Bacteria maintenance. What do you dose?

[LARedstickreefer]

If you provide bacteria as filter feeder food, that's great.

I dosed vinegar largely for that reason.

Yup, that is what I’m experimenting with right now. I don’t think my tank lacks the proper types of bacteria, I just want to see if the corals and algae respond to more of it being dosed regularly. I’m hoping that this stuff eats up phosphate, before algae can, and then gets eaten by corals or skimmed out.

If I see a clear benefit (better colors/ growth and much less algae) I’ll probably start up vinegar or vodka dosing once these bottles run out. (I have a small tank so these bottles will last for months).

 

[Clownfishy]

I have been dosing Bacter7 for several months in the hope it would help with Dino's. All I can say is that I doubt it is doing anything as as soon as I increase my Lighting (after reducing my light to just blue lighting) to include white lighting, they return. I am going to stop bacteria dosing as it is certainly not the cure to Dino's. What is interesting is the ORP pluments after dosing Bacter7.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

I have been dosing Bacter7 for several months in the hope it would help with Dino's. All I can say is that I doubt it is doing anything as as soon as I increase my Lighting (after reducing my light to just blue lighting) to include white lighting, they return. I am going to stop bacteria dosing as it is certainly not the cure to Dino's. What is interesting is the ORP pluments after dosing Bacter7.

ORP dropping at least let’s you know it’s alive I guess?

It probably takes a long time to beat back something like Dino’s with bacteria alone. MB7 might not be as aggressive as Dino’s are?

Also, if your rocks are leeching phosphate, wouldn’t that help Dino’s to thrive despite having a competition for phosphate in the water column?

Dino’s be like “have at it MB7, I got all I need right underneath me”.

 

[Terry Mattson]

I dosed Vibrant for maybe 6 weeks to resolve some bubble algae. I cannot say for sure that it worked, because I also threw a handful of emerald crabs in at the same time.

Perhaps it kept my glass clearer for an extra 1/2 day, maybe not. Fairly sure it removed a few ppm of nitrate, nothing crazy.

I never bought a second bottle.

Did the emerald crab damage and corals or grabbed sleeping fish?

 

[Terry Mattson]

I'm surprised you have anything in your sump after using Vibrant, it'll eat away at your cheato too. Explains pods disappearing. Your urchins will all algae except bubble algae. You might consider a small rabbitfish or foxface they'll decimate your bubble algae. Some say emerald crabs will too, but the only luck I've had is w/Rabbitfish-Foxface.

Thanks, how reef safe is the rabbit fish foxface?

 

[LARedstickreefer]

Did the emerald crab damage and corals or grabbed sleeping fish?

Mine did. He killed a fairy wrasse and was walking around the tank with the wrasse like it was a hotdog. Earlier he had climed one of my Acropora and was pinching at the polyps.

He wound up in my upside down, where he was forced to eat detritus.

 

[Terry Mattson]

Mine did. He killed a fairy wrasse and was walking around the tank with the wrasse like it was a hotdog. Earlier he had climed one of my Acropora and was pinching at the polyps.

He wound up in my upside down, where he was forced to eat detritus.

Yikes. That is why I have stayed a way from the emerald solution hearing testimony like yours. Lol

 

[LARedstickreefer]

Yikes. That is why I have stayed a way from the emerald solution hearing testimony like yours. Lol

I didn’t see him catch the wrasse, so it’s possible the wrasse had a sudden heart attack out of the blue, but if you saw this crab, his face, you just knew it was him. He’s got that OG look.

 

[AquaBiomics]

Reef tanks already have tremendous bacterial diversity.

Do they? On what evidence do you base this statement?

My surveys have led me to conclude that reef tanks vary about six-fold in their diversity. The diversity in reef tanks is comparable to the diversity in natural reef waters, but varies widely.

So it is hardly clear that having more is necessarily desirable.

More than what? More than a low diversity tank (~100) or a high diversity tank (>400)?

I absolutely agree, though, that we don't yet know what number is best, or how best to increase it if we wanted to (aside from live rock or similar materials).

Does it make your GI tract more productive, resilient, and stable to randomly consume bacteria? No.

No, but not because the gut microbiome doesn't matter. It's because the stomach is well adapted to destroy bacteria in food.

