ok, i must admit i'm posting this thread here, since it's very reef-nerdy lol
the recent r2r thread on "stirring up detritus as sps food" (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/stirring-up-detritus-for-sps-food.413823/)
... got me thinking, usually a terrible thing. please chime in if you have knowledge of marine bio or oceanography, lol!
so many of us have heard about the nutrient rich waters of antartica, and the associated upwelling of nurients from the deep ocean. some of us have also heard of the existing principal oceanic gyre (the "great conveyor belt," aka thermohaline circulation), that help transport these nutrients. i assume these nutrients feed phytoplanktonic life forms, which in turn feed zooplanktonic life forms, and so on...
the reason i bring this up, is that deep, cold upwellings, be it from tides or currents, feed many of the world's riches reefs. i don't know from how deep or how cold, but when scuba diving in indonesia, you can really shiver when a chilly upwelling hits you.
question 1: what are these "nutrients" upwelled from the deep, is it detritus?
- are these nutrients organic, inorganic, or a mix?
- do we have similar detritus in our tanks?
- should we employ a 'deep ocean sump' and introduce that detrius occassionally?
we all assume that old sumps, with old established live rock (presumably with a lot of old detritus, and all sorts of bacteria and fungi) is a good thing, yes? for example, look at the video by oremium aquatics on sanjay's sump, i think sanjay said he's never cleaned it, ever. look at the video on reef raft usa, by LA frag guys. i'm sure tony intentionally hasn't touched that 'low flow' sump for years.
so this oceanic gyre thing, and these old 'do not touch' sumps, has me thinking about doing a separate sump that mimics the deep ocean, say 30 inches deep with low flow, with selected periods of high flow, to mimic our great oceanic conveyor belt. just extrapolating from my own little tank, there's gotta be an unimaginable detritus nutrient sink on the ocean floor!
as part of my arm-chair research, i read that as organic matter sinks to the bottoms of our oceans, and then anerobic bateria break down the organics into their inorganic constitutents (dosing inorganic nitrates and phospates comes to mind, but that's off topic here). true? if this is true, would dosing inorganics be shortcutting the anerobic processes that might occur in a 'deep ocean sump'? or is there something else in ocean bottom muck?
so that kinda leads to my next question, and apologies for quite the logic leap:
question 2. does anyone have a detectable amount of phytoplankton in their tanks (hobby, commercial, or institutional)?
- does anyone feed phytoplankton to their corals?
- do we want to maintain plankton in our tanks?
so our corals obviusly consume inorganics, such as Ca, Alk stuff, Mg, NO3, etc. then do coral also eat phytoplankton and zooplankton? i assume yes, at least size appropriate organisms. so just what are the zooplankton, like our anthropods, in our tanks feeding on? my 1 min crash course in marine bio, courtesy of wikipedia, says they eat phytoplankton. common sense says they feed on reef tank detritus because i believe nobody's ever measured plankton in a reef tank setting... true?
besides intoducing lifeform diversity and food for anthropod-a-vors and NPS, why is there maket demand for, say, algaebarn products?
3. what's up with the redfield ratio?
- are we growing corals, zooxanthellae, or phytopankton?
omg. someone clear this up. there's been a lot of talk about the redfield ratio lately. even brs mentioned it in a video. from what i understand on this rather old 80 year old ratio, all sampled biology, living and dead, in various oceans, conformed to this ratio.
