question for the microbiologist

[ShaunW]

I'm definatly not considering going skimmerless, my feeding habits wont allow it even with my 25% waterchanges once a week and 50% once a month. I feed my tanks 5-7 times a day of various food. (there is more fish/coral coral food in my feezer and in my fish closet than most people own peole food) I firmly believe a lot of the corals in our systems are malnourished/underfed due to our inability to properly export the by products, true rapid growth can only be acheived by providing the proper diet for all these critters, damn hard to acheive when the by products of half of what they need for optimal growth would crash most systems because we cant get rid of the waste/unconsumed foods before it breaks down, this is where having diverse microfauna and my insane waterchange ritual as well as far overskimming my tank comes into play.

I most certainly agree. However, unlike the ocean that has the abyss to dilute and degrade nutrients, our tanks are so minuscule water volume wise.

Basicly the whole basis of the conversation was on the fact that I WAY over skim and was wondering if I was doing detriment to ceartain populations of microfauna and bacteria by way overskimming, but the overall conclusion I have drawn is any detriment is negligable compared to the benifit of removing excess micro foods and waste before they break down, and contribute to pollution.

By overskimming you are definately removing any plankton/microfauna you add or have (not bacteria so much) and many of the nutrients they need for growth. As you mention it is a toss up/cost vs benefit question.

I sometimes turn off my skimmer. I do it when I notice that it isn't pulling out much skimmate as normal. I also turn it off for 24 hour periods of time.

often peole who try to mimic my feeding habits or even feed once a day end up with horrible algae problems and I have no nuisance algae to speak of (what I am stating here is that my grazer crew can easily handle the growth of algaes in my display, not that it doesnt form). by feed my tank i dont mean feed my fish 5-7 times a day, I am feeding lots of micro foods, cyclops, dapnhia, home made foods, several algae foods, and so on rotating what gets fed to ensure if something doesnt utilize a ceartain food it doesnt have to wait long to get one it can.

These food I am assume are live, therefore, they are not organic waste until they die. I would definitely turn off your skimmer for a period of time to allow contact between the food and the "mouth" to occur.

free floating bacteria is also a food I want available to my corals so if skimming is a serious detriment to free flating bacteria I would consider, shutting down my skimmer for one day a week then kicking up the sand bed to send bacteria into the water column to make the bacteria available for the corals that consume it. before restarting the skimmer. (now this is again where your opinion really makes a difference for me) I have no way of guaging or knowing how much the overskim capacity diminishes the free floating bacterial levels in the tanks overall volume, if you were to say its most likley negligable I would continue to leave my skimmer running while I kick up my sand bed, if you thought that it reall cut down on the available bacteria I would probably shut my skimmer down 50% of the time when i was kicking up my sand bed. I stirr up my sand bed to release detritus for filtration too, so I would let it skim every other time I stirr my sand bed.

what are your thoughts on that?

It's too bad that I couldn't get a water sample from your tank when I was doing the planktonic bacterial study. Your tank seems like it would have been a great addition, to see if you are indeed achieving nature levels of planktonic bacteria or not.

You are not going to kick up bacteria by disturbing a SSB. You will kick up organic waste however.

Bacteria can live as biofilms. I have added two artist representation of what they look like below. From these biofilms, planktonic bacteria are going to be constantly released to the water column. These communities will be all over the live rock. They are going to live this way based on nutrients, as nutrients increase the population increases, and individual bacteria will be released from the biofilm to venture off to find a new home and start a new community. Your only action to increase the planktonic bacterial content would be to increase your nutrients, since the bacteria are already able to do the job of getting into the water column themselves.

 

[ShaunW]

shaun, the tanks u did the plankton analysis on, did they feed phtyo to their tanks? if no, would that make a difference if they did u think?

I was looking at water borne (planktonic) bacterial levels. But I am not sure about whether they were dosing phyto or not. But I don't think that the amount of phyto would have affected the total planktonic bacterial population.

 

[reefkprZ]

However, unlike the ocean that has the abyss to dilute and degrade nutrients, our tanks are so minuscule water volume wise.

and that would be the crux of my dismay, the absolute inability to mimic the oceans purity while also providing the amounts of foods available.

