Utilising the CNP in phytoplankton to carbon dose my system.

[Dan_P]

But bacteria cannot consume phosphates without nitrates, no? The bacteria theory doesn’t make sense if nitrates are stable.

The only theory I can think about is that phosphates are binding to calcium carbonate, or if some other precipitation reaction occurs with phosphate. Not sure though.

Bacteria and algae engage in luxury uptake of nutrients. This means, uptake occurs even though the nutrient is not required at the time. This fact and the fact that the uptake ratio of N/P is dependent on where the organism is on the growth rate curve, makes interpretation of changes in the ratio of inorganic nutrients in water tricky, and especially tricky when dealing with hundreds of species all growing at different rates and interacting with each other.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Not gonna lie, your thread in the chemistry forum seemed a little out there to me, but since stumbling upon your original phyto doser thread and now this one I think it makes a lot of sense.

I’m more of a traditional SPS reefer (low nutrient, metal halides, oversized protein skimmer, refugium, lots of live rock and sand). My main objective is to create as close to nature as possible with water chemistry.

Reading back over old threads and articles about nutrient levels in the ocean, things are starting to click. While you can grow SPS in high N/P conditions, I think what is ideal is to lower these substantially and have your SPS get this N and P through plankton feeding as seen in the ocean.

I think I’ll look into dosing phytoplankton Into my system. Are there specific species of phyto that work best for this application? Are you still dosing any rotifers as you did before?

Thank you, most of my threads are based on my experience and observations I also tent to read several articles with related information to confirm some of my thoughts.

you may find this one interesting if you considering dosing phytoplankton to aid the introduction of natural forms of CNP to your system.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09670262.2013.875596

this talks about the different organic nutrients in phytoplankton and the production of dissolved organic carbon by some species of phytoplankton it’s one of the reasons that dinoflagellates can cause a system to become depleted in nutrients.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Phosphates keep decreasing rapidly in this system they are detectable just not as stable as nitrates, im dosing around 0.2 pppm a week of phosphates to balance the system (still cheaper than using phosphate absorbing medias if you ask me, 500 ml of po4 comes very affordable these days and in the dosing unit kind of makes things easier. It’s been very helpful to not have to add any medias to my system. I’ve also bought 6 fish today to add to the system making a total of 9 fish. Will update coral later on, the previous issue with dinoflagellates is resolved now also it only took a couple days to resolve it.

 

[djf91]

Have you ever considered a species of phyto endemic to more tropical coastal seas? Like Isochrysis?

 

[sixty_reefer]

Have you ever considered a species of phyto endemic to more tropical coastal seas? Like Isochrysis?

Never tried it before to be honest, we don’t have many options on this side of the pond.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Left my system for 4 days wile away, got back to this

phosphates bottomed out after the last dose of 0.1ppm on Sunday morning before I left.
I now have 0 ppm phosphates and 10 ppm nitrates.

just dosed 0.2 ppm of phosphates, will use the situation to observe the dinoflagellates

5 days ago there was a pandemic of dinoflagellates today there’s a endemic, nutrients back on track and they gone just like that.

 

[sixty_reefer]

And the 10 weeks anniversary of the phytoplankton reactor without having any maintenance, no cleaning, no splitting, no hassle. Culturing going strong as ever

 

[sixty_reefer]

Visible growth on the montipora digitata (stick 3) on week 4, unfortunately it’s properly encrusted to the rock, removing it for weight will be impossible from this point forward.

it’s like playing spot the difference from here on

Sps chosen to take part of the test

random stick 1:

Random stick 2:

random stick 3:

how far apart should I check the weight again? A couple months?

 

[sixty_reefer]

 

[Miami Reef]

This tank looks so pristine! I don’t understand how you got it looking so crystal clear. UV?

 

[djf91]

I’m about to start dosing Nannochloropsis with a doser to my system. Nitrates are ~15-20, Phosphate 0.05. In the past month I’ve had green hair algae and cyano resurface in the display due to what I believe was me adding rocks (nutrient laden) from a friends tank break down.

Do you think this phyto dosing will help in bringing nutrients down and also in combating GHA and cyano?

 

[sixty_reefer]

This tank looks so pristine! I don’t understand how you got it looking so crystal clear. UV?

Thank you the water clarity is ok, I was trying to figure out the reason myself although I can only speculate.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I’m about to start dosing Nannochloropsis with a doser to my system. Nitrates are ~15-20, Phosphate 0.05. In the past month I’ve had green hair algae and cyano resurface in the display due to what I believe was me adding rocks (nutrient laden) from a friends tank break down.

Do you think this phyto dosing will help in bringing nutrients down and also in combating GHA and cyano?

