would normally have been outcompeted with a healthy reef biome, but dry starts are anything but that. I restarted the tank using ocean rock and dont have any of the same issues.

Id be happy to send you all of my data in private if you wanted to look them over and see if you can find anything that seems interesting to you.


Personally Im just at the opinion that this tech is too new and untested to be of any actual use. maybe in 5-10 years, but now, its useless info.

 

[IntrinsicReef]

i have no idea why the tank went the way it did. honestly that whole tank was a terrible endeavour. it was shut down not long afterwards. The entire tank was just sooo out of whack all around..... crazy uglies that stayed fro months, no corals would stay alive, vermetids and aiptasia went crazy and overtook everything. ive got like 6 months or so worth oof data showing where it started and how it changed over tije to ending up as what you saw.

I blame it on starting with dry rock and using only bottled bacteria, vs starting with actual liverock. and because of that i think things were able to take hold that would normally have been outcompeted with a healthy reef biome, but dry starts are anything but that. I restarted the tank using ocean rock and dont have any of the same issues.

Id be happy to send you all of my data in private if you wanted to look them over and see if you can find anything that seems interesting to you.


Personally Im just at the opinion that this tech is too new and untested to be of any actual use. maybe in 5-10 years, but now, its useless info.

Thank you for being honest about your tank and the problems. It makes sense why you were trying to send off tests and find some solutions. That is helpful.
If I am following the timeline correctly, the test with a lot of Pelagi was a year after you posted about GFCI issues with your UV. Since most UVs have bulb lifes of around a year, I don't think you can call the unit brand new.
Jan 2020 : Thread 'UV keeps tripping GFCI??' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uv-keeps-tripping-gfci.679977/
June 2020: Almost no Pelagi
Jan 2021: Lots of Pelagi
Does this timeline seem correct?

 

[GlassMunky]

Thank you for being honest about your tank and the problems. It makes sense why you were trying to send off tests and find some solutions. That is helpful.
If I am following the timeline correctly, the test with a lot of Pelagi was a year after you posted about GFCI issues with your UV. Since most UVs have bulb lifes of around a year, I don't think you can call the unit brand new.

yes it was tripping, but due to that i was in contact with BRS and Pentair and had them send me multiple brand new units over the time period in addition to new ballasts and bulbs all trying to figure out what the issue was that was making it trip (never did figure it out). They sent me 3 units, 2 ballasts and 2 bulbs. no combination could get it to not trip the GFCI.
Due to that, it was basically a new unit over and over and over again that whole time.

Jan 2020 : Thread 'UV keeps tripping GFCI??' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uv-keeps-tripping-gfci.679977/
June 2020: Almost no Pelagi
Jan 2021: Lots of Pelagi
Does this timeline seem correct?

 

[AquaBiomics]

@AquaBiomics Do you have any insight into Randy's observation as to the compared relative abundance of bacteria in the two samples at the beginning of this thread?

Randy's point about relative abundance is absolutely correct. This is a fundamental limitation of any method based on sequencing DNA in a pool (seawater, soil, blood, etc). You get relative abundance. Its always important to remember the limitations of the method so we can interpret it correctly.

In this case, its clear that Vibrionaceae make up a smaller fraction of the community after the treatment, so lets focus on those as an example.

These are bacteria sampled from the water column in the display tank. So they're a pretty good estimate of what the coral is encountering from the environment. Before the treatment, a large fraction of the bacteria corals encounter were Vibrionaceae. After treatment, a smaller fraction were Vibrionaceae. This is a solid and biologically relevant result.

Alternatively, we cannot say from these data that the absolute levels of Vibrionaceae (cells per ml) were lower after the treatment. We could interpret these results to mean that Vibrionaceae were outcompeted due to the treatment (an absolute decrease) or that all these other families were promoted, while Vibrionaceae remains the same.

Teasing apart those different interpretations is an interesting discussion but we cannot directly tell them apart from the data. What we can tell for sure is the relative abundance of Vibronaceae went down substantially.

