"Biodiversity is dead, long live biodiversity" 10 month microbiome data from BRStv.

[Dan_P]

Let's try to illustrate sixty's point here in a chart....


The below chart shows my subjective 1-10 "uglies score" at 15 weeks for each tanks, but split them into two groups.
The blue ones (first 7 listed) are ones that had photosynthetic material from lighted system that was placed directly into the test tanks.
The red bars (last 5) are the ones that either had no photosynthetic material, or who had a very extended dark cure time, or were never added to the lighted part of the tank (dark rubble).

I share Ryan's conclusion here that I just wouldn't take lighted material from one system (or the ocean) and put it in a new system in a lighted portion. Not if I wanted to make life as easy as possible, anyway. In the absence of dedicated herbivores from the first week - it's sort of a foregone conclusion, like sixty said.

(I might point out here the similarities between the dark rubble treatment and the aquabiomics article here Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock. Interesting to see what results do get replicated.)

Just reread the Aquabiomics report and found similar experimental shortcomings that exist in the BRS experiment. The most serious is the lack of consistency of the organic and maybe even inorganic nitrogen concentration across the tanks. Like BRS, Aquabiomics rots live rock in the dark in the aquarium. While replications show similar effects in both replicates, the level of rotting biomass across experiments is not determined, nor is the algae accompanying each live rock sample taken into account. Another obvious missing or just unreported piece of information is concentration data for ammonia and nitrate throughout the experiment. It would have been very interesting to know what it was when livestock was added.

I am thinking right that nitrogen concentration played a role in the outcome of both Aquabiomics and BRS experiments, not biodiversity or balance. Also, I am thinking that we need to develop a new seeding method when using solid inoculum like live rock at least for conducting experiments if not for staring aquaria.

 

[taricha]

I am thinking right that nitrogen concentration played a role in the outcome of both Aquabiomics and BRS experiments, not biodiversity or balance.

To be clear, you are suggesting that the differences in algal growth - in the BRS study and seen here in the aquabiomics article linked above ....

...are quite possibly due mostly to nutrient (N) differences. (I find this very plausible. You could even say the data supporting this is hinted at in the aquabiomics article itself. These charts demonstrate that inorganic N would have been far more prevalent for longer in the "Dry" and "Live Rock A" treatments. )


(in fact the red vs green curves in this chart point strongly to what you suggest - vey high die-off in "Live-A" compared to "Live-B")


You aren't suggesting that the bacterial community differences are driven mostly by inorganic N in the water. (which I don't think fits with theory about these bacterial groups.)

I was reading this paper yesterday or today (posted by aquabiomics in another discussion) and thinking about how much more you'd like it than the other data we've been discussing.
Microbial Community Succession and Nutrient Cycling Responses following Perturbations of Experimental Saltwater Aquaria

They measured nutrients thoughout and even did stuff you like that I think is a bit daft like measuring the biome coming out of a bag of dry sand to ensure that the biome in the dry sand started aquarium looks like the bag. (result - they both look like human interaction/contamination)

 

[Dan_P]

To be clear, you are suggesting that the differences in algal growth - in the BRS study and seen here in the aquabiomics article linked above ....

...are quite possibly due mostly to nutrient (N) differences. (I find this very plausible.

Yes, nitrogen concentration has a strong effect on growth rates, maybe even the species that flourish.

You could even say the data supporting this is hinted at in the aquabiomics article itself. These charts demonstrate that inorganic N would have been far more prevalent for longer in the "Dry" and "Live Rock A" treatments. )


(in fact the red vs green curves in this chart point strongly to what you suggest - vey high die-off in "Live-A" compared to "Live-B")


You aren't suggesting that the bacterial community differences are driven mostly by inorganic N in the water. (which I don't think fits with theory about these bacterial groups.)

