Carbon Dosing & Skimmerless

A portion of my job is microbial ecology for DuPont and the advances in next-gen sequencing have really let us study populations in amazing detail. The cost continues to drop and hopefully will be at a point soon where it wouldn't be cost prohibitive for some of the reefers in academia to run some samples. It would be very interesting to see microbial populations across different systems along with carbon dosed systems and skimmed-skimmer-less changes. I doubt carbon dosing just increases the overall number that much long term (I mean big changes like 1 log), but I am guessing that it would drastically change the populations. You could sequence skimate as well to see what populations are being removed. IMO the overall numbers are not nearly as important as what families those numbers contain.

Knowing the populations give a great starting point to "seeing" what is happening as you can then dial in specific populations to get clues on different mechanisms of action. You can then look at skimmer populations and hopefully see the significance of what is being exported.

You can use RNAseq and take this one step further. Looking at RNA gives an idea of what is "going on" with these populations with gene expression. Looking at a tank's population and gene expression pre and post carbon dosing over a variety of time frames would really be interesting. The cost and really the bioinformatics support means this is probably a few years away yet for reef tanks (opposed to commercial applications) unless there is someone with deep pockets!
 
@Subsea

Which one would you suggest for a plenum system; 1-2mm coral sand or 3-5mm coral sand? Or should I go with oolitic aragonite like Red Sea's new Reef Base, 0.5-1.5mm or 0.25-1mm?
 
deepnblue said:
@Subsea

Which one would you suggest for a plenum system; 1-2mm coral sand or 3-5mm coral sand? Or should I go with oolitic aragonite like Red Sea's new Reef Base, 0.5-1.5mm or 0.25-1mm?
Click to expand...


What do you mean when you say Plenumn system?

I noted your tank thread as a skimmerless mushroom dominate tank. I recently started up a 55G mushroom & macro dominate tank that is skimmerless and sumpless. Substrate is oolite aragonite sand at less than 1" deep. To me oolite is surgar sand at .05 to .5 mm in diameter. I

In response to your question on your tank thread about lighting, T5 at 2W per gallon should be sufficient for your mushrooms.
Patrick
 
Yes all I'm going to use is a hob filter filled with matrix, a tunze 6020 and 2x24w T5 lighting in a sumpless and skimmerless 29g tank, which is why I was reading about plenum and dsb setups in case one of them would be beneficial to my tank. But after reading your reply I will just use a bag of oolite aragonite. Thank you.
 
hart24601 said:
A portion of my job is microbial ecology for DuPont and the advances in next-gen sequencing have really let us study populations in amazing detail. The cost continues to drop and hopefully will be at a point soon where it wouldn't be cost prohibitive for some of the reefers in academia to run some samples. It would be very interesting to see microbial populations across different systems along with carbon dosed systems and skimmed-skimmer-less changes. I doubt carbon dosing just increases the overall number that much long term (I mean big changes like 1 log), but I am guessing that it would drastically change the populations. You could sequence skimate as well to see what populations are being removed. IMO the overall numbers are not nearly as important as what families those numbers contain.

Knowing the populations give a great starting point to "seeing" what is happening as you can then dial in specific populations to get clues on different mechanisms of action. You can then look at skimmer populations and hopefully see the significance of what is being exported.

You can use RNAseq and take this one step further. Looking at RNA gives an idea of what is "going on" with these populations with gene expression. Looking at a tank's population and gene expression pre and post carbon dosing over a variety of time frames would really be interesting. The cost and really the bioinformatics support means this is probably a few years away yet for reef tanks (opposed to commercial applications) unless there is someone with deep pockets!
Click to expand...

A pHD friend on nano reef called the bacteria in our reef tanks "microbial overlords". I suspect the Martians in "War of the Worlds" would agree. Carbon dosing is not a new principal. It has been used for years in waste water treatment especially in front of denitrating filters.

While I understand the importance of bacteria in our reef tanks, is all the carbon that we dose up taken by bacteria?

