Dead vs live phytoplankton

[Miami Reef]

I like to ask @Randy Holmes-Farley , @taricha , and @Dan_P these types of questions because they are most of the time backed up with evidence instead of speculations or information passed from anecdotal claims (which isn’t very accurate for questions like these).


For the SOLE purpose of feeding filter feeder (sponges, clams, gorgonians) is there a difference in live vs preserved vs dried phytoplankton.

An example of live is @AlgaeBarn Ocean Magic, an example of preserved is Seachem’s phytoplex, and an example of dried is PolypLab’s reefroids (technically zooplankton?).

I do not care about reducing nitrates/phosphates with live phytoplankton. All I want is to grow the organisms mentioned above. My goal is to get product A inside the mouths of Organism B without target feeding.

 

[arking_mark]

Following

 

[Miami Reef]

Nannochloropsis gaditana :: Non-flagellated Yellow/Green :: 1 – 5 microns This tiny green algae consumes several nitrogen waste compounds including ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. As a result, Nano helps if you have an overfeeding problem, if you are adding a new critter to your tank, or if you want to reduce the frequency of water changes.

“TET”​

Tetraselmis sp :: Green Biflagellate :: 6 – 10 micronsWith a rich and varied amino/ fatty acid profile, Tetraselmis provides a very nutritional feed for your marine life. Large aquaculture facilities commonly use Tet, due to its highly nutritional makeup.

“ISO”​

Isochrysis galbana :: Brown Biflagellate :: 10 – 14 microns This complex brown algae is high in DHA and is also often used to enrich zooplankton such as copepods and brine. Dosing your tank with Isochrysis will also boost zooplankton and copepod levels. It will also help with the development, coloration, and resilience of your marine life. Oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops all love Isochrysis!

“THAL”​

Thalassiosira weissflogii :: Unflagellated Diatom :: 5 – 32 microns Thal is the largest strain of phytoplankton we offer. As a beneficial diatom, this algae consumes silicates, restricting the growth of harmful dinoflagellates and silicates. Cycle time is reduced by adding Thal to your tank!

OceanMagik

OceanMagik is a nutritious mixture of four Live Phytoplankton strains (Nano, Iso, Tet, and Thal) that is great for feeding copepods, corals, clams, and other filter-feeding inverts. OceanMagik is a hand-selected blend of the most nutritious Live Phytoplankton strains available.

www.algaebarn.com

Obviously I would like to use Algaebarn’s product, as it contains all 4 live strains, but price for my tank size is not worth it.

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

following

 

[Dan_P]

I like to ask @Randy Holmes-Farley , @taricha , and @Dan_P these types of questions because they are most of the time backed up with evidence instead of speculations or information passed from anecdotal claims (which isn’t very accurate for questions like these).


For the SOLE purpose of feeding filter feeder (sponges, clams, gorgonians) is there a difference in live vs preserved vs dried phytoplankton.

An example of live is @AlgaeBarn Ocean Magic, an example of preserved is Seachem’s phytoplex, and an example of dried is PolypLab’s reefroids (technically zooplankton?).

I do not care about reducing nitrates/phosphates with live phytoplankton. All I want is to grow the organisms mentioned above. My goal is to get product A inside the mouths of Organism B without target feeding.

I will have to sit this one out, but interested in the answer,

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Following as well. Good question @Miami Reef

 

[Miami Reef]

I’m glad I have people who are wondering the same thing as I am! I hope we can get some answers.

Here’s another question I had: is it true our tanks are limited in the micro algae (phyto)?

If so, why? Is it because they are free swimming, and our tanks use skimmers, water changes, etc?

Would dosing F2 fertilizer in our tanks make the phytoplanktons grow without needing do actually add phyto? What does phyto even eat since it’s at the beginning of the food chain?

 

[taricha]

For the SOLE purpose of feeding filter feeder (sponges, clams, gorgonians) is there a difference in live vs preserved vs dried phytoplankton.

An example of live is @AlgaeBarn Ocean Magic, an example of preserved is Seachem’s phytoplex, and an example of dried is PolypLab’s reefroids (technically zooplankton?).

I do not care about reducing nitrates/phosphates with live phytoplankton. All I want is to grow the organisms mentioned above. My goal is to get product A inside the mouths of Organism B without target feeding.

The way I think about the question is to ask what people do in the world of fish breeding, because there's no way to fool yourself there. In raising larval fry - you can't feed the fish directly. You feed a target food (rotifer or specially selected tiny copepod) and the tiny fish eat that. So the amount of nutrition that you can load into the target food directly determines the success of the fish fry.