If you introduce bacteria from the other end it can have profound effects on human health...

Might some species be helpful? Certainly true. Are some species undesirable? That is true as well. Does having more as opposed to the "best" species help? That is far from clear

To be clear, I agree 100% with all of this. Perhaps the ideal state for an aquarium is not the most diverse community possible, but a particular community well suited for that environment. That seems possible and even likely as far as I'm concerned.

That's all consistent with diversity still being generally valuable and important for ecosystems (probably including our tanks), though. Which was my main point.

You hypothesized three possible benefits as if there were accepted facts.

To be clear, I was saying that these (and other) benefits of diversity are *generally* recognized by ecologists. Diversity is central to the field of ecology and is generally associated with these and other benefits at the ecosystem scale. Which is not to say that more diversity is always better, even in a general sense. Ecologists have been debating these subjects for longer than we've been alive, and I don't imagine they'll stop either studying the effects of diversity or debating its importance anytime soon.

It seems reasonable to question each of these in the aquarium setting, as you have done. I think we'd agree that the answer to almost all of your questions is "we don't have enough data on this yet", right?

My point was just that our starting point should probably be based on the longstanding recognition that diversity is generally valuable in microbial ecology [1-3]. Specifically, microbial diversity is associated with intact, healthy reef ecosystems in nature [e.g., 4]. This suggests diversity will also be valuable in a reef ecosystem. Its a reasonable starting assumption.

Since the starting diversity of every tank is essentially 0 until the reef keeper starts adding to it, it makes sense to me to simultaneously (1) value diversity as we establish and maintain our tanks and also (2) continue to ask questions about how much is enough and what kind of microbial community is ultimately best.

This is a tiny sampling of references on the subject, just making the point that diversity remains central to studies of ecosystems including reef ecosystems.
References:
1. Naeem, S., Thompson, L., Lawler, S. et al. Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems. Nature 368, 734–737 (1994)
2. Duffy JE, Godwin CM, Cardinale BJ. 2017. Biodiversity effects in the wild
are common and as strong as key drivers of productivity. Nature 549:261–264.
3. Isbell F, Craven D, et al. (2015). Biodiversity increases the resistance of ecosystem productivity
to climate extremes. Nature 526:574 –577.
4. Weber, L., González‐Díaz, P., et al. (2019), Microbial signatures of protected and impacted Northern Caribbean reefs: changes from Cuba to the Florida Keys. Environ Microbiol.

 

[Larry L]

I've been experimenting with small daily doses of PNS Probio ( https://www.algaebarn.com/shop/aquarium-supplies/pns-probio/ ) which contains purple non-sulfur bacteria used in wastewater treatment that are supposed to be capable of sequestering nitrates (among other things). Without changing anything about my maintenance routine (which includes vinegar dosing and periodically harvesting chaeto from my refugium), my nitrates have been running at about 4 ppm instead of the usual 10-ish, so I think it might be making a difference. My corals seem to be looking a bit better than usual too, but that might just be wishful thinking.

 

[Mical]

Thanks, how reef safe is the rabbit fish foxface?

Extremely safe. When your bubble algae is gone you're going to have to supplement their diet with Nori or algae pellets. But they're great fish to have provided your tank is big enough. My foxface is in a 120g and my bi-colored rabbitfish is in a 65g. tank.

 

[Terry Mattson]

Extremely safe. When your bubble algae is gone you're going to have to supplement their diet with Nori or algae pellets. But they're great fish to have provided your tank is big enough. My foxface is in a 120g and my bi-colored rabbitfish is in a 65g. tank.

I have a red sea 350. 72 gallon with 19 gallon sump. Kohl tang is the largest fish. Have 3 fire fish, 4 clowns, mandarin, sand shifting goby, 2 pajama cardinals, and a purple dottyback. I do feed algea pellots and some nori sheets.

 

[Mical]

I have a red sea 350. 72 gallon with 19 gallon sump. Kohl tang is the largest fish. Have 3 fire fish, 4 clowns, mandarin, sand shifting goby, 2 pajama cardinals, and a purple dottyback. I do feed algea pellots and some nori sheets.

