Do you mean this?: phosphate-levels-increase-growth-rate-in-acropora-muricata
Do you mean this?: phosphate-levels-increase-growth-rate-in-acropora-muricata
Yup, though I read the journal version. I don't mean for it to imply that phosphate is a good thing, only that basing a successful long term system or methodology on growth (or growth alone, really) may not be accurate--at least not in all circumstances. This goes back, again, to oversimplifying things. Can't say I'm not guilty of doing the same thing all the time, though. Everybody wants something they are supporting to work out eloquently and it doesn't usually happen that way.
yes
the ocean is the same scavengers of all sorts are not going to give up on the nutrients found in detritus.Well in the ocean, this is not the case. But in our aquariums, this could be more or less true.
http://www.absolutereef.com/forums/i...howtopic=15454
in localized areas it can but still as far as p binding and staying there, if coralline is growing on my rocks like crazy and P is known to inhibit calcification, how could this be true?pH has to drop into the 7's for this to happen.
All the hobbyist test kits only detect Pi, so we can't know how much Po there is. I wish there was a way to get this info, to me it is more valuable than knowing the Pi.
Ocean is a special case. As detritus is processed on the seafloor, P becomes solubilized within the pore spaces in the sediment and then trapped in abyssal plains. After probably millions of years the P can be made available again through continental processes.the ocean is the same scavengers of all sorts are not going to give up on the nutrients found in detritus.
In a DSB, this soluble P makes its way down into anoxic zones. I guess the danger here is when the sand is disturbed, releasing all this P....or when the sand becomes saturated?
Pi inhibits coral skeletal formation. I don't know if coralline algae formation is the same, but if it is, that is a good point you make. I really don't know enough about coralline to offer any advice. Maybe encrusting algae have their own enzymes that can degrade or digest the rock they are attached to?in localized areas it can but still as far as p binding and staying there, if coralline is growing on my rocks like crazy and P is known to inhibit calcification, how could this be true?
I did the super expensive labor intensive method, had a great looking tank, but it was just way to much work and money. Now I do the 'let nature take care of things' method and I am having great success for mere pennies compared to what I used to dump into my other tank. I just tested my 60G, and it has had a pretty stable PO4 reading for the past 6 months, which today is .52. That is way higher than I would have ever run my tanks in the past, but you know what, I have SPS corals encrusting and growing up the back glass. The growth is actually better than what I get on my other tank, which usually hovers in the .09 area. After weighing how much time and money I was spending trying to control phosphates at a certain level and then seeing my other tank level off and find its own balance with no interaction I no longer consider phosphates themselves to really be an issue or something I should worry about and control as long as the tank can maintain a steady level on its own, it is the stability that is more important than the actual reading is most cases.
I think a better way to test a tank for phosphates is to test right before feeding, then 5 minutes after, then 1 hour after that to get a feel on how well the tank can control phosphates. If you feed and phosphates remain elevated for several hours then I would work on fixing that issue, feed less, possibly adding good bacteria, better designed scrubber, flow, etc.. there are many variables which could cause and resolve a particular issue.
Good discussion . Adds value to this forum at my opinion. Doesnt matter where we end up, it gives wider view to things.
While analogy with rotating doors is nice, I feel its inaccurate at the same time. Algae is not the door it is array of doors. And there is basic difference. After screen cleaning we have lets say one rotating door. Next day we have 5 door and after week we have hundreds of rotating doors as algae continues to grow every day. Lets assume it is not full of passengers 100% , but we dont need that . When we clean screen we dump all doors together with their present passengers away and I would call this P and N export. If we keep algae and not harvest it - that would look like buffer. I see when people harvest their refugium and feed fish same algae . That happens in ocean. Animals eat algae but not export. All goes round. Algae is storage and conversion mechanism here.
There was information (or link to) on this site year or two ago how many P and N has dried harvested algae. Since we dump it away - we can say that scrubber cleans tank and not contaminates it with P. If this is enough ? - depends on tank and scrubber individually.
In our case secret is to have more rotating door at the end of week with more passenger inside. There goes your creativity and forum members experience how to make ATS more efficient.
