Nutrient Saturated Systems

[reeferfoxx]

I like to keep my nutrients off the chart. If it doesn't take an entire reagent bottle to perform a single test, you're not doing it right. ;)

You can't just 'one-up' everyone here! HAHA

 

[Brew12]

I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong but nucance alegea= it was introduced to the system. Nutrients have nothing to do with it. It goes a bit off topic I suppose.
But in systems with high nutrients nusance algae is not absolutely going to happen.
It introduction to the tank. I think most folks now dip in Bayer and drop the frag in the tank. That doesn't kill algae. Nobody really talks about QT for coral either.
My experiment was to strip the nutrients with the algae and coral then kill the nucance algae. Worked mostly. In the 55 it's miraculous how well it worked in the 30 not as much. The 30 is only six months old kinda. Lower water volume less age I suppose.

I'm going to go with a Bayer dip and an H2O2 dip for my frags before they go in the DT. Feel like it is much better way to keep the tank safe.

 

[Paul B]

I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong but nucance alegea= it was introduced to the system. Nutrients have nothing to do with it. It goes a bit off topic I suppose.
But in systems with high nutrients nusance algae is not absolutely going to happen.
.

I don't like to say that but you are correct, nutrients have nothing to do with growing algae. I know I will get a lot of hate mail but if algae "wants" to grow, it will grow as it grows on every healthy reef in the world. If it didn't what are all those tangs, rabbitfish, urchins, slugs, manatees and chitens eating?
It even grows on them

 

[reeferfoxx]

I'm going to go with a Bayer dip and an H2O2 dip for my frags before they go in the DT. Feel like it is much better way to keep the tank safe.

I tried a h2o2 dip on a "tester zoa frag" once. I might have had the ratio wrong but I think I was pretty reserved in the amount of h2o2 added. Anyway, the frag shriveled up and died within 5 minutes.

 

[Brew12]

Rambling thoughts from a noob on nutrients.

I am not aware of any life form that can thrive without nutrients. Why do we strive to keep them out of our tanks?

Fish are showpieces
Snails and crabs are a CuC.
Copepods and amphipods are a food source.
Algae is a nuisance.
Bacteria is a filter.

Isn't it really true that everything living in the tank is part of the CuC? I just happened to have listed them from biggest to smallest. If it takes all of these working together to make a natural reef work why do we fight it so much in our aquariums?

 

[Paul B]

Rambling thoughts from a noob on nutrients.

I am not aware of any life form that can thrive without nutrients.
QUOTE]

What about Supermodels!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I tried a h2o2 dip on a "tester zoa frag" once. I might have had the ratio wrong but I think I was pretty reserved in the amount of h2o2 added. Anyway, the frag shriveled up and died within 5 minutes.

yup. many zoas hate peroxide. IMO if a coral is unstable it produces peroxide as it dies already. so @Brew12 like fish QT you should treat each one differently. That supermodel Julian invented stuf to do that that we ignore just like most folks ignored him at macna.

I'm going to go with a Bayer dip and an H2O2 dip for my frags before they go in the DT. Feel like it is much better way to keep the tank safe.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

yea dude super models.o_O

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Rambling thoughts from a noob on nutrients.

I am not aware of any life form that can thrive without nutrients. Why do we strive to keep them out of our tanks?

Fish are showpieces
Snails and crabs are a CuC.
Copepods and amphipods are a food source.
Algae is a nuisance.
Bacteria is a filter.

Isn't it really true that everything living in the tank is part of the CuC? I just happened to have listed them from biggest to smallest. If it takes all of these working together to make a natural reef work why do we fight it so much in our aquariums?

