Randy Holmes-Farley
Reef Chemist
View BadgesStaff member
Super Moderator
Excellence Award
Expert Contributor
Article Contributor
R2R Research
My Tank Thread
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2014
- Messages
- 67,122
- Reaction score
- 63,463
Hello,
Since I have developed these products I want to describe the ideas behind the products.
We want to make our products as easy to use and at the same time as safe as possible. The view at nutrients is very much a matter of personal opinion. In my eyes these opinions are not always correct. Acropora species and other SPS have a certain ecological physiology and certain demands in aquaria. Nuisance algae have a bit different demands. We want to offer safe N and P additives for different tanks with different stocks of fish and corals, mainly for use with our balanced calcium additives like Original Balling, Carbo-Calcium and All-For-Reef. These tanks tend to be rather on the low phosphate side.
We are just redoing our product for tanks with calcium reactors which adds only organic nitrogen and no phosphate because the calcium reactor filled with coral rubble usually supplies enough phosphate to the corals.
The nutrients in our N and P additives are a combination of organic and inorganic N and P. These nutrients are combined with an organic carbon additive. This seems contradictory at first glance but in my opinion it is not. With these products we want to introduce a dynamic equilibrium of nutrients. Let me explain this by the image of a bucket with an own faucet under a water faucet. If you open only the water faucet the bucket will be full somewhen and flow over. If you close the water faucet completely and open the bucket faucet it will run dry somewhen. In a dynamic equilibrium both faucets are opened to a certain degree. By mechanisms like increasing water pressure with rising water level in the bucket this increases the likelihood of a balanced flow of water through the bucket without running dry completely and without flowing over a lot. With some likelihood the water level in the bucket will stabilize at a certain level although water is added continuously. Small regulations of the water faucet or of the bucket faucet will result in only minor variations of the water level. This is the explanation of a dynamic equilibrium we want to create for nutrients.
The organic carbon source in my opinion has a second very positive effect. If you add inorganic ortho-phosphate to a tank low in phosphate, at first much of the phosphate is adsorbed to rocks, sand and gravel, all the calcareous materials in the tank. Only after these calcareous materials have reached a certain degree of saturation enough phosphate remains in the water to be tested and to nourish corals. The phosphate concentration suddenly jumps up although you have changed nothing with your phosphate additions. You stop phosphate addition, phosphate concentration decreases in the water but the phosphate adsorbed to calcareous materials remain in place. Nuisance algae and cyanobacteria start to grow at the expense of the adsorbed phosphate while the corals have no access to the adsorbed phosphate. These phosphate swings are amongst the worst things that can happen to your corals and to your tank because SPS are quite sensitive to phosphate swings. This has something to do with their rapid calcification which needs and consumes phosphate.
The role of the organic carbon source is to increase the growth of heterotrophic bacteria on the corals, the decoration and in the water and increase the incorporation of phosphate into bacterial biomass. Corals have direct access to the bacterial biomass growing on their surface and in their gastric cavity, and to bacterioplankton forming in the water. Much of the bacterial biomass growing on other surfaces will be eaten by grazers or forming secondary bacterioplankton by sloughing off. Both processes give the corals access to further nutrients. We have tried to find a organic carbon source that is most beneficial to the corals and maybe to the symbiotic bacteria growing on and in corals. In this way we have tried to "target feed" the corals with nutrients instead of saturating rocks and gravel with phosphate for algal growth.
That is a short description of the ideas and experiences behind our nutrient additives and we hope you agree that they work quite well.
Thank you for the clarification.