Does carbon combine to form compounds that are building blocks to be up taken through photosynthetic activity by corals and macros?

Inquiring minds want to know?
Patrick
 
Yes methanol dosing in wastewater has a long history with plenty of publications. I have read one article that said it was someone's experience with wastewater carbon dosing that started the idea of carbon dosing in aquaria, but with something better tolerated than methanol.

I am sure the carbon we dose does not 100% go to bacteria. I have not looked up any papers to see what other organisms can use the carbon we dose, I bet Randy knows, but there are a variety of compounds that the ethanol or acetic acid can be metabolized to that other organisms can use if not directly using the ethanol or acetic acid directly. I wouldn't be surprised to see the populations of bacteria and other organisms varies considerably system to system. I still think it is the populations of bacteria the drive the noticeable nutrient reduction we observe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the bacteria consuming (or other compound utilizing) higher life forms that account for the increase in filter feeding organisms observed with carbon dosing.
 
Patrick,

I am enjoying reading your thread and learning a lot from it. Thank you.

I have a question about carbon dosing, which has been bothering for some time, which I hope you can provide an answer:

Nitrates (Salifert) and Phosphates (Rowa Merck) have been very low in my reef tank for a very long time. They have been 0.1 ppm and less than 0.008 mg/l (phosphorus) respectively. Last December (17/12/20113 to be exact), I began vinegar (5% distilled Barley malt vinegar) dosing. My objective was to provide bio diversity and food (read it as bacteria) for my corals. My starting dose for my 66 (US) gallon tank was 2 ml per day. I also dosed Salifert's Amino acids during the experiment. on 25th December 2013, the vinegar amount was 8ml per day. This was when I first noticed tissue recession at the base of one of my acropora corals. I do not know if it was a coincidence, but some of my LPS corals also looked quite unhappy a few days prior to the STN (slow tissue necrosis) event. I continued to dose vinegar until early February 2014 and sadly had to abort the experiment as the number of acropora corals exhibiting STN increased. I did not want to lose them as some of them were mature colonies.

I carried out a fairly largish water change and started to run GAC in a reactor. Shortly afterwards, STN stopped.

For what it is worth, I used a protein skimmer throughout and kept a healthy bed of chaeto, but stopped my GAC and GFO reactors during vinegar dosing. The skimmate production increased significantly during the vinegar dosing, but the growth rate of chaeto growth did not seem to be affected.

I cannot prove scientifically that vinegar was the culprit behind STN, but when I stopped it, STN stopped too.

In your opinion, what did I do wrong? Was dosing amino acids a mistake? or did I increase the amount of vinegar from 2 ml/day to 8/day too soon (I followed Randy's vinegar dosing table published in the Reefkeeping magazine)?

regards

Bulent
 
DiscusHeckel said:
Patrick,

I am enjoying reading your thread and learning a lot from it. Thank you.

I have a question about carbon dosing, which has been bothering for some time, which I hope you can provide an answer:

Nitrates (Salifert) and Phosphates (Rowa Merck) have been very low in my reef tank for a very long time. They have been 0.1 ppm and less than 0.008 mg/l (phosphorus) respectively. Last December (17/12/20113 to be exact), I began vinegar (5% distilled Barley malt vinegar) dosing. My objective was to provide bio diversity and food (read it as bacteria) for my corals. My starting dose for my 66 (US) gallon tank was 2 ml per day. I also dosed Salifert's Amino acids during the experiment. on 25th December 2013, the vinegar amount was 8ml per day. This was when I first noticed tissue recession at the base of one of my acropora corals. I do not know if it was a coincidence, but some of my LPS corals also looked quite unhappy a few days prior to the STN (slow tissue necrosis) event. I continued to dose vinegar until early February 2014 and sadly had to abort the experiment as the number of acropora corals exhibiting STN increased. I did not want to lose them as some of them were mature colonies.

I carried out a fairly largish water change and started to run GAC in a reactor. Shortly afterwards, STN stopped.