So do they do live? preserved? or dried phyto?
Live phyto is probably the most common, and high quality preserved products are also used with success: see Reed Mariculture offerings.

• Phototrophically grown
• Highly-concentrated
• Whole-cell algae (non-viable but intact)
• Full nutritional value with no need to hydrate
• Biosecure, pathogen-free and clean
• Easy to use
• Always available
• The algae you want for hatchery success!

Instant Algae® products are used in hatcheries in 90 countries around the world for fish, shrimp, and shellfish larviculture, as well as public aquariums and hobbyist reef tanks.

Dried phyto? not really ever heard of successful fish rearing on dried phyto. (Reef roids isn't phyto, btw)

Is fish-breeding-level nutrition overkill for a reef tank? yeah sure, but it illustrates the question I think.

 

[Miami Reef]

Thank you, @taricha

Do you know why our tanks are phyto limited compared to the ocean?

 

[Joe31415]

Following as well. I dose Brightwell zooplankin and phytocrom and I always wonder if there is an advantage (or how much of an advantage there is) to using their live counterparts.
I'd be more than happy to go that route instead, but it's a nice reminder to do it when I can just keep the bottles right next to my tank instead of having to refrigerate them as well as not worry about them expiring.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

For the SOLE purpose of feeding filter feeder (sponges, clams, gorgonians) is there a difference in live vs preserved vs dried phytoplankton.

I'm sure there is a difference, and there will be a difference between different species of live phyto or other types of plankton or particulates. Filter feeders are often quite sensitive to the size and chemical nature of the things they filter out and consume.

But I do not know the answer as to what is useful vs not, and what is optimal vs less optimal, and think it also likely depends on the species of filter feeder.

The latter comment is why biologists often do not even know exactly which organisms are prey for any given filter feeder without experimenting on it.

Here's a paper from 2016:

https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lno.10287

"We quantified suspension feeding by the giant barrel sponge Xestospongia muta on Conch Reef, Florida, to examine relationships between diet choice, food resource availability, and foraging efficiency. Sponges consistently preferred cyanobacteria over other picoplankton, which were preferred over detritus and DOC; nevertheless, the sponge diet was mostly DOC (∼70%) and detritus (∼20%). Consistent with foraging theory, less-preferred foods were discriminated against when relatively scarce, but were increasingly accepted as they became relatively more abundant."

 

[flyingscampi]

Following.

I've been adding Tetraselmis microalgae to my tank for a while now (LINK). I started when I bought some Tisbe copepods imported from Algae Barn by ZM Systems, but I confess that I have no idea if the phyto benefits the aquarium at all. I'm not sure if the product I'm using is even live phyto or not.

The pod population is certainly thriving, but then I have no fish - only GSP, discosoma mushrooms, and some inverts..

 

[taricha]

Thank you, @taricha

Do you know why our tanks are phyto limited compared to the ocean?

Skimmers pretty severely limit any planktonic populations in our reef tanks. You can see this with phyto by the color of the collected skimmate changing based on the phyto that is dosed. But skimmers are overwhelmingly a good thing and I wouldn't consider running without one over this issue.

 

[fryman]

Interesting discussion. Tagging along.

I think Randy makes a good point that it depends on the organism. Filter feeders are varied and blanket statements about them is difficult.

I also agree with taricha about looking at aquacture industry practices. He already touched on feed organisms for fish breeding. I'm not sure about gorgonians or sponges. But there is a robust aquaculture industry for bivalves, and the most commonly cited food for them is live diatoms such as thalassiosira. Not many of us actually culture diatoms...

I expect live is better if we are talking same species food organism comparisons. Preserved could be equivalent at the optimal time of harvest and time=0...but a month later? Probably not.

There are other considerations however. A single species of food is not likely to be optimal for any given filter feeder. But culturing multiple strains of phyto is very resource-intensive.

So, is a blend of preserved foods (e.g phyto-feast) better than a single species of live phyto? Most hobbyists who culture live phyto use only a single species - usually nannochloropsis or tetraselmis. Probably this is not optimal, it's just the most practical.

Is a single species of live phyto really better, nutritionally speaking, than a preserved mixture containing multiple different strains of phyto such as nannochloropsis, isochrysis, tetraselmis, thalassiosira, pavlova, etc.?

Probably a mixture of different live phyto species is best, but for practicality reasons I think there's a good argument for use of preserved phyto options.

