ID help please!

[leon.1980]

So I have not been able to find this online. I was told supposedly it’s a bacterial bloom yet I have read nothing about bacterial blooms on the rock and they are only in the water column. If this is a bacterial bloom how do I get rid of a bloom on the rock and what causes them?
Nitritates, Nitrates and ammonia are zero when tested for. I don’t have a phosphate tester yet.
thanks

 

[Timfish]

There's all kinds of biofilms including sponges that can grow on sutfaces. In most cases there's nothing that can be dumped in a tank the won't also have a negative impact on the microbiomes essential for healthy reefs. You can use straws with a siphon to remove it, how fast it returns depends on what it's feeding on.

 

[leon.1980]

Nice! Thanks! Problem is it comes back overnight! How would I figure out what it’s feeding on?

 

[leon.1980]

There's all kinds of biofilms including sponges that can grow on sutfaces. In most cases there's nothing that can be dumped in a tank the won't also have a negative impact on the microbiomes essential for healthy reefs. You can use straws with a siphon to remove it, how fast it returns depends on what it's feeding on.

Nice! I think I’ll confiscate one of those straws from my wife! Lol.
however, how do I figure out what it is feeding on?

 

[Timfish]

Nice! I think I’ll confiscate one of those straws from my wife! Lol.
however, how do I figure out what it is feeding on?

I don't know. You'll have to find out what it is first and that's not going to be easy. If it's a species of sponge it may be feeding off the Dissolved Organic Carbon released by algae and corals and I'd only remove what might be encroaching on corals. Here's some more info on sponges and DOC you might interesting:

Element cycling on tropical coral reefs.
This is Jasper de Geoij's ground breaking research on reef sponges. (The introduction is in Dutch but the content is in English.)

https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/14555035/13completethesis.pdf

Sponge symbionts and the marine P cycle

Sponge symbionts and the marine P cycle

Marine sponges are ubiquitous colonizers of shallow, clear-water environments in the oceans (1, 2). Sponges have emerged as significant mediators of biogeochemical fluxes in coastal zones by virtue of respiring organic matter and facilitating both the consumption and release of nutrients (3, 4)...

www.pnas.org

Phosphorus sequestration in the form of polyphosphate by microbial symbionts in marine sponges

Phosphorus sequestration in the form of polyphosphate by microbial symbionts in marine sponges

Coral reefs are highly productive ecosystems that raise a conundrum called “Darwin’s paradox”: How can high production flourish in low-nutrient conditions? We show here that in three abundant Caribbean sponges, the granules that have been commonly observed in sponge tissue for decades are...

www.pnas.org

Differential recycling of coral and algal dissolved organic matter via the sponge loop.
Sponges treat DOC from algae differently than DOC from corals

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besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Surviving in a Marine Desert The Sponge Loop Retains Resources Within Coral Reefs
Dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen are quickly processed by sponges and released back into the reef food web in hours as carbon and nitrogen rich detritus.

(PDF) 2013 deGoeij Science Sponge loop

PDF | On Jun 23, 2015, Jasper M de Goeij and others published 2013 deGoeij Science Sponge loop | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

The Role of Marine Sponges in Carbon and Nitrogen Cycles of COral Reefs and Nearshore Environments.

The role of marine sponges in carbon and nitrogen cycles of coral reef and nearshore environments - ProQuest

Explore millions of resources from scholarly journals, books, newspapers, videos and more, on the ProQuest Platform.

search.proquest.com

Coral and macroalgal exudates vary in neutral sugar composition and differentially enrich reef bacterioplankton lineages.

Coral and macroalgal exudates vary in neutral sugar composition and differentially enrich reef bacterioplankton lineages - PubMed

Increasing algal cover on tropical reefs worldwide may be maintained through feedbacks whereby algae outcompete coral by altering microbial activity. We hypothesized that algae and coral release compositionally distinct exudates that differentially alter bacterioplankton growth and community...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Sugar enrichment provides evidence for a role of nitrogen fixation in coral bleaching

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onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Excess labile carbon promotes the expression of virulence factors in coral reef bacterioplankton

Excess labile carbon promotes the expression of virulence factors in coral reef bacterioplankton - The ISME Journal

Coastal pollution and algal cover are increasing on many coral reefs, resulting in higher dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. High DOC concentrations strongly affect microbial activity in reef waters and select for copiotrophic, often potentially virulent microbial populations. High...

www.nature.com

Unseen players shape benthic competition on coral reefs.

Unseen players shape benthic competition on coral reefs - PubMed

Recent work has shown that hydrophilic and hydrophobic organic matter (OM) from algae disrupts the function of the coral holobiont and promotes the invasion of opportunistic pathogens, leading to coral morbidity and mortality. Here we refer to these dynamics as the (3)DAM [dissolved organic...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems


BActeria and Sponges


Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)