Is there a way to test a reef for ATP/NADPH in my water column?

[AKG]

Basically since it's part of the carbon cycle I feel like if we were to keep a NPS reef, ATP and NADPH has negative water and thus in theory I imagine somehow these molecules are uptaken by NPS corals in some fashion and used in the filter feeding process in addition to actual food.


But in reality I want to try dosing some form of carbohydrate into an nps tank and see if the results prove my theory that sugars in addition to ATP and NADPH are being filtered from the water column with NPS corals. I just think naturally the bottom of the ocean would be a sort of "sink" for these molecules over the 3 billion years it's been around!


Thoughts?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm not sure it's of any more benefit to dose ATP and NADPH than other organics such as acetate (since they make their own), but here's a paper that discusses ATP in seawater used by bacteria:

Dissolved ATP in the sea and its utilisation by marine bacteria - Nature

THE biologically labile fraction of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the oceans seems to be a chemically complex solution of a wide variety of compounds derived mainly from the contents of cellular metabolic pools released into the seawater after the death and cell lysis of marine...

www.nature.com