F2 fertilizer in the aquarium?

[Subsea]

Here's another culture, doesn't it look nice and dark green? This is cyano



Tetraselmis will eventually settle but it takes many hours. It's motile.

You probably have tetraselmis at the top and something else that settles out like that.

there are thousands of species of Cynobacteria, what species is that. Why are you raising cyno? It’s my understanding that Spirulina is a popular ediable cynobacteria.

 

[jeffchapok]

Here's another culture, doesn't it look nice and dark green? This is cyano

Tetraselmis will eventually settle but it takes many hours. It's motile.

You probably have tetraselmis at the top and something else that settles out like that.

100x

440x

Can you tell what it is?

Regardless of what it is, it doesn't appear to be hurting anything. I've been dosing it daily for a year and a half now.

 

[Subsea]

Tank looks great! I'm not really one to make assumptions which is why i recommend checking.

Unlike your aquarium, we cannot assess the quality of phyto by visual appearance. If you are making changes to methods just be careful - phds have determined recommended culture parameters based on extensive testing. I don't think you can improve on this without even a microscope.

@fryman
Interesting that your focus is on the purity of the food culture and my only interest is health of the reef tank.

 

[fryman]

100x

440x

Can you tell what it is?

Regardless of what it is, it doesn't appear to be hurting anything. I've been dosing it daily for a year and a half now.

That's not tet, too small. This is tet at ~100x. That looks to be the size of bacteria.

I am of course interested in the health of the tank, which is why i think we should know what's in the foods we use. It's entirely possible for a tank to thrive in spite of some of the additions we make, happens all the time.

 

[elysics]

People here across the pond culture and dose Synechococcus (green cyano that looks exactly like that) all the time to feed the tank and to outcompete red cyano.

 

[jeffchapok]

People here across the pond culture and dose Synechococcus (green cyano that looks exactly like that) all the time to feed the tank and to outcompete red cyano.

Ah, that definitely looks like it. It appears to be beneficial, so I guess I'll stay the course. Thanks for the info!

 

[fryman]

@fryman
Interesting that your focus is on the purity of the food culture and my only interest is health of the reef tank.

Interesting to me that my hunch was correct, and yet you're all still mad at me, lol.

It's ok, I understand.

 

[elysics]

Ah, that definitely looks like it. It appears to be beneficial, so I guess I'll stay the course. Thanks for the info!

At least it doesn't seem to be overly harmful. As with anything, there's almost religious wars over whether it's a gift from heaven or the poison that will kill your reef, especially because it shares a name with the object of many peoples'hate, but it does seem to work for it's main application of replacing ugly red cyano mats with free floating green cyano that's not really noticeable. There might be occasional green mats because of it but imho those are not nearly as ugly and seem to be less frequent too.

I'm not experienced with culturing it, I only have a couple bottles in my fridge I bought from someone, but from what i have heard, it is notorious for it's almost magical ability to contaminate other cultures

 

[Subsea]

Interesting to me that my hunch was correct, and yet you're all still mad at me, lol.

It's ok, I understand.

You give yourself too much credit. Mad has nothing to do with it. You think it’s important and I don’t think it makes that much differrence. My proof is my reef tank.

@fryman
If it’s important to you, I will send it to a lab, if you pay for the results.

 

[fryman]

Look, I know I'm not the most diplomatic person. I'm an engineer, not so good with the feels. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and let you go about your merry way. But if it were me, I'd want to know what I was dosing. Feel free to ignore my input. It's just one opinion.

I hadn't heard about dosing cyano for nutrient export before, but it seems plausible to me. Cyano consumes nitrate and phosphate, and grows very fast. Maybe it's better for this purpose than chaeto?

But as a food, there's most definitely a difference between cyanobacteria and phytoplankton. Some animals may be able to eat either/or, but many cannot. Copepods for example will not grow on cyanobacteria, they need phytoplankton. There's even a difference between different species of phyto. I don't know what you are keeping, and for all I know cyanobacteria is an optimal food source for something in the reef. Stranger things have happened. But I cannot understand your insistence that it doesn't matter.

There's something to be said for maintaining the course, especially when you have such good results to show for it. That's fine, I'm not saying you should stop what you're doing, just saying it would be better to know what you are using than not.

At the very least if anyone wanted to replicate your results, we need to know what you are actually dosing.

 

[Lasse]

Cyano consumes nitrate and phosphate, and grows very fast. Maybe it's better for this purpose than chaeto?

Not the whole truth. Many of the pelagic cyanobacteria are fixators - it means that they do not need NH3/NH4 and/or NO3 as an inorganic N supplier - they fix it with help of N2 gas Synechococcus is normally seen as a non fixator - but there is strains that have been shown recently to fixate N2

Some animals may be able to eat either/or, but many cannot.