Correct, determining which bacteria dominate the biofilm is complicated and difficult to predict. I do wonder though how the absolute population size determines the role the biome plays in the aquarium. A small balanced biome vs a huge balanced biome,

I was reading this paper yesterday or today (posted by aquabiomics in another discussion) and thinking about how much more you'd like it than the other data we've been discussing.
Microbial Community Succession and Nutrient Cycling Responses following Perturbations of Experimental Saltwater Aquaria

I will read this right after walking the dogs. Thanks

They measured nutrients thoughout and even did stuff you like that I think is a bit daft like measuring the biome coming out of a bag of dry sand to ensure that the biome in the dry sand started aquarium looks like the bag. (result - they both look like human interaction/contamination)

 

[Dan_P]

I was reading this paper yesterday or today (posted by aquabiomics in another discussion) and thinking about how much more you'd like it than the other data we've been discussing.
Microbial Community Succession and Nutrient Cycling Responses following Perturbations of Experimental Saltwater Aquaria

They measured nutrients thoughout and even did stuff you like that I think is a bit daft like measuring the biome coming out of a bag of dry sand to ensure that the biome in the dry sand started aquarium looks like the bag. (result - they both look like human interaction/contamination)

Thanks again for the paper.

It seems they made the rookie mistake of measuring nitrate in the presence of nitrite. I will have to see if that changes any conclusions. Probably not.

Nice paper and it will need further study to appreciate the detail. Too bad they only focused on nitrogen cycling and did not consider organic carbon cycling versus OTU’s. I guess linking nitrogen cycling to eDNA was easier, and cheaper for the already already well established process. I never seem to hear anything about what these other bacteria do to benefit the aquarium.

 

[Dan_P]

I was reading this paper yesterday or today (posted by aquabiomics in another discussion) and thinking about how much more you'd like it than the other data we've been discussing.
Microbial Community Succession and Nutrient Cycling Responses following Perturbations of Experimental Saltwater Aquaria

They measured nutrients thoughout and even did stuff you like that I think is a bit daft like measuring the biome coming out of a bag of dry sand to ensure that the biome in the dry sand started aquarium looks like the bag. (result - they both look like human interaction/contamination)

I noticed the aquaria had a sand depth of 30 cm. I guess the students will be investigate pore water chemistry.

The “daft“ stuff in the paper probably added to the uniqueness of the study, and therefore, more publishable. You will recall, I thought the lack of an initial biome assessment in the BRS experiment was a mistake

 

[fredward]

Just read the whole thread. Good discussion everyone! Very interesting. As a rookie I was enthralled by the brs experiment, but it’s great to have its shortcomings pointed out and to see how much we can extrapolate from the data. Really wish all this experimentation was done years ago so I could benefit from it now lol

 

[taricha]

I've got this bat and this dead horse, so let me go a round or two.
Wanted to make a last push toward wrapping up whatever I think I want to try to say about this data.
I was listening to this video discussion and realized it gives me a neat way to wrap up my thoughts on this thread.
Dr. Eli Meyer, AquaBiomics/Dr. Andrew Bouwma discussion(~30 min of this discussion from 1:08:00 in video)
(back to that video in a post or two, but first....)

I wanted to point out something Dan had already illustrated in post 189 in a different way. Many of these tanks converged to some very similar end-state regarding the microbial family makeup. This idea of convergence is well established in the literature on natural microbial communities.

In Red circles, I have those treatments that by week 10 and 15, had converged together with the control that got nothing but dry rock and sand.
In shades of Green I have the treatments that seemed to converge to another kind of community in the week 10 and 15 results.

Group A - Red circles: Ocean direct Live Sand and Aquaforest mud converged to a very similar community by the end as the Control that got no intentional bacterial seeding. In my opinion it's hard to see that as a positive result. If I'm adding material to try to create a certain community - I'd like the eventual community to be measurably different than if I had added nothing at all. It seems that whatever those media had different to offer - in terms of the bacterial community, it was less important than what they all got the same - saltwater, clownfish, fishfood.

Group B1 - lightest Green: The indo rock, the 160 water treatment, and the tank that got Coral in on day 1 all converged to a very similar community of 3 families in similar ratios andsmall changes between weeks 10-15

Group B2 - dark green: The dark rubble, and the 360 rock and sand treatments also converged to a very similar week 10-15 path, that was itself similar (but less so) to group B1.

I put the Real Reef as group B1.5 because it was similar to both groups B1 and B2, and sort of between the two.