C : N : P = 106 : 16 : 1
wiki says this has more recently been revised to 117:14:1
(i don't know if this only includes microscopic organisms, or also corals, fish and inverts.)
i read somewhere that deep water nutrients (detritus?) also very consistently follow the redfield ratio.
as a user of triton, i noticed they'll soon have a test for carbon and organics. are we all on a path to being plankton keepers? redfield ratio keepers? or is the redfield ratio totally bunk for our purposes, as 'surface' plankton take on the ratio of whatever chemistry they live in? or is this ratio somehow beneficial to all marine life on earth?
whew, off my chest. that's a lotta unknowns.
the recent r2r thread on "stirring up detritus as sps food" (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/stirring-up-detritus-for-sps-food.413823/)
... got me thinking, usually a terrible thing. please chime in if you have knowledge of marine bio or oceanography, lol!
so many of us have heard about the nutrient rich waters of antartica, and the associated upwelling of nurients from the deep ocean. some of us have also heard of the existing principal oceanic gyre (the "great conveyor belt," aka thermohaline circulation), that help transport these nutrients. i assume these nutrients feed phytoplanktonic life forms, which in turn feed zooplanktonic life forms, and so on...
the reason i bring this up, is that deep, cold upwellings, be it from tides or currents, feed many of the world's riches reefs. i don't know from how deep or how cold, but when scuba diving in indonesia, you can really shiver when a chilly upwelling hits you.
question 1: what are these "nutrients" upwelled from the deep, is it detritus?
- are these nutrients organic, inorganic, or a mix?
- do we have similar detritus in our tanks?
- should we employ a 'deep ocean sump' and introduce that detrius occassionally?
we all assume that old sumps, with old established live rock (presumably with a lot of old detritus, and all sorts of bacteria and fungi) is a good thing, yes? for example, look at the video by oremium aquatics on sanjay's sump, i think sanjay said he's never cleaned it, ever. look at the video on reef raft usa, by LA frag guys. i'm sure tony intentionally hasn't touched that 'low flow' sump for years.
so this oceanic gyre thing, and these old 'do not touch' sumps, has me thinking about doing a separate sump that mimics the deep ocean, say 30 inches deep with low flow, with selected periods of high flow, to mimic our great oceanic conveyor belt. just extrapolating from my own little tank, there's gotta be an unimaginable detritus nutrient sink on the ocean floor!
as part of my arm-chair research, i read that as organic matter sinks to the bottoms of our oceans, and then anerobic bateria break down the organics into their inorganic constitutents (dosing inorganic nitrates and phospates comes to mind, but that's off topic here). true? if this is true, would dosing inorganics be shortcutting the anerobic processes that might occur in a 'deep ocean sump'? or is there something else in ocean bottom muck?
so that kinda leads to my next question, and apologies for quite the logic leap:
question 2. does anyone have a detectable amount of phytoplankton in their tanks (hobby, commercial, or institutional)?
- does anyone feed phytoplankton to their corals?
- do we want to maintain plankton in our tanks?
so our corals obviusly consume inorganics, such as Ca, Alk stuff, Mg, NO3, etc. then do coral also eat phytoplankton and zooplankton? i assume yes, at least size appropriate organisms. so just what are the zooplankton, like our anthropods, in our tanks feeding on? my 1 min crash course in marine bio, courtesy of wikipedia, says they eat phytoplankton. common sense says they feed on reef tank detritus because i believe nobody's ever measured plankton in a reef tank setting... true?
besides intoducing lifeform diversity and food for anthropod-a-vors and NPS, why is there maket demand for, say, algaebarn products?
3. what's up with the redfield ratio?
- are we growing corals, zooxanthellae, or phytopankton?
omg. someone clear this up. there's been a lot of talk about the redfield ratio lately. even brs mentioned it in a video. from what i understand on this rather old 80 year old ratio, all sampled biology, living and dead, in various oceans, conformed to this ratio.
C : N : P = 106 : 16 : 1
wiki says this has more recently been revised to 117:14:1
(i don't know if this only includes microscopic organisms, or also corals, fish and inverts.)
i read somewhere that deep water nutrients (detritus?) also very consistently follow the redfield ratio.
as a user of triton, i noticed they'll soon have a test for carbon and organics. are we all on a path to being plankton keepers? redfield ratio keepers? or is the redfield ratio totally bunk for our purposes, as 'surface' plankton take on the ratio of whatever chemistry they live in? or is this ratio somehow beneficial to all marine life on earth?
whew, off my chest. that's a lotta unknowns.
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