Not a feesh supplements

[Hooz]

That would certainly be appropriate, especially if we knew what changes were observed to decide what to dose, but I thought just said they chose it based on mud in the ocean???

We actually had some mud collected from the solomon islands to analyze for which aminos we chose, using the oceamo organo-MS testing. We had no idea where to start in developing an amino acid, so we just looked to get some real info from nature. We weren't expecting to see very much, but... we were very wrong :). This mud sample was collected very deep (~70 feet) near some solomon islands lokani (which we have struggled keeping historically), and we saw some very interesting things... The most notable spike was actually in Taurine (thus the name"Reef Bull"), but there were many other aminos that spiked considerably.

From their webpage:

The development of Reef Bull comes from an interesting story.

We noticed that the deep water acropora from the Solomon Islands always didn’t do well in aquarium. We also heard from the wholesaler that those Acropora grows out of mud. So we were curious and wanted to study the mud.

We sourced some deep water mud from the Solomon Island and put it in our SPS tank sump. And within a day or two, all the corals, from Acropora to torches started to grow faster or look better! Even the forever stagnant rainbow Acropora milliepora started to grow new branches!

We send samples of the tank water before and after we put in the mud to do some organic MS tests. We found that there are 6 kinds of amino acid and vitamin B2 significantly elevated in the tank water in one week putting the mud in the sump. The most significantly elevated amino acid is Taurine. Therefore, we created our amino acid & vitamin blend and named it Reef Bull. Because it energizes the corals to grow just like you give people a Red Bull drink

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

OK, thanks.

I see their rationale after that expanded description, although it lacks info on what the system was like before the mud was added. It is a substantial problem with reef supply companies promoting products: what exactly are they comparing to that is claimed to be worse before the product was used.

Were they previously dosing any amino acids? Was N limited by low nitrate? Those things matter, IMO, but companies like to gloss over details to make products look useful in more scenarios than may actually be the case. Not saying that is true here. but it is commonly done.

It also demonstrates to me the issue that folks sometimes get into: they made many things change at once (at least the 6 chemicals they observed rise, likely plus others they did not monitor, possible including inorganics (think miracle mud)) and don't really know which (if any) of those are responsible for the observed changes.

I actually would have been happier with a simple statement that we added just those 6 things and observed a benefit, even if they did not want to test each individually for a benefit.

Even the namesake taurine is not demonstrated to be of value, at least according to how they developed the product.

 

[hunterallen40]

Curious why a mud composition is a good indication of which amino acids (if any) are beneficial to dose? Seems odd to me. What is your rationale?

@Randy Holmes-Farley very fair question! So, apparently, many of the deep water species we were struggling with from the solomons tend to exist right above these pools of mud in low flow regions. Having been extremely skeptical in the past about fiji mud and other "miracle mud" solutions, I thought it would be interesting to prove it wrong empirically. I wanted to get these results and say "see, there's absolutely no point in doing this. It doesn't have anything good in it, I'm glad I never grabbed it." That was not the observation, though.

Many of the solomon acros we had that did not do well previously, suddenly resumed growth, got their colors back, and generally seemed much happier. That said, NOT ALL MUD IS CREATED EQUAL. We found this to be true ONLY for the very deep mud, and, sadly, I lost many of the acros that were doing really well when I refreshed my mud bed with some solomon mud that was collected from shallow depths.
Fortunately, I have ICP-MS (the organic one from oceamo) for both these samples. The difference? The aminos that leach from the deepwater mud! The deepwater mud is also very different, and far less "mulchy" than the shallow mud.

In short, I had no reason to believe that mud would be the key to any of this, but tried it in a desperate attempt to figure out those super frustrating acros.

The other motivation for formulating things this way was to avoid the industry-standard "proprietary blend™" type of supplement and aim for one based purely on data. Truth be told, I don't pretend to know exactly what I'm doing with aminos from a biochemical standpoint, but I can certainly mix a supplement if I have a natural reference blend to mimic. Based on the positive visual observations combined with the ICP data, those deepwater mud leachates became the perfect candidate to use as that baseline.

Also, taurine is not typical amino acid. It is not a protein building block. Why do you think adding it is useful?

True, but there is at least one study that discusses how this may be important you can read here . The TL;DR is that taurine is a host release factor, and can be used to induce the algae to release their products to their hosts. In other words, it's a "feed me" signal: taurine shifts the symbiant's metabolism to stop hoarding insoluble starches and instead pump out soluble sugars (photosynthates) to the coral host.

 

[hunterallen40]

I see their rationale after that expanded description, although it lacks info on what the system was like before the mud was added. It is a substantial problem with reef supply companies promoting products: what exactly are they comparing to that is claimed to be worse before the product was used.

This is very fair. To clarify, the system was actually doing just fine. The only issue was those pesky solomon deepwater acros. Other solomon acros were stagnant, but didn't die. I do plan on doing a full write up with our results (we have data for ICP-MS, ICP "organo" MS, and aquabiomics before and after the mud experiment started).

Were they previously dosing any amino acids?