The three treatments I didn't group - Gulf Rock, 2 cups of sand, and 900 biobrick all ended up with something that was not much like any of the others. Given how prevalent convergence was - how many tank treatments did converge - may suggest that these each had strong influences that pushed them to some other community. This could have been amount and types of organics present at the beginning, or the algal material these three systems grew, or some other driving influence. As others have pointed out, there's not nearly enough info to feel good about the "why" on these sort of questions.

Opinion that I can't quite justify, if I had to pick where I would like a new tank to be out of these week 10/15 groupings (or ungrouped) - I'd prefer my tank be in the group that converged toward "B."

One more thing that I think is interesting is the number of tanks that looked near identical at week 10 but went very different directions to week 15. Literally the opposite of convergence.
You can see these circled below in Blue.

This might be unexpected - if we supposed that the microbial community is strongly governing the maturation process, then we'd guess that having a near-identical week 10 microbiome ought to predict similar week 15 community, or at least that the two would be well-correlated, but that was far from the case.
My half-guessed interpretation of this is an idea I've suggested from this BRS data before. That stability takes longer than even the 15 week sequence shown here. Just because a bunch of tanks have similar biomes after 10 weeks, there are still apparently factors involved in the maturation process that could push systems like these in unpredictable directions.

 

[areefer01]

I understand this isn't your data but I still find it difficult to use. Stacked color bar. Similar with titration tests not everyone can make out color change.

I should also say thank you for the post. I don't think it is a bat and horse at all but rather moth to a flame Sometimes your mind just takes you back to the question or problem for another look. Hope you have a great day!

 

[taricha]

I don't think it is a bat and horse at all but rather moth to a flame Sometimes your mind just takes you back to the question or problem for another look.

I like that. Let's go with it.


About this...

I was listening to this video discussion and realized it gives me a neat way to wrap up my thoughts on this thread.
Dr. Eli Meyer, AquaBiomics/Dr. Andrew Bouwma discussion(~30 min of this discussion from 1:08:00 in video)

So here's what I found really compelling in the discussion with Eli Meyer from aquabiomics and Andrew Bouwma.

Rather than 12 tanks of the BRS data - this is just one single tank, but in some ways it's more what I hoped the BRS data would look like - in terms of telling us how a tank microbiome reflects the conditions of the tank and how it changes over time. The reason I find it logical and satisfying, is it lays out more clearly connections between the microbiome and the things that we expect to move the microbiome. It also adds more context to understanding what the BRS data was - interpreting against the background of this chart, the BRS data at weeks 2, 4, 10 and 15 was all early in the maturation - Bouwma's tank eventually looked like its mature "apex community" for the first time in the 8 & 12 month tests.

Ok, so let me lay out the interesting points to me from this - these are things that I believe would likely hold up to more rigorous data and scrutiny:
1. Eventually a tank community does stabilize, but well past the 15 week microbiome window of the BRS tests. May be 6+ months as it was with Dr. Bouwma's tank

2. The early tank community (even a couple of months in) is a disturbed community - marked by many competing bacterial families that are unlike the final likely dominant families.

3. There is a stable low-nutrient reef microbial community that tanks can converge to - it's marked by a large portion of pelagibacteraceae - pale pink (low nutrient water living type) and another strong group of vibrionaceae - dark pink (coral / animal associated)
These two types are very slow to establish but become large in the stable low-nutrient communities. (Zero of 12 BRS tanks had strong representations of both of these communities within 15 weeks)
there will also be smaller portions of....
alteromonadacea - red (higher nutrient water type)
rhodobacteraceae - dark orange ( higher nutrient surface associated)
This community is not the only one that a stable system can converge to - but it does show up over and over again. A number of example tanks / aquabiomics reports can be produced.

4. This stable community can be lost by large disturbances to the system - the community then again looks much like the early stage disturbed community. This happened several times in Bouwma's tank:
Fish disease / fallow / nutrient overdose - 3/3/21
Brown Jelly - 4/19/22
STN / RTN - 1/8/23

5. After the disturbance, the system can slowly return to the low-nutrient stable community over time. (5/4/21)

6. Periods of time that the hobbyist identifies as the tank really performing at its best, with good coral growth and health fall into this low nutrient stable community time period.
Dr. Bouwma talks about this at 1hr20 in the video

7. The tank during this "golden age" was visually spectacular and also marked by high balance scores on aquabiomics, consistent with the elements mentioned in point 3.

