An article which demonstrates the complicated interactions between living things in the ocean and how some of these interactions are good, some bad.
http://webs.uvigo.es/thalassas/Thala...%20et%20al.pdf
An article which demonstrates the complicated interactions between living things in the ocean and how some of these interactions are good, some bad.
http://webs.uvigo.es/thalassas/Thala...%20et%20al.pdf
Is mostly about phyto, so is more of a general interest than specific to using macro for filtering.
How scrubbers REALLY get rid of display algae (mostly). Due to the effects of Allelopathy on nutrient uptake on the target species, it's effect is amplified by competition for nutrients. Doesn't always work though, especially if the display outbreak is large enough to "poison" the screen first.
http://www.academicjournals.org/AJPS...ell%C3%ADn.pdf
That paper was for microalgae.
Yes, and this ones about Hair Algae on phyto;
http://www.researchgate.net/publicat...kes_get_warmer
can you see a theme developing here ?
Oh, yeah, there's this one;
http://www.mendeley.com/research/algal-allelopathy/Chemicals contributed by the alga can affect (1) other algae in its vicinity, (2) its own growth (i.e., autotoxicity), (3) microbes associated with it, (4) higher plants in its vicinity, and (5) accumulation and availability of nutrient ions which can influence the distribution, growth and establishment of other algae, microorganisms, and plants
Good stuff, thanks for sharing. I do believe some of that relates to how my ATS is working on my 75G (ie, never worked in regards to removing algae from the display). I always pull out more algae from the display than from the screen each week even though to me seems like the screen is working fantastic going off of the amount of algae I scrape each week, and this is going on close to 4 years now. Meanwhile my 60G system that only has an ATS and never grew much on the screen has never had an algae problem in the display. I always suspected having the screen work 'too well' was contributing to my failure but could never pinpoint why exactly, but those articles shed a little light onto why that may be.
I also wondered how much cleaning the screen contributed to the issues. There was a documentary I watched recently that showed how plants give off chemicals when threatened in order to warn other plants of danger which in turn makes the other plants go into protection mode, close up, and stop growing. It is the plants way of communicating with each other, which I found absolutely fascinating. I have no idea if that related to macro algae, the documentary was on land plants and what happens when animals eat the leaves. Just google 'plants communicate' to read up on it.
If macros could inhibit other macros, displays would not fill up with algae.
Anyway Garf, as always, I appreciate all the research you do and share with us.
4 Days growth on my 75G ATS
Your not really getting the point here SM. This is how I see it so far, secondary metabolites can either inhibit OR promote OR have zero effect on the growth of other organisms. This explains why Caulerpa species can be killed off in a scrubber system, even though Caulerpas (reef macros) have a lower growth rate and higher affinity for N & P, which means they are capable of survival at mega low dissolved inorganic levels. It also explains why some screens just will not start up and are always a screen full of mush "autotoxification". It also explains why display algae can die off, shortly after starting a scrubber, even though nutrients are far from limiting. It also explains why sometimes as in Aces case, the scrubber can grow great, but unfortunately so does the display algae. It also explains the "clamping" issue that has been observed in corals. Basically this one theory encompasses every problem related to running a scrubber tank. I think it's worth your time, not to just dismiss this.
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