Yes, we were using KZ's aminos. During our experiment, we deliberately continued using this product, and in the same dose + frequency (once weekly, mixed in our food, which is CRT's concoction). We also did not change any water during this period, and were very deliberate about maintaining all the inputs consistently. It's a fishless system, which does help remove some sources of noise (e.g. fish food, fish waste), but it's far from flawless. We do have consistent N / P, by the way, as we constantly dose ammonium chloride (I used this before I read your bicarbonate article, btw... I recommend others use ammonium bicarbonate instead of ammonium chloride) as well as sodium phosphate to maintain a consistent level.

It should be noted that many of these aminos we added do in fact exist in KZ's aminos (including taurine, and others), but the spikes in concentration we saw far exceeded our control data (again, 6000% for taurine specifically). As such, we determined them to be massive increases on top of the established KZ amino "baseline," rather than just "things added by the KZ supplement."

Those things matter, IMO, but companies like to gloss over details to make products look useful in more scenarios than may actually be the case.

100%. We are not claiming in any way that we understand these results, nor that we have bottled some "magic" that fixes every problem for everyone. In fact, many of these aminos can be quite problematic if just dosed with reckless abandon -- for example, arginine, which has been shown to make dinoflagellate toxins even more potent in a system where dinos are already thriving.

t also demonstrates to me the issue that folks sometimes get into: they made many things change at once (at least the 6 chemicals they observed rise, likely plus others they did not monitor, possible including inorganics (think miracle mud)) and don't really know which (if any) of those are responsible for the observed changes.

I actually would have been happier with a simple statement that we added just those 6 things and observed a benefit, even if they did not want to test each individually for a benefit.

I think you've probably seen my other reply covering that statement by now, but yes, we absolutely agree. The mud was a shotgun approach. We did not isolate those aminos individually during that initial phase, though we absolutely plan on doing those isolated experiments later on to see exactly which ones are in fact driving the observed successes with these specific corals.

Even the namesake taurine is not demonstrated to be of value, at least according to how they developed the product.

We did lean heavily on the existing research regarding taurine, which I linked in my previous reply. Based on the literature (specifically regarding Host Release Factors), I do firmly believe it has a demonstrated beneficial role for coral health and nutrition. Plus, if you'll allow me... it makes for a pretty fun name for a product ;).

Happy to answer any other questions you have! It's not a perfect experiment by far, but it's the best we could reasonably do in a home setting. If you have any suggestions for follow ups, I would also love to hear your thoughts!

 

[Joe Rice]

Been running Not-a-Feesh for about a month now and quite happy with it. Using two 5 liter wide-mouth HDPE containers rather than the ones NAF sell. The wide mouth makes it really easy to stir the RO/DI water in with the reagents and the larger footprint makes the containers feel more stable. I drilled holes at the top of the handles and found 5 mm outer diameter glass tubes which fit snuggly into the silicon tubing and slide into the drilled holes.

Switching from B-ionic to NAF raised my pH from 7.90 to 8.15 at night and from 8.17 to 8.35 during the day.

My only concern is whether the plastic compression fittings on the Neptune DOS are resistant to the sodium hydroxide component. It's been a month and they're still OK so

 

[BriDroid]

Been running Not-a-Feesh for about a month now and quite happy with it. Bought two 5 liter wide-mouth HDPE containers rather than the ones NAF sell. The wide mouth makes it really easy to stir the RO/DI water in with the reagents and the larger footprint makes the containers feel more stable. I drilled holes at the top of the handles and found 5 mm outer diameter glass tubes which fit snuggly into the silicon tubing and slide into the drilled holes.

My only concern is whether the plastic compression fittings on the Neptune DOS are resistant to the sodium hydroxide component. It's been a month and they're still OK so

Nice! I’ve also been on it a month or so and I’m pleased as well. My dKH consumption has gone way up since adding my Helix LED bars. The pH holds a lot more stable, I never see below 8.0 at night. I’m dosing 48 times a day to keep things as stable as I can. I’m using the BRS slim jugs and they’re working great.

 

[hunterallen40]

Switching from B-ionic to NAF raised my pH from 7.90 to 8.15 at night and from 8.17 to 8.35 during the day.

Awesome!

Nice! I’ve also been on it a month or so and I’m pleased as well. My dKH consumption has gone way up since adding my Helix LED bars. The pH holds a lot more stable, I never see below 8.0 at night. I’m dosing 48 times a day to keep things as stable as I can. I’m using the BRS slim jugs and they’re working great.

Very clean setup!

My only concern is whether the plastic compression fittings on the Neptune DOS are resistant to the sodium hydroxide component. It's been a month and they're still OK so

I've been using them for years, and they seem to be okay! The neptune DOS reservoirs, though, are **not** safe for use, though. We have had a couple emails from some folks that have had a not so fun mess from those... It seems to eat through the glue connecting the upper reservoir to the bottom plate.

 

[Joe Rice]

I've been using them for years, and they seem to be okay!

Oh, that's great to know!

I think more of that kind of information on your web site would help people who are trying to decide whether to make the switch.