It would greatly depend how you would implement it in my opinion. Cyanobacteria and Green air algae belong to the autotrophic organisms that will thrive under inorganic nutrients.
min your case if you have them starting to grow in your system it may well be due to a abundance in this type of nutrients. Unfortunately is not as easy to deal with organic nutrients as it is for inorganic.

live phytoplankton as you mentioned will assimilate organic nutrients wile in the water column and if you dose every day during the tank photoperiod would aid the outcompete.

encouraging the growth of diatoms with silica will also aid the removal of organic nutrients by assimilation

dosing organic carbon at lights out will also aid the removal of organic nutrients I believe the dosage can be anywhere between 0.5 ml to 1ml per 25 gallons of tank volume.

there ain’t many effective ways known to me that will remove efficiently organic nutrients although I believe the 3 named above will be some of the most effective ways to remove them.

a alternative is to give the sand bed and rock work a good scrub as most of the organic nutrients get trapped in those areas.

 

[sixty_reefer]

My protein skimmer not been collecting much the last two weeks

i’ll keep it on the aid the removal of pelagic bacteria, the phytoplankton reactor still going strong the colour of the culture his always constant now

the system before lights on

Nutrients and dosing

for my system I’m finding 2mg/gallon the ideal dose to keep nutrients balanced ive just upped the dose to 3mg/gallon to reduce phosphates a tad as I had to add a lot of phosphates to get out of my last lock with dinoflagellates, overall in that week I dosed 3ppm of phosphates maybe more and I end up to getting a residual of 0.4 ppm will reduce it to 0.05 in the coming weeks and nitrates are still stable at 10 after adding some last week.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Stick 4 seems that may be experiencing STN

 

[sixty_reefer]

My skimmer seems that has stopped producing for almost 2 weeks now, the skimmer still working just not filling the container anymore. Phosphates have decreased by 0.2 ppm in the last week and nitrates stable at 10ppm. To say that the system doesn’t have a external filter everything looks clean and with no build up of detritus, glass maintenance looks to be fairly reduced also, water clarity is at is best an fish sometimes seem like they are floating im fairly satisfied with this as I haven’t used GFO or GAC since I first set up the system.
Somewhere in the last 3 weeks I had one of the acros starting to STN for a unknown reason and some colour up to the point were colour are visible fairly well with white light, my green Kenya tree also started to drop babies, possible signs of stress or good water quality is hard to know. Filter feeders and micro life is blooming I can see them starting to appear in new places.
Overall it seems that the system is finding its balance just a couple of spots with some nuisance algae, golden algae and GHA but they not spreading at this point yet.

Kenya before splitting

Kenya after splitting

Golden algae

skimmer not emptied since last pic

D

 

[sixty_reefer]

Looking trough a microscope for the afternoon it looks like my sand bed is full of nematodes, possibly in connection with the sand bed being so clean. They did become more active after a drop of phytoplankton was dropped in the sample there where some fairly fat nematodes, magnification 100x, I saw around 30 of this in a small Sand sample probably 20 grains of sand.

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[djf91]

So how would you rate the overall health of the system? Upward trajectory?

Do you think the waste that was being removed by the skimmer is now being sequestered somewhere else?

 

[djf91]

Would you say carbon dosing and dosing phyto have similar effects on a system?

 

[sixty_reefer]

So how would you rate the overall health of the system? Upward trajectory?

Do you think the waste that was being removed by the skimmer is now being sequestered somewhere else?

Overall I can complain I had 2 corals dying, one acropora that started stn and a non photosynthetic gorgonian, I can’t put the reason of losing this two corals in connection to the phytoplankton, my tank is not designed to sustain acros and the non photosynthetic gorgonians went trough a lot of stages of the tank.
I had a small problem with Aipatasia that was spreading quite quickly due to the constant amount of rotifers floating around the water column that is under control with a peppermint shrimp.
The protein skimmer not producing anything was experienced during the first test a couple years back, this time I’m refusing to remove it and even if it’s not removing anything it will at list aid with gas exchange, with the experience I had yesterday I believe that i have now several trophic levels working in the tank with bacteria and archae breaking down the organic matter and some ciliates as the ones in the videos above completing the cycle, since yesterday I found that the organism in the second video is a Paramecium that feeds on bacteria and the chap from the first video is a didinium that feeds on paramecium and rotifers I got reasons to believe that most of the microscopic trophic levels are now in place and not many leftovers for the protein skimmer to remove, as many will know nutrients are removed via bacteria assimilation and then extracted via protein skimmer during carbon dosing.
Only time will tell how everything will end up although so far I am fairly pleased how a system with barely no equipment and external filtration is doing.