You might have a problem w/tang and foxface and/or rabbitfish. They all compete for the same food so it's "iffy". Why I say that, I added a foxface to my old 60 g tank that had a powder brown tang in it - it was battle royal for 3 days and I HAD to separate them. The fox went to my 65 and the PB stayed in 60. Both were badly beaten up, scars, lumps discolorations it was ugly. So if you get one have "plan B" on hold.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Do they? On what evidence do you base this statement?

My surveys have led me to conclude that reef tanks vary about six-fold in their diversity. The diversity in reef tanks is comparable to the diversity in natural reef waters, but varies widely.

There you go. We are in agreement. I call that diverse. You call it variable diversity. Regardless, it is lots and lots of species.

I do not at all disagree that a new reef tank may well benefit from more bacteria. I'm a big fan of natural rocks and such for these reasons.

What I am skeptical of, and critical of, is the assumption that established reef tanks where lots of species have evolved in populations and expanded to fill lots of roles and over months to years to decades, may have pushed out less competitive species, necessarily benefits from adding more ordinary bacteria just because that makes it more diverse.

 

[lexinverts]

There you go. We are in agreement. I call that diverse. You call it variable diversity. Regardless, it is lots and lots of species.

You are a chemist, and not a biologist. Let's imagine a water chemistry parameter
varying six-fold. How about KH? 1 dKH is equal to 17.9 mg/L CaCO3 and a dKH of 6 is equal to 107 mg/L. If I said that 17.9 mg/L is "lots and lots" of CaCO3 and therefore not that different from 107 mg/L you would laugh at me. That's because we know much more about the imporance of KH in Reef tank water chemistry than we do about bacteria. When were we first able to measure dKH in reef tanks? As of 6 months ago we were not even able measure the microbial diversity in our reef tanks. Now that we can measure microbial diversity, let's have an open mind about what we can potentially learn about the importance of this new parameter in our reef tanks.

 

[ScottB]

I have been dosing Bacter7 for several months in the hope it would help with Dino's. All I can say is that I doubt it is doing anything as as soon as I increase my Lighting (after reducing my light to just blue lighting) to include white lighting, they return. I am going to stop bacteria dosing as it is certainly not the cure to Dino's. What is interesting is the ORP pluments after dosing Bacter7.

For MOST dino species I would not use bacteria to fight it. For sand based amphidinium, I might try it as a hail mary.

 

[ScottB]

Did the emerald crab damage and corals or grabbed sleeping fish?

I've not seen them on corals. Any fish they could grab in my tank would have to be dead or near dead. They will kill each other off over time though. Pretty sure I am now down to just one big one. I know where he hangs out.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

Seems we will need to know more about the bacteria in these bottles. If your tank reads “0” ammonia then I’d say you have the bacteria that you need. I couldn’t see any reason to put anymore of that in the tank.

If these bacteria go after phosphate, and can wind up as easily available food to our corals, well then that is pretty useful. Maybe these bacteria really excel at eating phosphate?

 

[taricha]

I'll go ahead and say it: I suspect most of these bottled products are effectively placebos, and have seen no evidence that they produce any lasting effects in aquariums. I personally find it a little surprising so many are adding bottles of unknown ingredients without evidence these products do anything at all, let alone have the stated effect.

And along the same lines, some of the ones generally agreed upon as effective - the bacteria may be the placebo, or at least redundant. And the active part of the additive is the media and not really the bacteria in the bottle.
Looking at a couple of experiments that point that way.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

You are a chemist, and not a biologist. Let's imagine a water chemistry parameter
varying six-fold. How about KH? 1 dKH is equal to 17.9 mg/L CaCO3 and a dKH of 6 is equal to 107 mg/L. If I said that 17.9 mg/L is "lots and lots" of CaCO3 and therefore not that different from 107 mg/L you would laugh at me. That's because we know much more about the imporance of KH in Reef tank water chemistry than we do about bacteria. When were we first able to measure dKH in reef tanks? As of 6 months ago we were not even able measure the microbial diversity in our reef tanks. Now that we can measure microbial diversity, let's have an open mind about what we can potentially learn about the importance of this new parameter in our reef tanks.

since you do not know me, I will try to not be insulted by your implication that I do not understand bacteria.