Big-ish picture thoughts
My opinion at this point is that although there are other stable communities that could be achieved that can grow a reef tank well, but since this particular template is well documented in aquabiomics data and exemplified across many successful tanks, and can be achieved with a more or less known formula (Good live rock to start, coral, fish, low nutrients, no UV, and stability for lots of time) it seems a good target I would be fine starting a tank and aiming for, and aquabiomics report offers a way to demonstrate that such a community has in fact been achieved.
I'm sure I'll be wrong but I don't see example systems hitting this template in anything much faster than ~6 months.

This is mostly my speculation, but I think there is a widely held opinion among reefers with deep experience keeping sensitive corals successfully that systems don't hit their stride in a matter of weeks but rather achieve something like a desirable maturity on a scale of months. This is my best attempt to say what measurable things it might be that are underlying this sentiment. (no I can't prove it)


The BRS experiment in part, was an attempt to get to that template in a rapid way by different initial media additions. In a wider context of aquabiomics data, I think 15 weeks wasn't long enough - but If I look at trends in the BRS data as I did in post 227 - my guess is that the treatments in group B were well on their way in that direction.
That none of the treatments got to this template by 15 weeks is itself useful data - it serves as a further suggestion of how difficult this particular stable community is to achieve in a short time frame.
Can you keep corals alive before that? Of course, but I think they'll do way better in that system at 6-8 months vs at 6-8 weeks.

 

[beesnreefs]

I like that. Let's go with it.


About this...


So here's what I found really compelling in the discussion with Eli Meyer from aquabiomics and Andrew Bouwma.

Rather than 12 tanks of the BRS data - this is just one single tank, but in some ways it's more what I hoped the BRS data would look like - in terms of telling us how a tank microbiome reflects the conditions of the tank and how it changes over time. The reason I find it logical and satisfying, is it lays out more clearly connections between the microbiome and the things that we expect to move the microbiome. It also adds more context to understanding what the BRS data was - interpreting against the background of this chart, the BRS data at weeks 2, 4, 10 and 15 was all early in the maturation - Bouwma's tank eventually looked like its mature "apex community" for the first time in the 8 & 12 month tests.

Ok, so let me lay out the interesting points to me from this - these are things that I believe would likely hold up to more rigorous data and scrutiny:
1. Eventually a tank community does stabilize, but well past the 15 week microbiome window of the BRS tests. May be 6+ months as it was with Dr. Bouwma's tank

2. The early tank community (even a couple of months in) is a disturbed community - marked by many competing bacterial families that are unlike the final likely dominant families.

3. There is a stable low-nutrient reef microbial community that tanks can converge to - it's marked by a large portion of pelagibacteraceae - pale pink (low nutrient water living type) and another strong group of vibrionaceae - dark pink (coral / animal associated)
These two types are very slow to establish but become large in the stable low-nutrient communities. (Zero of 12 BRS tanks had strong representations of both of these communities within 15 weeks)
there will also be smaller portions of....
alteromonadacea - red (higher nutrient water type)
rhodobacteraceae - dark orange ( higher nutrient surface associated)
This community is not the only one that a stable system can converge to - but it does show up over and over again. A number of example tanks / aquabiomics reports can be produced.

4. This stable community can be lost by large disturbances to the system - the community then again looks much like the early stage disturbed community. This happened several times in Bouwma's tank:
Fish disease / fallow / nutrient overdose - 3/3/21
Brown Jelly - 4/19/22
STN / RTN - 1/8/23

5. After the disturbance, the system can slowly return to the low-nutrient stable community over time. (5/4/21)

6. Periods of time that the hobbyist identifies as the tank really performing at its best, with good coral growth and health fall into this low nutrient stable community time period.
Dr. Bouwma talks about this at 1hr20 in the video

7. The tank during this "golden age" was visually spectacular and also marked by high balance scores on aquabiomics, consistent with the elements mentioned in point 3.