In principle it is possible to calibrate these things down to cells per ml. In practice this is usually limited to single species kinds of studies (e.g. with bacterial cultures). Impractical for universal studies of the whole community. Which is why its rarely if ever done - instead the field of environmental microbiology accepts the limitations and interprets the data accordingly.

 

[AquaBiomics]

@IntrinsicReef As for the comparison itself - here is my take.

• The treatment had a dramatic effect on the bacterial community composition (balance score) while leaving the diversity relatively unchanged.
• Before the treatment the tank had three several groups of concern, shown in the report.
  1. High levels of Vibrionaceae. These were mostly composed of two of the most common unclassified Vibrio sp. found in reef tank samples. So not unusual for these to be present but they usually make up a smaller fraction of the community.
  2. High levels of Colwellaciea. In your case (as shown in the additional details under excess families) your tank had high levels of Thalassomonas sp. which is associated at the genus level with coral disease. Since we can't place it to the species level it doesnt light up as a pathogen in the list at the bottom of the report, but this is a group of concern.
  3. High levels of Arcobacter type 1103. This is highly correlated with disease in aquarium corals. Initially identified in Euphyllia we've seen in in several cases with Acropora disease.
  
  Please note -- in all cases when I say "high levels" I mean that compared to the >1000 other tanks we have tested, these levels (relative abundance) are unusually high.
• After the treatment all of these signals are greatly reduced.
• Importantly, this is a one-tank experiment. n=1. We can't get ahead of ourselves in drawing general conclusions about all tanks everywhere. We have very good data showing that a change in the community happened in this tank, following the treatment, and this accompanied an improvement in the tank. Conclusively showing that the treatment caused the change - that will take replication.

 

[IntrinsicReef]

@IntrinsicReef As for the comparison itself - here is my take.

• The treatment had a dramatic effect on the bacterial community composition (balance score) while leaving the diversity relatively unchanged.
• Before the treatment the tank had three several groups of concern, shown in the report.
  1. High levels of Vibrionaceae. These were mostly composed of two of the most common unclassified Vibrio sp. found in reef tank samples. So not unusual for these to be present but they usually make up a smaller fraction of the community.
  2. High levels of Colwellaciea. In your case (as shown in the additional details under excess families) your tank had high levels of Thalassomonas sp. which is associated at the genus level with coral disease. Since we can't place it to the species level it doesnt light up as a pathogen in the list at the bottom of the report, but this is a group of concern.
  3. High levels of Arcobacter type 1103. This is highly correlated with disease in aquarium corals. Initially identified in Euphyllia we've seen in in several cases with Acropora disease.
  
  Please note -- in all cases when I say "high levels" I mean that compared to the >1000 other tanks we have tested, these levels (relative abundance) are unusually high.
• After the treatment all of these signals are greatly reduced.
• Importantly, this is a one-tank experiment. n=1. We can't get ahead of ourselves in drawing general conclusions about all tanks everywhere. We have very good data showing that a change in the community happened in this tank, following the treatment, and this accompanied an improvement in the tank. Conclusively showing that the treatment caused the change - that will take replication.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. That is very helpful. I have ordered another sampling kit and am curious to see how the bacterial community settled out after several months of not dosing bottled bacteria. I will update the thread when I receive the results. Thanks again!

 

[sdreef]

I hadn't added any bottled bacteria to this tank for 4.5 years after initial setup. Visually the tank was cleaner after the bacteria addition, and the ORP went up by about 25% in 24 hours and has remained there. There were problems with STN in Acropora, that have cleared up, but I made other changes at the same time. So, not very scientific. Let me know if you have any insight.

@IntrinsicReef, you mention other changes you made at the time of beginning dosing the bottled products. Can you please share what other changes you made at the time?

 

[IntrinsicReef]

@IntrinsicReef, you mention other changes you made at the time of beginning dosing the bottled products. Can you please share what other changes you made at the time?

