What are phenols, skatols and creosols?

[Floyd R Turbo]

I was wondering if anyone could she some light on this, it was brought up by a user on another site during a discussion on ATSs stating that algae releases "phenols, skatols and creosols, which are known irritants to most SPS, and many LPS corals"

I have a very strong feeling this person is just a flame thrower, because he stated this and then didn't bother to try and back it up when asked. So SM I figured you probably would have come across this one before!

1) what are phenols/skatols/creosols, besides irritants to some species of corals?
2) how/in what quantity are they released by algae?
3) at what point in the growth cycle are they released?
4) are they release by red turf or green hair or both?
5) in a properly maintained (cleaned weekly) ATS is it even an issue?
6) are these present in a non-ATS system?
7) is there a filtration system that removes these?
8) do they build up to the point where a large PWC is required?

You get the general idea...I love slamming doors on people, so help me out on this one...

[SantaMonica]

He's purposely working for the skimmer/etc people. He's also an idiot and completely wrong. Don't get sucked into his typical plot of him making an unsubstantiated statement and expecting you to jump through hoops. After he posts at least one study showing what he said is true, you can tell him the following:

To my knowlege, algae does not produce skatols or creosols at all.

Algae does not produce phenols; algae removes them:

http://www.oilgae.com/algae/cult/sew/new/phe/phe.html
http://www.springerlink.com/index/0JUBGY6JLF55G0C3.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19138816


Further, corals live in the ocean, and the DOC in the ocean is produced by algae. That is what corals eat. If algae harmed corals, there would be no corals in the ocean, since algae is 90% of all life in the ocean, and DOC from corals is 95% of all carbon in the water.

Here is a decent review on RC of what algae does to corals:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... 41&page=11 (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1843241&page=11)

And here is one of my responses on Zeo forum about DOC:
http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.php?p ... stcount=96 (http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.php?p=207048&postcount=96)