Big-ish picture thoughts
My opinion at this point is that although there are other stable communities that could be achieved that can grow a reef tank well, but since this particular template is well documented in aquabiomics data and exemplified across many successful tanks, and can be achieved with a more or less known formula (Good live rock to start, coral, fish, low nutrients, no UV, and stability for lots of time) it seems a good target I would be fine starting a tank and aiming for, and aquabiomics report offers a way to demonstrate that such a community has in fact been achieved.
I'm sure I'll be wrong but I don't see example systems hitting this template in anything much faster than ~6 months.

This is mostly my speculation, but I think there is a widely held opinion among reefers with deep experience keeping sensitive corals successfully that systems don't hit their stride in a matter of weeks but rather achieve something like a desirable maturity on a scale of months. This is my best attempt to say what measurable things it might be that are underlying this sentiment. (no I can't prove it)


The BRS experiment in part, was an attempt to get to that template in a rapid way by different initial media additions. In a wider context of aquabiomics data, I think 15 weeks wasn't long enough - but If I look at trends in the BRS data as I did in post 227 - my guess is that the treatments in group B were well on their way in that direction.
That none of the treatments got to this template by 15 weeks is itself useful data - it serves as a further suggestion of how difficult this particular stable community is to achieve in a short time frame.
Can you keep corals alive before that? Of course, but I think they'll do way better in that system at 6-8 months vs at 6-8 weeks.

Thank you for continuing to visit the rabbit hole, @taricha. Whether a bat and horse situation or just your curiosity pulling you back, I for one am grateful for what I’m learning from you!

 

[Thales]

I like that. Let's go with it.


About this...


So here's what I found really compelling in the discussion with Eli Meyer from aquabiomics and Andrew Bouwma.

Rather than 12 tanks of the BRS data - this is just one single tank, but in some ways it's more what I hoped the BRS data would look like - in terms of telling us how a tank microbiome reflects the conditions of the tank and how it changes over time. The reason I find it logical and satisfying, is it lays out more clearly connections between the microbiome and the things that we expect to move the microbiome. It also adds more context to understanding what the BRS data was - interpreting against the background of this chart, the BRS data at weeks 2, 4, 10 and 15 was all early in the maturation - Bouwma's tank eventually looked like its mature "apex community" for the first time in the 8 & 12 month tests.

Ok, so let me lay out the interesting points to me from this - these are things that I believe would likely hold up to more rigorous data and scrutiny:
1. Eventually a tank community does stabilize, but well past the 15 week microbiome window of the BRS tests. May be 6+ months as it was with Dr. Bouwma's tank

2. The early tank community (even a couple of months in) is a disturbed community - marked by many competing bacterial families that are unlike the final likely dominant families.

3. There is a stable low-nutrient reef microbial community that tanks can converge to - it's marked by a large portion of pelagibacteraceae - pale pink (low nutrient water living type) and another strong group of vibrionaceae - dark pink (coral / animal associated)
These two types are very slow to establish but become large in the stable low-nutrient communities. (Zero of 12 BRS tanks had strong representations of both of these communities within 15 weeks)
there will also be smaller portions of....
alteromonadacea - red (higher nutrient water type)
rhodobacteraceae - dark orange ( higher nutrient surface associated)
This community is not the only one that a stable system can converge to - but it does show up over and over again. A number of example tanks / aquabiomics reports can be produced.

4. This stable community can be lost by large disturbances to the system - the community then again looks much like the early stage disturbed community. This happened several times in Bouwma's tank:
Fish disease / fallow / nutrient overdose - 3/3/21
Brown Jelly - 4/19/22
STN / RTN - 1/8/23

5. After the disturbance, the system can slowly return to the low-nutrient stable community over time. (5/4/21)

6. Periods of time that the hobbyist identifies as the tank really performing at its best, with good coral growth and health fall into this low nutrient stable community time period.
Dr. Bouwma talks about this at 1hr20 in the video

7. The tank during this "golden age" was visually spectacular and also marked by high balance scores on aquabiomics, consistent with the elements mentioned in point 3.