These food I am assume are live,

as much as is feasable yes, but often I am forced to feed frozen cultures as I dont always have fresh live on hand.

You are not going to kick up bacteria by disturbing a SSB. You will kick up organic waste however

now correct me if I am wrong here, but wouldnt some bacteria attach to the organic particles, thus when the particles are consumed by whatever corals are capable, be feeding the corals the attached bacteria also?

Your only action to increase the planktonic bacterial content would be to increase your nutrients, since the bacteria are already able to do the job of getting into the water column themselves.

this my friend is good news to me, as i feel I provide a pretty steady supply of nutrients with out bogging down in decaying organics.

the feeding rate I have devised, was slowly built up to over the course of several months. I didnt just start bombing in food, in large quantities. i initially increased my feedings from once every two days to once a day 3/4 of the amount each day that I was feeding every other day (thus increasing frequency but not total in put by more than half. after several weeks at the higher ratio I then moved on to two feedings a day, and on untill i am now feeding 5-7 times a day with out fear.

well the future wife is home from work so I'm out for a while, I will pick up this conversation where I left off later tonight.

 

[clownlover]

OK it was Anthony Calfo that I first heard it from (wheather he originated the idea or not I dont know)

Page 38 in the book: "Book of coral propagation volume 1 version 1.0" shows an image of nutrient scrubbing raceway, and on the following page he explains how to use aiptasia as a natural "scrubber" as they are voracious filter feeders and would be a great method of cleaning for tanks that have high input of foods such as baby brine rotifers and other microfoods. I'll do a direct quote from the book here



I have been mulling this idea over for well over a year and am not about to run blind into a method that will plauge my display with a nuiscance.

sounds like u have it planned out. interesting idea. def wanna hear about the
results. did calfo say the uv sterilizer would kill the aip?

 

[reefkprZ]

no he actually didnt present any ideas for prevention of aip spreading back into the display. so the UV is my own addition, its the only means I can think of that would be effective without seriously f' ing up the water, as mass UV exposure can kill almost anything if the dose is high enough, the tricky part is calculating the dose, I dont want 99.999 percent effectiveness I want 100% solid. thats the only thing holding me back. I have been playing with My UV and samples of aip but have no concrete conclusions at this time. unfortunatly I can only play with samples of aip that hike in on corals if I dont have to eliminate them for the sake of the coral. and at this point I am not setting up a tank just to play with these Ideas. though it may come to that in the future.

 

[jhale]

the flip side to the giant UV you will need is that it will kill all the beneficial bacteria your trying to produce and keep.

 

[Deanos]

the flip side to the giant UV you will need is that it will kill all the beneficial bacteria your trying to produce and keep.

All? Or just those not located in biofilm?

 

[boozeman]

Using Aiptasia as a means of nutrient export is discussed in one of the Delbeek/Sprung books, where it is also suggested to use a UV after the culture tank to prevent the introduction back into the display.

 

[ShaunW]

All? Or just those not located in biofilm?

It would definately prevent the expansion of the biofilm to new locations by killing the planktonic bacterial stage of biofilm formation.

 

[ShaunW]

Using Aiptasia as a means of nutrient export is discussed in one of the Delbeek/Sprung books, where it is also suggested to use a UV after the culture tank to prevent the introduction back into the display.

Instead of using Aiptasia, on my system I personally would utilize greater skimming capacity but at only select moments (i.e. turn the skimmer off most of the time) and huge water changes (50% volume) at regular intervals.

I reallly wonder what their capibility to remove nutrients actually is: Mass for mass, how many nutrients (inorganic phosphate, nitrate, or organic particulate) does one aiptasia actually consume?

 

[reefkprZ]

I reallly wonder what their capibility to remove nutrients actually is: Mass for mass, how many nutrients (inorganic phosphate, nitrate, or organic particulate) does one aiptasia actually consume?

Me too.

thats why I keep kicking this idea around, and refining how I want to utilize it, and how can I show solid results. I dont care if the results show your better off not attempting it or if they show that its an overlooked form of filtration due to the aiptasia heebiejeebies.

but unfortunatly I am exhausted so I dont have the energy to carry on this conversation productively tonight (been sick all week thats why I was posting a lot, stuck at home) today I worked now I need bed.