Cure for insomnia!

[dtyharry]

www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/jp.. (http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/jp..). - Options

Don't know if this link works and maybe you have seen it before but it is an interesting read if you have a little time.
Certainly makes you realise that the ocean ecosystem is very complex, and for us to even try and replicate a tiny fraction is very arrogant of humanity!

[Floyd R Turbo]

The link did not work, looks like it has a space in it somewhere. You might to use the "URL" button above to force it to recognize it right...

[SantaMonica]

Without being able to read the link, I can still say that attempting to recreate anything should probably start out by recreating the biggest and most-basic parts. So since algae is 90 percent of all life mass (except bacteria) in the oceans and lakes, and all other life mass is just 10 percent, it would make sense to start out with a lot of algae in a closed system.

[dtyharry]

Sorry about the link. If you type "what removes nitrate in the ocean?" into google it comes up on the second page with the heading "inputs, losses and transformations of nitrogen and phosphorous".
As you said previously, a significant amount of "filtration" is carried out by the most basic form of algae, phytoplankton. Another significant method is denitrification by bacteria on the continental shelves. Dilution by ocean currents is also very important, a good example being the north Atlantic gulf stream transferring large amounts of inorganic nutrients, and combining with iron from the sahara desert dusts to enable large blooms of phytoplankton to be produced.
Although the benefits of algae scrubbers are obvious, I think it is over exaggerating to compare hair algae to phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is the very start of the food chain, hair algae is something else altogether. I would say it was a more efficient version of chaetomorpha, nothing more, nothing less.

[srusso]

http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/jpr ... _BGC96.pdf (http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/jprospero/Publications/Michaels_Prospero_Nutrient%20N-NAO_BGC96.pdf)

Fixed link

"http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/personal/jprospero/Publications/Michaels_Prospero_Nutrient%20N-NAO_BGC96.pdf"

[SantaMonica]

Algae, be it phyto or hair, are photoautotrophs. Photoautotrophs do all the filtering in the ocean, via chlorophyll. On land, it's trees and grass. It does not matter what form the chlorophyll comes in.

If you do more research you will find that on reefs, hair algae (i.e. benthic algae) do indeed handle more of the filtering than phyto, because of the shallowness and thus lack of phyto in reef areas. And since reefs recycle most nutrients (i.e, they are not waterchanged with the open ocean), it is indeed hair and related solid algae that do the important filtering for the water around corals.

[iggy]

What succession if any are people seeing on the screens.

I had a clears order of what algaes left the display tank but I am not clear if a true order of algae changed on screen.

What left tank was

Diatoms 1-2 weeks, small amount of hair algae 4-6 weeks, cyano thick turf like on rocks.
What did not leave was red turf algae, that turbo snails ate and bubble algae that I removed mechanically

Screen itself only changed different shades of green and some course filament algae that came and went in bottom of scrubber.

[SantaMonica]

The only common stage is diatoms to start. After that it depends on conditions.