Big-ish picture thoughts
My opinion at this point is that although there are other stable communities that could be achieved that can grow a reef tank well, but since this particular template is well documented in aquabiomics data and exemplified across many successful tanks, and can be achieved with a more or less known formula (Good live rock to start, coral, fish, low nutrients, no UV, and stability for lots of time) it seems a good target I would be fine starting a tank and aiming for, and aquabiomics report offers a way to demonstrate that such a community has in fact been achieved.
I'm sure I'll be wrong but I don't see example systems hitting this template in anything much faster than ~6 months.

This is mostly my speculation, but I think there is a widely held opinion among reefers with deep experience keeping sensitive corals successfully that systems don't hit their stride in a matter of weeks but rather achieve something like a desirable maturity on a scale of months. This is my best attempt to say what measurable things it might be that are underlying this sentiment. (no I can't prove it)


The BRS experiment in part, was an attempt to get to that template in a rapid way by different initial media additions. In a wider context of aquabiomics data, I think 15 weeks wasn't long enough - but If I look at trends in the BRS data as I did in post 227 - my guess is that the treatments in group B were well on their way in that direction.
That none of the treatments got to this template by 15 weeks is itself useful data - it serves as a further suggestion of how difficult this particular stable community is to achieve in a short time frame.
Can you keep corals alive before that? Of course, but I think they'll do way better in that system at 6-8 months vs at 6-8 weeks.

Excellent. Thanks. The push to get tanks settled down and thriving asap just doesn’t seem to pan out, even though versions of it get pitched over and over again. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.
Someone with a newer tank asked me what they should do about their dying frags. I said wait a month or two and try again.

 

[areefer01]

Excellent. Thanks. The push to get tanks settled down and thriving asap just doesn’t seem to pan out, even though versions of it get pitched over and over again. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

This is so very true. It takes years for reefs to form why should we as hobbyist expect it to be faster in our home.

 

[LRT]

Excellent thread and discussion.

 

[taricha]

The push to get tanks settled down and thriving asap just doesn’t seem to pan out, even though versions of it get pitched over and over again. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

true. It almost feels like a conspiracy ...
I want the established microbial community of the water in this tank. *transfers water*
Sorry. microbiome will look nothing like the one in the water you transferred over.
Ok, I'll take a bunch of live rock from that tank *transfers rock*
Sorry. microbiome still looks nothing like the tank the material came from.
Biobrick? Hah, no.
Coral frags? you wish.
Cup of sand? cup of heck no.

Why all these material transfers don't lead quickly to the same settled, mature community they were in in the first place is pretty head-scratching.

My thinking is that If you move a rock with a settled mature community into a new tank, there's a few reasons why it might not create a community in the new "blank" tank like the one it came from in any short time frame.
Biofilms get chemical cues from the water, cues that tell it things like be stable, grow more, or take to the water and go elsewhere. So the film community of the rock doesn't have the same relationship with the new water, and the film is going to change in response.
Also there's a bunch of uncolonized stuff in a new system which is an invitation for a free-for-all to everyone who can to colonize it - leading to waves of succession.
And even if you transferred rock, sand and water to a new tank so no new surfaces - none of those established surfaces would be in the same spatial relationships to flow, light, O2, and goodies as they were in the old system. So all those living films that were in ideal spots, now aren't. Some will bulk up and grow if things got better, some will leave into the water if the spot isn't okay anymore, some will die - inviting a whole round of new characters to come deal with that.

Apparently it takes these living surfaces and water that we like to keep a really long time for everyone to be happy with where they are.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

true. It almost feels like a conspiracy ...
I want the established microbial community of the water in this tank. *transfers water*
Sorry. microbiome will look nothing like the one in the water you transferred over.
Ok, I'll take a bunch of live rock from that tank *transfers rock*
Sorry. microbiome still looks nothing like the tank the material came from.
Biobrick? Hah, no.
Coral frags? you wish.
Cup of sand? cup of heck no.

Why all these material transfers don't lead quickly to the same settled, mature community they were in in the first place is pretty head-scratching.

