Not gonna lie looks like snake oil

Sean Clark

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I bought some reef rubble a month or so ago. The hope was to introduce beneficial bacteria without "pests." Actually came with some free zoanthids. While I have some small amount of algae, my young tank doesn't seem to be imbalanced. I am not disappointed.
Were those "free zoanthids" included in the report?
 
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doubleshot00

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Good stuff! There's more and more research showing how critical the right microbes are to a successful reef ecosystem. What you bought wasn't shells but healthy microbes that have been checked to insure there's no coral or fish pathogens. Can you get stuff from the coast? Sure, PaulB has been touting the grunge he collects for decades.
Sure i could get stuff from the water but who knows what’s gonna be in it.
 

Mattiejay6

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Were those "free zoanthids" included in the report?

was a coral listed on a microbiome report
uhm GIF
 

TangerineSpeedo

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Sure i could get stuff from the water but who knows what’s gonna be in it.
Dude... I am running two temperate tanks with stuff from our area. In fact there is even temperate rocks in my tropicals. I grab 5g of NSW for water changes in my tidepool tanks every week. Never had an issue. The whole Cabrillo AQ runs on collected NSW and specimens.
Just stay out of the MPA's and your good, That and have a fishing license with a ocean stamp
You could of had some super fresh diversity!
 

MnFish1

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I'm not a marine biologist, so, maybe I should say it might help with the diversity the OP bought it for.
Yes - My question was a little deeper - is there any evidence that the added diversity provided by the provided rocks 'do anything' positive?
 

tnw50cal

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For what its worth BRS did a whole series about skipping the ugly stage and they used AquaBiomics' DNA sequencing to reference the results.

For what it's worth BRS had lots of nice things to say about Vibrant that has been proven to be snake oil.
 

Mattiejay6

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For what it's worth BRS had lots of nice things to say about Vibrant that has been proven to be snake oil.

Lol. Vibrant wasn’t a snake oil… I mean it did what It was supposed to… they just lied about how it was doing it.
 

livinlifeinBKK

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I think the diversity will definitely be a positive thing but there doesn't look to be very much rubble there and I remember hearing in an Aquabiomics video that the bacteria compete with each other and so after a while you end up with a good bit less diversity than you started with...due to that I'm not sure how much that small quantity will do for you...I guess it depends on your tank size and maintenance how much the biodiversity spreads throughout the tank. I'm definitely no expert though of course, just my opinion gathered from "here and there".
 

sixty_reefer

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The op hasn’t bought snake oil, we got exactly what he ordered.
What he ordered was some rubble that contains several organisms that can be beneficial to seed a system with some diversity.

the discussion of its beneficial or not would be fairly different and it will depend on how the aquarist maintains his system. Most of this bacteria may never develop due to the nutrients levels we keep our aquariums.

as far as pest free you need to read between the lines, there is certain organisms that Some would consider a pest present in the eDNA sample.
 

GlassMunky

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I think he's onto something with what he's doing. It's probably semantics. Wish he would chime in and clear this up. I think he is probably talking about something called eDNA which is an emerging technology for the assessment of biodiversity in our world. And he is mapping his ocean samples to that. Don't know.
yes you are correct hes just testing environmental DNA. well not him actually, he mails it off to a lab who does the actual sequencing and he just interprets the data.

I used their services for well over 6 months and its a complete waste of time and money. I sent him in the same sample labeled differently and the results came back wildly different. sometimes it took almost 2 months to get the results back. Their data is slow, not very repeatable, and even if it were accurate, what the data means and how to use that info to help your tank is still a total guessing game.

all in all, right now, its just useless info (if its even correct info)
 
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