My 0.02
I find that there are many studies that conclude that skimmers are not very efective at removing organics. I have found them to say that it is in the 30-35% range. So as I read it, bubbles may not be the organics answer.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/1/aafeature
"It is apparent that the similarity in k values for the skimmed and the unskimmed tank trials do not support the notion that the skimmer is contributing in any material way to the removal of TOC from the reef tank water. That is, the natural TOC consumers (bacteria and other organisms) are completely adequate for returning the post-feeding TOC levels to approximately baseline values after ~ 24 hrs - the skimmer isn't required in this process. These observations therefore do not support the conventional wisdom that a skimmer is obligate for lowering and/or maintaining low TOC levels in a reef tank."
"Many factors contribute to the "value" of a skimmer to an aquarist, including quality of construction, size, footprint, noise level, ease of cleaning, energy efficiency of the pump, and of course, the ability to remove organic waste from aquarium water. Our data show that there are not compelling or remarkably large differences in measurable skimmer TOC removal metrics among the seven skimmers tested, although the Reef Octopus 150 consistently underperformed compared to the other skimmers. However, in the larger picture, it is equally apparent that if an aquarist runs a skimmer continuously (24/7), then any of the skimmers tested would perform adequately in terms of rate of TOC removal; the only practical differences might involve the frequency of skimmer cup cleaning. A perhaps more interesting observation to emerge from these skimmer studies involves not the rate of TOC removal, but rather the amount of TOC removed. None of the skimmers tested removed more than 35% of the extant TOC, leading to the conclusion that bubbles are really not a very effective medium for organic nutrient removal. If fact, the presence of refractory, or unskimmable, TOC, coupled with the likelihood that endogenous TOC consumers (bacteria, among others) also do not remove all of the TOC present (cf. Fig. 4), suggest that in an operational sense, TOC can be categorized as follows:"
Look at the comments on that article, you will notice one thing that out performs what a skimmer does by a mile.. which is carbon. Skimmers remove 30-35% on average, Rox .08 carbon removes 85-90% of the same stuff. The only thing a skimmer does that carbon can't that adds a benefit to a tank is aeration but if your goal is to remove the stuff algae creates (oils, etc), carbon is the answer IMO. A small mesh bag of carbon in an overflow box for 1 weekend a month to me is equivalent to running a skimmer 24/7 for a month, but the skimmer in that time will also remove a lot of good stuff from the water that would have benefited the tank.
In some as yet unpublished work, we have shown that GAC is very effective at stripping aquarium water of its TOC load; from 60 - 90% removal, if I recall correctly, depending on specifics. We looked at ROX, HC2 and Black Diamond GAC's. The ROX was the winner by far.
Correct. TOC = Total Organic CARBON...I am more concerned about phosphorus than carbon. The same authors in the study you cited, followed up with a new article where they did an elemental analysis:
"Phosphorus analysis:
The 0.46% by weight of P present in the 5.18 gms of dry skimmate solid implies that there is 24 mgs of P present. Assuming all of the P is present as phosphate, PO43- (MW = 95, unknown counterion), then there are ~ 74 mgs (~ 1.4 %) of PO43- present in the 5.18 gm of dry skimmate solid. This amount equals ~ 14300 ppm of phosphate, which again is vastly more than the < 0.02 ppm of phosphate in the tank water."
Source: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/2/aafeature
EDIT: And to further this, they calculated that during the week of skimmate collection, they added 42 mg of P from their food source. The skimmer pulled 24 mg. That is almost 60% of the input. I think that is very impressive. That would be the equivalent of doing a 60% water change every day, shortly after you feed.
I would expect that if someone were running a skimmer and an ATS, that the ATS would grow significantly more algae biomass if the skimmer were removed, if food input remains the same. The higher Po should feed more bacteria which would create more Pi for algae.
Does anyone here have experience with this?
Thank you for the reply. This is what I'm looking for. I want real world experiences, from someone who understands the processes and cycles going on.
I think that I represented certain facts pretty well, like the way in which algae cycle nutrients hand-in-hand with bacteria, and how phosphorus especially in its organic form is an important consideration for us aquarists. You can choose to "disagree" or not "believe" these things, but they are very real as demonstrated scientifically. Belief doesn't matter.
What I don't have enough knowledge of is how all this relates to real-life reefing. And that's the valuable info I want to gather for the benefit of everyone.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)