"WE" are inexperienced and "we" want furniture. But in husbandry you must control populations, in your tank and in Yellowstone.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Saltyfilmfolks, it's interesting that you mentioned Dr Ron Shimech as he and I are the same age and along with Martin Moe, we all started with salt water the same year. 1971 is the year they really started to import saltwater fish to the US. Before that I kept some salt water fish but they were all local fish and they, for some reason are very hardy so to kill them you have to lay them in the street and have a 1955 Oldsmobile run over them, twice.
I think many of us started out very poor and some of us still are. When I started my tank I was bringing home $52.00 a week as an electrician apprentice so I had to feed my fish table scraps and collect food at the beach. I also used NSW and local rocks as they were free. I didn't realize then that that natural food and bacteria and mud laden rocks were actually good for my system and I would try to keep it clean. Of course, like today, that is a no no as far as I am concerned as I want as much bacteria as I can get. As I said, my tank is very stable and it doesn't matter if an elephant seal died in there. For instance once a very large carpet anemone died. It was a foot across and it rotted in my tank. The water turned into snot and the fish were gasping at the surface. I cleared it up with a diatom filter and all was well. I didn't lose one fish. (that was before corals)
Then, years later I had an urchin business. I would SCUBA to collect black sea urchins and sell them to hobbiests to eat algae. I had to many so I put 25 of them in my reef where they all spawned at once. Again the tank looked like whipped cream and I could not see one inch into it. The skimmer overflowed about 10 gallons on to my floor. I got out my diatom filter, cleared it up and the tank never looked so good.
Those things are because of the large numbers of the correct types of bacteria I have in the tank, not my good looks, Lady GaGa or luck. I feel we need to get this sterile thing out of our heads and embrace bacteria as well as Supermodels. :cool:

Here in the top picture is one of those urchins. This picture must be from the 80s (I forget) and it appeared in FAMMA magazine.

Ron Randy Dana Yourself and supermodels were always the most widely accessible to me via the net while I was bored at work and struggling to figure out what i was doing. The forums were to full of folks telling me I didnt have enough money to reef but their tank had crashed, and I just wanted more fertile soil for my coral and bugs. So from the veterans I figured out a lot more about what patience was and that its a journey, so I kept reading from those guys. A lifelong love of Jaque Cousteau and David Attenborough didnt hurt either.
Not many folks have read the original 40 year old reef thread btw. Algae happens even to the best of us. it goes away. get off the couch youve seen this episode of Seinfeld. use a tooth brush. I cant get a diatom filter but I did get a used canister filter.

I do think its a serious disconnect and probably just part of the human condition, that, even though we want a piece of nature in our home we dont or cant accept that its...well nature.

I may be wrong again (my wife is nodding her head), if you read our favorite chemist, Randy's work, He's describing nature in chemical terms. as its all chemistry. His tank didnt run GFO for a long time, it had a refugium and he grew bacteria. Most folks think Randy. Chemist. Bottle. Good.
He describes Ideal parameters, FOR MOST REEFS, but does not rule out variations from species to species..

Nutrients in a tank will ebb and flow and as Joe Yaiullo said, Its a chess game. you have to stay ahead of the game and you have to keep learning the whole way because the animals and plants have been playing a lot longer than you. The humans biggest downfall as players is, imo, we like shiny things and advertising is an exact science.

 

[mcarroll]

We used to think bacteria were bad, but now we know that bacteria are what makes the world go around

I can't find the blurb anymore that said it extremely well, but since I found out the viruses are the predominant form of life in the ocean (bacterial viruses (phages), most predominantly) I've suspected they might be the weakest link in our home systems.

Mostly I suspect this because we are the most-ignorant about viruses, yet they are apparently so numerous and so important. I know virtually nothing about them past what's in this post.

Check out this quote (just from the abstract...pay article):
From http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6736/full/399541a0.html

"Viruses are the most common biological agents in the sea, typically numbering ten billion per litre. They probably infect all organisms, can undergo rapid decay and replenishment, and influence many biogeochemical and ecological processes, including nutrient cycling, system respiration, particle size-distributions and sinking rates, bacterial and algal biodiversity and species distributions, algal bloom control, dimethyl sulphide formation and genetic transfer."

It seems like viruses are the ultimate biological balancers and they do touch on all our problem areas. The more functional our little ecosystems are, the more of these resiliencies the tank inherits. Paul's been preaching this on the fish front for longer than I've been around. ;) But I think it's true in general....and I think viruses are where it's at.