My thinking is that If you move a rock with a settled mature community into a new tank, there's a few reasons why it might not create a community in the new "blank" tank like the one it came from in any short time frame.
Biofilms get chemical cues from the water, cues that tell it things like be stable, grow more, or take to the water and go elsewhere. So the film community of the rock doesn't have the same relationship with the new water, and the film is going to change in response.
Also there's a bunch of uncolonized stuff in a new system which is an invitation for a free-for-all to everyone who can to colonize it - leading to waves of succession.
And even if you transferred rock, sand and water to a new tank so no new surfaces - none of those established surfaces would be in the same spatial relationships to flow, light, O2, and goodies as they were in the old system. So all those living films that were in ideal spots, now aren't. Some will bulk up and grow if things got better, some will leave into the water if the spot isn't okay anymore, some will die - inviting a whole round of new characters to come deal with that.

Apparently it takes these living surfaces and water that we like to keep a really long time for everyone to be happy with where they are.

In reference to the biofilm, they change very easily due to any shift in environmental conditions. They're also go through different stages of maturation in the case that the tank is new and shift in the dominant microorganisms. This isn't just my personal opinion, Ive done a good amount of research on it.

 

[Thales]

In reference to the biofilm, they change very easily due to any shift in environmental conditions. They're also go through different stages of maturation in the case that the tank is new and shift in the dominant microorganisms. This isn't just my personal opinion, Ive done a good amount of research on it.

Can you share the research? I am unaware of much at all research on tanks. Thanks

 

[Thales]

true. It almost feels like a conspiracy ...
I want the established microbial community of the water in this tank. *transfers water*
Sorry. microbiome will look nothing like the one in the water you transferred over.
Ok, I'll take a bunch of live rock from that tank *transfers rock*
Sorry. microbiome still looks nothing like the tank the material came from.
Biobrick? Hah, no.
Coral frags? you wish.
Cup of sand? cup of heck no.

Why all these material transfers don't lead quickly to the same settled, mature community they were in in the first place is pretty head-scratching.

My thinking is that If you move a rock with a settled mature community into a new tank, there's a few reasons why it might not create a community in the new "blank" tank like the one it came from in any short time frame.
Biofilms get chemical cues from the water, cues that tell it things like be stable, grow more, or take to the water and go elsewhere. So the film community of the rock doesn't have the same relationship with the new water, and the film is going to change in response.
Also there's a bunch of uncolonized stuff in a new system which is an invitation for a free-for-all to everyone who can to colonize it - leading to waves of succession.
And even if you transferred rock, sand and water to a new tank so no new surfaces - none of those established surfaces would be in the same spatial relationships to flow, light, O2, and goodies as they were in the old system. So all those living films that were in ideal spots, now aren't. Some will bulk up and grow if things got better, some will leave into the water if the spot isn't okay anymore, some will die - inviting a whole round of new characters to come deal with that.

Apparently it takes these living surfaces and water that we like to keep a really long time for everyone to be happy with where they are.

Agreed. Even a new tank added to an established system is unstable for a while.
I have also transferred established rock from establish systems to new systems many times, which I think gives a massive head start to maturity and stability, but I still watch it extra carefully for a few months.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Can you share the research? I am unaware of much at all research on tanks. Thanks

Yes of course! Give me a few minutes to find it. Btw, while the study was performed in Ex Situ conditions, they weren't made to replicate our typical tanks due to the purpose of the research. I see absolutely no reason how their results wouldn't apply very similarly though. I'd be interested in rereading as well...it's been a while!

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

@Thales Here it is...it's pretty interesting if you take the time to read through the entire thing. While conducting my starfish research I had to review a lot of research like this to try and understand the underlying problem as well as possible.

 

[GARRIGA]

This was more than I bargained for and checked out pages ago. Was more than my ADD can tolerate. Best I can gather there’s likely no way to really know therefore I’m just going to continue with my approach of seeding with every bacterial product I can get my hands on along with live rubble mixed in and let the hunger games begin. Seems best I could grasp end of day some will survive. Some won’t. Every tank is different therefore which will and won’t a big unknown. Survival of the fittest will continue to be my approach. Anyone disagree please let me know and why.

At a minimum. Seems I can’t rely on those biome tests I was hoping I could. Crap shoot again