At the same time I increased the amount of BRS Soda ash dosed in the 600 gallon tank from 5 liters a week to 8 liters a week. This increased the average pH from about 8.15 to 8.3.
I also sent off ICP tests to ATI and started doing some adjustment based on their recommendations. I will pull up the tests from that time period and post them.

 

[IntrinsicReef]

Here are the links to the tests. Iodine was high so I stopped dosing Red Sea Reef Colors A and started dosing Flourine. I continued dosing Reef Colors B,C,D
-6/6/23: https://lab.atiaquaristik.com/share/15f79bcf606ae4b2d25f
-8/8/23:
https://lab.atiaquaristik.com/share/c9d980baecafaf7c9a71

 

[IntrinsicReef]

@telegraham Here are the results of the Aquabiomics test after not dosing bacterial supplements since the fall. Let me know if you have any questions about the tank.

.pdf link: Aquabiomics Test 2/5/24

 

[sdreef]

@telegraham Here are the results of the Aquabiomics test after not dosing bacterial supplements since the fall. Let me know if you have any questions about the tank.

.pdf link: Aquabiomics Test 2/5/24

Thanks for taking the time to share all of these tests. I'm interested what have you learned from this data and has it changed anything for your tank? Any other observations?

 

[IntrinsicReef]

Thanks for taking the time to share all of these tests. I'm interested what have you learned from this data and has it changed anything for your tank? Any other observations?

I think I was most surprised by the shift in diversity ( or relative abundance as Randy pointed out) after treating the tank with Dr. Tim's. After setting the tank up with Real Reef rock and Marco rock ( no live rock) and running for 4.5 years, I thought it was worth doing the tests before and after adding the first bottled bacteria since setup. I believe I used Seachem stability upon setup. I honestly wasn't expecting such a change. I don't know exactly what it all means, and I am grateful to Eli and Randy for explaining some of it. I thought it was a good time to collect some data. Since this testing was from the same time period the tank was ROTM, it is well documented publicly. And I wanted to share this data in the hopes that it will be helpful in presenting the most complete snapshot of the tank to the community.

I have not changed anything based on the tests. I am not sure many hobbyists can extract enough data from the tests to base changes on. It is interesting for little experiments that we devise for our systems. Much of the fun of the hobby for me is conducting little experiments. Sometimes I learn something useful. I have made many observations of Waste-away keeping systems cleaner, so I will continue to utilize it as a tool. Eco-balance is a little more subtle. The claims that it out competes Vibrio is not something I can really observe. I thought it was interesting that the second test came back with relatively much less Vibrio. I'm not sure if that is actionable information ( or even repeatable), but I was intrigued.

 

[telegraham]

I appreciate the data share, @IntrinsicReef. It's interesting to see how the tank's microbiome has shifted. Realistically, we can't say it was because of the dosing, but it's nice to see the diversity increasing. It is interesting to see no Bacillaceae. Also interesting to see the shift in suspected pathogens.

What I appreciate the most about the service that Eli's providing is the questions I have that I didn't know I had. It's a fun way to explore my hobby.

 

[IntrinsicReef]

I appreciate the data share, @IntrinsicReef. It's interesting to see how the tank's microbiome has shifted. Realistically, we can't say it was because of the dosing, but it's nice to see the diversity increasing. It is interesting to see no Bacillaceae. Also interesting to see the shift in suspected pathogens.

What I appreciate the most about the service that Eli's providing is the questions I have that I didn't know I had. It's a fun way to explore my hobby.

Another thing to note is nothing new was added to the tank between the first and second tests. I looked at my calender and I added some Berghia from another client's tank on Aug 4th (after the second test). No new fish, coral or tank water was added to this system between the first two tests.

 

[telegraham]

That's very interesting. Because of SCTLD, and other evils, I'm considering testing tanks before I accept coral. Interesting, eh?

 

[IntrinsicReef]

That's very interesting. Because of SCTLD, and other evils, I'm considering testing tanks before I accept coral. Interesting,

I am actually curious about the tests that gave the designation " suspected coral pathogens." From what I understand, biologists have struggled to nail down bacteria and other microbes that are consistently pathogenic to corals. Maybe someone can point me in the direction of articles that show this. From what I have read, even finding differences in the holobiont of a healthy and infected coral has been difficult. Factors like environmental conditions, coral origin, coral health, other members of the holobiont all seem to contribute whether a microbe turns virulent.