Also from the free part of the linked article:

"Steady-state model of carbon flow in a hypothetical aquatic microbial food web with and without a virus component that is responsible for 50% of bacterial mortality and 7% of phytoplankton mortality."

This made my eyeballs go: :eek:

I need to hunt down some free references on this.

I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong but nucance alegea= it was introduced to the system.

I can only offer an anecdote....I do think some algae seem to have the omnipresence of bacteria (and cyano) and they just materialize in a tank. The green fuzzy stuff seems like this.

On the other hand, golden algae (and many others) will not show up unless you bring it from another tank.

Free nutrients are a factor, but only more or less. They don't create the problem.

I also think tank maturity is a factor...and one that receives regular "microbe updates" like Paul's is going to be better off – more capable – than an old, isolated, underfed tank like mine. (Which is still pretty capable, thank you. ;))

My tank has been through some stuff the last few years and could use a new chunk of live rock – or something new from the ocean.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I'm mostly talking about hair algae, film algae and cyano bac. But yes, algae like bryopsis, bubble algae, and turf algae are typically introduced.

agreed. I wonder if film alge comes in with food or fish poop.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong but nucance alegea= it was introduced to the system. Nutrients have nothing to do with it. .

I don't agree. Sufficiently low N, P, iron, or or other factors will limit algae growth.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

.I do think some algae seem to have the omnipresence of bacteria (and cyano) and they just materialize in a tank. The green fuzzy stuff seems like this.

On the other hand, golden algae (and many others) will not show up unless you bring it from another tank.

When i see serious diatom chyristo the really weird stuff here , I usually ask where they live. Seems a lot of them are in the south east. o_Owind? anyone who understands lambic brewing might agree.
Hows that for a crazy thought.

Cyano I just negotiate with. I figure it did create life on earth as we know it, so It's probably a lot smarter than me.

 

[mcarroll]

I bet you are right and most of it comes inside the guts of our snails and fish.

I don't agree. Sufficiently low N, P, iron, or or other factors will limit algae growth.

True! Those things once lowered to an effective range can limit corals as well, can't they?

And it does depend which "algae" we're talking about. Anything that has any ability to fix N2 or associate with an N2-fixer will be a tough cookie if only confronted this way.

 

[reeferfoxx]

On the other hand, golden algae (and many others) will not show up unless you bring it from another tank.

I've heard others suggesting this is introduced? I'm not familiar with this being introduced? Do we not quite understand chrysophytes or is golden algae something different?

I suppose it would be introduced just like adding adding a wave pump or a skimmer. In that case ALL diatoms, algae and bacteria are technically introduced just as Live rock is introduced.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I don't agree. Sufficiently low N, P, iron, or or other factors will limit algae growth.

Hi Randy,
But won't those also limit coral growth? Thats the essence of the thread here I believe.
I think that's what all of us newer reef keepers struggle with. And lately with the huge amount of no/low nutrients and still have algae probs, it raises a lot of questions for me.

 

[Brew12]

What about Supermodels!

I try not to talk about my wife too much :p

 

[Brew12]

I tried a h2o2 dip on a "tester zoa frag" once. I might have had the ratio wrong but I think I was pretty reserved in the amount of h2o2 added. Anyway, the frag shriveled up and died within 5 minutes.

Well that is good to know! I did dip the 2 zoa frags I have. One stayed closed for 2 days but was doing fine till I got sloppy trying to superglue it back on the plug when it came lose :(. The other zoa opened back up within an hour and is doing great. Both plugs went from algae covered to algae free.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Well that is good to know! I did dip the 2 zoa frags I have. One stayed closed for 2 days but was doing fine till I got sloppy trying to superglue it back on the plug when it came lose :(. The other zoa opened back up within an hour and is doing great. Both plugs went from algae covered to algae free.

My ratio must have been off? Even still, i refuse to attempt it again. I just cut the frag plug off and inspect the coral. If a strand of algae is present, I cut my loses off.