 

[taricha]

Right. If you just want to grow a diversity of sponges, hitchhiker bivalves, gorgonians etc then you don't have to be as specific. But if you want to keep a particular organism alive, then you actually have to do some research on preferred particle size and type etc.

Also diversity of diet sounds optimal, but as a practical matter it may not be true for many organisms. There are quite a number of ornamental marine fish that have only been successfully raised on a diet of monoculture t-iso fed to parvocalanus pods.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Most non photosynthetic sponges and non photosynthetic gorgonians won’t eat phytoplankton directly as @taricha mentioned earlier in the thread most of these species are found in the wild in rich microbe and rotifers waters. The reason you may see a few people temporarily having luck keeping these would be that as you add phytoplankton to your tank he will rapidly start to be broken down by microbes in your tank, as a side effect this may increase some of the microbes that some of these species utilised to feed on, just not enough to keep them alive long therm.

To answers to your question on why we don’t see a bloom of phytoplankton in salt water aquarium is simple.
High salinity and not enough flow to keep it in suspense, once it settles in the tank it will start to decompose in a couple days.

here’s a video we’re phytoplankton was observed being broken down by microbes. This was in a small chamber connected to the main reef, Pay attention to the nitrogen bubbles coming from the phytoplankton, this chamber used to break down 2g off phytoplankton every couple days.

 

[las]

Ive just started a skimmerless/daily phyto tank. So very interested in this conversation

 

[taricha]

here’s a video where phytoplankton was observed being broken down by microbes. This was in a small chamber connected to the main reef, Pay attention to the nitrogen bubbles coming from the phytoplankton, this chamber used to break down 2g off phytoplankton every couple days.

This is a cool video, thank you.
The bubbles seem far more likely to be O2 bubbles than anything else. The container is not mixed and is well-lit. Either still-living phyto cells or some other photosynthetic organism (cyano often would jump in to join a party like that) are generating O2 and exceeding the max solubility of local oxygen in the still water at the bottom and bubbles are generated.
Many photosynthetic organisms in our system (cyano, diatoms, dinos) can generate bubbles like this when their photosynthesis rate exceeds local gas exchange.
N2 bubbles would imply insanely fast denitrification of huge amounts of nitrogen - a process which barely happens at all. Other bubble possibilities like methane or hydrogen suflide seem unlikely given how happy the amphipod is munching on the greenery. CO2 generation from breaking down organics pretty much doesn't generate bubbles given how low CO2 concentration is in saltwater normally, and how much more you can load into saltwater as it converts to different things.

enjoyed the video - thanks again.

 

[sixty_reefer]

This is a cool video, thank you.
The bubbles seem far more likely to be O2 bubbles than anything else. The container is not mixed and is well-lit. Either still-living phyto cells or some other photosynthetic organism (cyano often would jump in to join a party like that) are generating O2 and exceeding the max solubility of local oxygen in the still water at the bottom and bubbles are generated.
Many photosynthetic organisms in our system (cyano, diatoms, dinos) can generate bubbles like this when their photosynthesis rate exceeds local gas exchange.
N2 bubbles would imply insanely fast denitrification of huge amounts of nitrogen - a process which barely happens at all. Other bubble possibilities like methane or hydrogen suflide seem unlikely given how happy the amphipod is munching on the greenery. CO2 generation from breaking down organics pretty much doesn't generate bubbles given how low CO2 concentration is in saltwater normally, and how much more you can load into saltwater as it converts to different things.

enjoyed the video - thanks again.

Thank you for the kind comment, the chamber was kept in a dark part of the sump. The light was mainly for the video purposes.

this was a very basic experience as I never had the chance to finish it. (House move).
It consisted of a small chamber in the sump we’re water from the main tank would overflow trough a 6mm air line and then back to the sump. Hence the low flow and the amphipods that found its way there.
Regarding the bubbles I never concluded on what they where as didn’t had the equipment to analyse. The chamber was feed 1 tsp (2g) of freeze dryer phytoplankton (dead phytoplankton) every couple days. I assume that it was being broken down by nitrifying bacteria at a a fast rate (2 days per 2g).
The goal to the hole experiment was to try and gather evidence that reef tanks can have a lot of benefits from the decay of phytoplankton.

I an under the impression that all the amino acids, vitamins etc will be available on the same ratio as redfield without broadcast feed the hole system.
In addition freeze dried phytoplankton has a low N&P compared to a live phytoplankton culture were N, P and C are not in balance with the ratio. N and P are trough the roof due to fertiliser in the culture.

edit: I’ve been removed from other forum for trying to debate this, so apologies if it sounds to crazy.