Quick survey about coral growth and alkalinity consumption

mudskipper1

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Hi Everyone! Do you dose 2-part or all-for-reef? Do you have a minute or two to spare? If so, I could really use your help!
I am hoping to collect as many responses as possible to this survey about alkalinity consumption, and some details about your tank. Since alkalinity consumption is a pretty good proxy for growth of stony corals, I hope to be able to observe trends of what leads to higher growth in our reef tanks. But to do that in a meaningful way, I will need lots of data! If I find anything interesting, I will share with everyone.
Will you help me? Survey can be completed here, first few questions are most important! Thank you!
 

ocboat

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I filled out the form but I also have 6 clams that influence alkalinity consumption as much as my SPS I would assume.
 

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Answered, the stocking question I just did 5, I have 50 frags and a large colony that are all different types of SPS growing since the new tank build.
 
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mudskipper1

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Answered, the stocking question I just did 5, I have 50 frags and a large colony that are all different types of SPS growing since the new tank build.
Sounds good. I debated a bit what was the best way to gauge stocking level. No survey is perfect, but I am hoping that if I get enough responses this linear scale approach will give me at least a semi-quantitative measure.
 

Dkmoo

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Not sure how many results you received or if it still makes sense to update your questions, but a few pointers to help you get more out of your data

1) your question on daily dose in ML - I'm assuming you are already normalizing the data with the dosing product question, bc the alk concentration between different products may not be the same. Also foe the DIY ones (like me) the concentration is also different, so answering in ml is not gonna give you a normalized answer. In my response I answered that question in Dkh

2) alk consumption is also heavily influenced by ca level, and controls for abiotic precipitation via mg level. Adding those two will give you more meaningful data.
 

redeyejedi

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Hi Everyone! Do you dose 2-part or all-for-reef? Do you have a minute or two to spare? If so, I could really use your help!
I am hoping to collect as many responses as possible to this survey about alkalinity consumption, and some details about your tank. Since alkalinity consumption is a pretty good proxy for growth of stony corals, I hope to be able to observe trends of what leads to higher growth in our reef tanks. But to do that in a meaningful way, I will need lots of data! If I find anything interesting, I will share with everyone.
Will you help me? Survey can be completed here, first few questions are most important! Thank you!
I think BRS TV have covered alk and growth.
 
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mudskipper1

mudskipper1

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Not sure how many results you received or if it still makes sense to update your questions, but a few pointers to help you get more out of your data

1) your question on daily dose in ML - I'm assuming you are already normalizing the data with the dosing product question, bc the alk concentration between different products may not be the same. Also foe the DIY ones (like me) the concentration is also different, so answering in ml is not gonna give you a normalized answer. In my response I answered that question in Dkh

2) alk consumption is also heavily influenced by ca level, and controls for abiotic precipitation via mg level. Adding those two will give you more meaningful data.
Thanks for completing and for the feedback/advice.

I will be normalizing by dosing product, yes. DIY solutions of course present a challenge there if not using a standard concentration. I will have to see how common this is to decide if it might be worth trying to add something to the survey, but I will likely at least add a blurb to comment what concentration you are using if DIY. So far, 10-15% are DIY. I was really trying to keep the number of questions to a minimum, so that more folks would be willing to complete it, so couldn't cover all cases unfortunately.

Calcium concentration is one that I removed for sake of brevity, but I agree it is potentially interesting. My assumption was that abiotic precipitation is not a major source of all consumption in a majority of systems that are running sufficiently high Mg levels to passivate surfaces. Of course not a perfect assumption. Your comment makes me rethink whether it might be worth adding a Ca level question at least.
 
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mudskipper1

mudskipper1

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I think BRS TV have covered alk and growth.
They have, but in a very limited way. My goal is to gather a larger (but obviously less controlled) dataset to identify other trends. The survey goes well beyond simply Alkalinity level and growth, so hopefully will provide other insights.
 
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mudskipper1

mudskipper1

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Agree with @Dkmoo.

I use calcium hydroxide in seawater. Therefore I am dosing seawater, plus calcium hydroxide. This would provide a nonsensical value for you.
This is why my first question was whether you dose 2-part or all-for-reef. Due to the diverse array of means of maintaining water chemistry, a comprehensive survey would be horribly complex, and the dataset would be too cumbersome for me to parse in my spare time. I really wish I could, and I appreciate your time, perhaps I or someone else ca attempt a similar study for other methods. Thus, I picked a subset that I felt was most straightforward and would be most useful for the most people. For example, this also doesn't cover Ca reactors, because I don't have a good way to quantitatively link that to an amount of growth.
 

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I was really trying to keep the number of questions to a minimum, so that more folks would be willing to complete it, so couldn't cover all cases unfortunately.
yeah cool - i figured as much.

Stony coral growth is such a loaded subject and the biology involved is so complex that there's going to be a trade off between survey brevity and what kind of conclusion you can expect to draw from your data.

To help you set that expectation and how to interpret the data - there is a well documented scientific fact for Calcium carbonate formation rate in different pH environment. So I'm curious to at least see that demonstrated in your survey. Whether or not that can translate to coral growth depends on some fair assumptions you can make on the below points:
1) Cal concentrate that we talked about
2) whether or not the calcium carbonate formation is:
a) precipitation - will need assumption on mag level
b) coral growth - i think you covered the two other big factors: nutrient and lighting. For lighting tho, type of lighting will matter less than whether or not it's the right spectrum and par intensity that we can make assumptions on. one interesting trend that i'm curious if this can show is actually tank age vs lighting vs tank size - since LED is mostly a newer addition in the market. Also MH/T5 tend to be more popular for the huge aquariums due to the cost of using that much LED on huge tank but that again maybe changing b/c some of the newer and larger LEDs introduced in the market. I am generalizing, of course.
c) coraline growth - i think you can assume that coraline growth is ancillary to coral growth b/c after all, generally good coraline growth = good coral growth. but just in terms of the raw magnitude of alk consumption - even FOWLR tanks need to at least occasionally monitor alk b/c coraline is still calcium carbonate.

GL - I'm very curious to see your results!
 

MexiReefer

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Hi Everyone! Do you dose 2-part or all-for-reef? Do you have a minute or two to spare? If so, I could really use your help!
I am hoping to collect as many responses as possible to this survey about alkalinity consumption, and some details about your tank. Since alkalinity consumption is a pretty good proxy for growth of stony corals, I hope to be able to observe trends of what leads to higher growth in our reef tanks. But to do that in a meaningful way, I will need lots of data! If I find anything interesting, I will share with everyone.
Will you help me? Survey can be completed here, first few questions are most important! Thank you!
complted
 

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