And I'll add an open question, in a further attempt to clarify my goals with this thread.
As a community, what are the effects of microbial communities that we should be measuring? Here are the ones I've thought about (and measured in some cases).
- nitrifying activities
- tendency to grow nuisance algae
- coral tissue necrosis
What other effects have been attributed by hobbyists to microbes (usually without evidence, since evidence has previously been hard to come by)?
Denitrification
Metabolization of coral allelopathic substances