For what it is worth, I used a protein skimmer throughout and kept a healthy bed of chaeto, but stopped my GAC and GFO reactors during vinegar dosing. The skimmate production increased significantly during the vinegar dosing, but the growth rate of chaeto growth did not seem to be affected.

I cannot prove scientifically that vinegar was the culprit behind STN, but when I stopped it, STN stopped too.

In your opinion, what did I do wrong? Was dosing amino acids a mistake? or did I increase the amount of vinegar from 2 ml/day to 8/day too soon (I followed Randy's vinegar dosing table published in the Reefkeeping magazine)?

regards

Bulent
Click to expand...

You give me too much credit. I am not knowledgable enough about amino acids to answer your question. I do not think your vinegar dose rate was too aggressive. I am dosing 100ml per day into a 135G tank with a 6" DSB. What was the reason to discontinue GAC during vinegar dosing?
Patrick
 
Subsea said:
You give me too much credit. I am not knowledgable enough about amino acids to answer your question. I do not think your vinegar dose rate was too aggressive. I am dosing 100ml per day into a 135G tank with a 6" DSB. What was the reason to discontinue GAC during vinegar dosing?
Patrick
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply.

Because my starting point was very low nitrates and phosphates (at least measurable ones), I thought if I had continued with aggressive GAC and GFO use while dosing vinegar, I would have reduced nitrates and phosphates even lower than they were, thus causing STN/RTN. It is for this reason that I also started to dose amino acids (i.e. just to boost up nitrogen a little). It turned out that my scheme backfired on me. However, I do not know why, hence my original question to you.

Tom (tmz) at the time advised me not to go ahead with vinegar dosing because my nitrates readings were very low to begin with.

I can really see why carbon dosing can be beneficial in a reef tank, but I am now questioning if it is universally applicable to all reef tanks irrespective of their nutrient levels, nutrient export strategy used and equipment set up (e.g. skimmer or skimmerless).
 
Last edited:
My education is a marine engineer. One of my previous jobs was in wastewater treatment. I have been of student of nature for 60 years and I emulate what works in the real world of nature. That is why carbon dosing intrigues me. In my outside growout systems, I move large volumes of water with air. Nitrogen and carbon dioxide are 80% of air. I am already carbon dosing at the water air interface. In a crude sort of way foam fractionation or protein skimming is a type of carbon dosing as it allows carbon dioxide to pass each way. Feeding our reef tanks is another type of carbon dosing.

I think carbon dosing is universally required in our reef tanks. As in most things, it is a question of balance.
Patrick
 
Subsea said:
Randy,
Can you elaborate on how the symbiotic algae in coral consumes acetate? Also, what are some of the other consumers beside bactetia?
Patrick
Click to expand...

Sure.

It is known in the scientific literature, and it happened in my tank with high doses of vinegar and with a single dose of sugar (browning of anemones and corals, which to me meant increased zoox).

Zooxanthellae providing assimilatory power for the incorporation of exogenous acetate in Heteroxenia fuscescens (Cnidaria: Alcyonaria)
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00397460

Acetate incorporation into the lipids of the anemone Anthopleura elegantissima and its associated zooxanthellae
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00397460
 
Randy,
Thank you for the links.
Your observation of browning of corals after carbon dosing high levels of vinegar then sugar is an interesting point. Charles Delbric & Danna Riddle both addressed the oppossite side of that coin in talking about ultra low nutrient systems causing extremely bright colors in corals before they bleached and died because of starving zooxanthellae.

I have been reading a lot of literature on using a carbon source in front of denitrating filters in waste water treatment for enhanced denitrification due to increasing bacteria populations. While researching this I came across a hobbiest article using carbon dosing in front of a sulfur denitrator followed by a calcium reactor. This biochemistry is interesting stuff.
Thanks for providing illumination.
Patrick
 
Yes, the zeovit method and related technologies seem to attain some of the color in corals by starving zoox.

Along with that seems to come extreme sensitivity to alkalinity, but I'm not sure why.
 
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