But, I think that is what we are hoping for. A tool that will help determine healthy sources of coral. Or maybe similar holobionts to our own system??? We can't screen bacteria visually like we can see flatworms or other parasites. 20 years we didn't care too much about coral parasites. Maybe in the future we will have a better understanding and look back and laugh at our current care-free ways of adding coral and crossing our fingers.

 

[sdreef]

I am actually curious about the tests that gave the designation " suspected coral pathogens." From what I understand, biologists have struggled to nail down bacteria and other microbes that are consistently pathogenic to corals. Maybe someone can point me in the direction of articles that show this. From what I have read, even finding differences in the holobiont of a healthy and infected coral has been difficult. Factors like environmental conditions, coral origin, coral health, other members of the holobiont all seem to contribute whether a microbe turns virulent.

But, I think that is what we are hoping for. A tool that will help determine healthy sources of coral. Or maybe similar holobionts to our own system??? We can't screen bacteria visually like we can see flatworms or other parasites. 20 years we didn't care too much about coral parasites. Maybe in the future we will have a better understanding and look back and laugh at our current care-free ways of adding coral and crossing our fingers.

Here are a few articles. No specific identified species. There are some families of interest, but not clear if their presence is causative, secondary, or associated with part of the tissue breakdown process.

A meta-analysis of the stony coral tissue loss disease microbiome finds key bacteria in unaffected and lesion tissue in diseased colonies - ISME Communications

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has been causing significant whole colony mortality on reefs in Florida and the Caribbean. The cause of SCTLD remains unknown, with the limited concurrence of SCTLD-associated bacteria among studies. We conducted a meta-analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA gene...

www.nature.com

Experimental transmission of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease results in differential microbial responses within coral mucus and tissue - ISME Communications

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is a widespread and deadly disease that affects nearly half of Caribbean coral species. To understand the microbial community response to this disease, we performed a disease transmission experiment on US Virgin Island (USVI) corals, exposing six species...

www.nature.com

Spatial extent of dysbiosis in the branching coral Pocillopora damicornis during an acute disease outbreak - Scientific Reports

Globally, coral reefs face increasing disease prevalence and large-scale outbreak events. These outbreaks offer insights into microbial and functional patterns of coral disease, including early indicators of disease that may be present in visually-healthy tissues. Outbreak events also allow...

www.nature.com

 

[IntrinsicReef]

Here are a few articles. No specific identified species. There are some families of interest, but not clear if their presence is causative, secondary, or associated with part of the tissue breakdown process.

A meta-analysis of the stony coral tissue loss disease microbiome finds key bacteria in unaffected and lesion tissue in diseased colonies - ISME Communications

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has been causing significant whole colony mortality on reefs in Florida and the Caribbean. The cause of SCTLD remains unknown, with the limited concurrence of SCTLD-associated bacteria among studies. We conducted a meta-analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA gene...

www.nature.com

Experimental transmission of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease results in differential microbial responses within coral mucus and tissue - ISME Communications

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is a widespread and deadly disease that affects nearly half of Caribbean coral species. To understand the microbial community response to this disease, we performed a disease transmission experiment on US Virgin Island (USVI) corals, exposing six species...

www.nature.com

Spatial extent of dysbiosis in the branching coral Pocillopora damicornis during an acute disease outbreak - Scientific Reports

Globally, coral reefs face increasing disease prevalence and large-scale outbreak events. These outbreaks offer insights into microbial and functional patterns of coral disease, including early indicators of disease that may be present in visually-healthy tissues. Outbreak events also allow...

www.nature.com

Thank you for sharing. I was reading a lot of the articles coming out of Florida a few years ago when I was dealing with some persistent STN. I will check these out. Hopefully they are making some headway in identifying some of the pathogens and triggers.