Synechococcus - a cyanobacteria genus - is sometimes the dominating phytoplankton genera in the seas. There is rather much evidence that it is the staple food for many not photosynthesizing corals - IMO



Sincerely Lasse

 

[Subsea]

@fryman

I do not dose for nutrient export. I dose for nutrient recycling. I export nutrients with algae filter.

As a Marine Engineer and a naturalist, I evaluate my husbandry thru the results. You evaluate your results with a microscope & a centrifuge. My results are secondary proofs and that is what I am interested in.

 

[Subsea]

@Lasse

Since we are talking about Cynobacteria, we should pay it the tribute it deserves.

ODE TO CYNOBACTERIA
Blue/green algae changed Earths early athmosphere from methane & sulfur to oxygen and carbon dioxide. In our reef aquariums with limited consumers, it can outcompete other photosynthetic organisms by assimilating nitrogen as a soluble gas or they form mats creating anaerobic chemistry and then assimilate organic nutrients.

Now we find that the Azte’s grew Cynobacteria for food.

10 Health Benefits of Spirulina

Spirulina is a type of blue-green algae that is popular as a supplement. Spirulina is incredibly nutritious, and has numerous health benefits.

www.healthline.com

​

Spirulina Is Extremely High in Many Nutrients​

Spirulina is an organism that grows in both fresh and salt water.
It is a type of cyanobacteria, which is a family of single-celled microbes that are often referred to as blue-green algae.
Just like plants, cyanobacteria can produce energy from sunlight via a process called photosynthesis.
Spirulina was consumed by the ancient Aztecs but became popular again when NASA proposed that it could be grown in space for use by astronauts (1)

 

[Lasse]

@Subsea - I know - and have done it since the 80:ties

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Subsea]

@Lasse

I received an order of Copepods from AlgaeBarn that had a freebie, Swedish Fish in it. Since I boiled crawfish today, I further thought on the Swedish Crawfish boil.

 

[Lasse]

Test it - but try to get a lot of "kron" dill (I´ll think it is crown dill in english) - if you can´t get that - use a lot of dill seeds in the water. In order to get the best taste and structure - chill it down fast and let them be in the spade for about 24 hours (cold). Use signal cray fish - the Louisiana type is often to small - use shorter cooking time with them. Over cooked crayfish is not very tasty

Sincerely Lasse

 

[manolius148]

Well... I've been reading this thread for I've been dealing for a while with pests problems and SPS bleaching in my reef tank. A week ago I decided to test dosing 1 ml/litre (0.24 g) of F/2 formula straight to the reef tank while adding 100 ml of cultured live phyto on a daily basis. I was having a new dinos outbreak, all my snails have died and some corals have started to suffer. Since then, very fast changes have improved the health of my inverts: dinos are gone in just five days, coral colors are astonishing vivid, polyps have expanded more than ever, aretracted Euphyllia and a bleaching histrix have returned to normal, and zoas breed and grow visibly in just a matter of days. Coralline has turned a deep maroon-purple color and has expanded, making it impossible to see through the glass because of this encrusting algae.
Tomorrow I'm going to do a massive parameter test to know where my nitrates and phosphastes stand. The only issue is that tetraselmis and phaeodactylum cover the glass and is a bit antiaesthetic, but not poisonous at all so that the cleaning team may eventually remove it.
I add some pictures of my reef tank taken today. The last one is a detail of coralline taking over the frontal glass of the tank.

 

[manolius148]

Upgrade.
After about a month adding f/2 to the reef tank on a daily basis I need to point out some facts:

- Some of my SPS tarted to brownish, so I cut off the dosage to just 0.5 ml in every 100 litres (2 ml per gallon)

- Not only my dinos are gone, but also my GHA even though it has taken some weeks, with the exception of coralline algae. This pest has worsen since then and it has started to generate problems

- My nutrients are down, lower than a month ago

- The consumption of Mg/Ca/KH os above the roof. So I have to dose more than 0.5 KH degrees daily and double my Ca and Mg supplementation. Coralline algae is to blame, but the only thing to remove it is brisling the reef tank since it has similar needs of stony corals

 

[Garf]

I like a good hobbyist experiment. I’m going to start adding a drop of f2 daily but without the addition of live Phyto, to see what happens, if anything.

 

[Garf]

I like a good hobbyist experiment. I’m going to start adding a drop of f2 daily but without the addition of live Phyto, to see what happens, if anything.

To be honest, I was expecting a “you’re an idiot” response. Wait for it;