Just read a Shimek Article in reef keeping magazine and have some question which are quite interesting for me. He describes the food chains in natural Ecosystems with various levels.
As he said each level consumes not more that 10% of energy present in food the rest is getting produced as waste there are always animals that able to utilize remaining energy from product of other level metabolism.
And that established ecosystem practically does not have much waste as most is getting reduced.
Something like that I have seen in my tank during the first few months.
I had setup my 48 gallon tank 18 moths ago.
Initially I didn't had any fish at all. My tank was going through the rock curing and start up stage during 2 months. Nitrate levels raised to 120ml/l in German measures. All I did is added a branch of caulerpa to float in tank, it got fixed on some rock and become 4 time bigger in 2 weeks bringing nitrate to 5ml/l and soon reducing it to undetectable. I had to remove it very fast because due to lack of nutrients it started getting white.
Once all kind of algae was gone I introduced 1 fish to the tank, which was Clarki Clown. I had no idea how much to feed so I fed it with huge amount of food. Initially amount of detrious started mounting but soon the number of pods become so big that I could count 10 on square inch of surface, all surface, on a glass on a rock they were everywhere. Population of other filter feeding anymalls started growing rapidly. My tank become full of pods, worms, tunicates, and spiral worms.
Clown were not eating them, he was mostly ignoring them, so those animals were crawling around during the day light, and my tank was totally clear, with white sand.
I forgot to tell that during all of that time I didn't use any skimmer at all. I was running only external filter with active carbon. And nitrate and phosphate were undetectable.
Later own the population of flat worms started getting bigger, so as I read that they are not good for tank I have introduced 6 line wrasse into the tank. Within a week or two this hunter had decimated all pods and probably forced them to hide most of the day. Ate all flatworms, all visible pods so now I had to look carefully for few minutes to find one.
Detritus started accumulating, and hair algae returned back, I was pulling as much as I could but it didn't help. I still have this algae in my tank. I tried to cure it by growing caulerpa, but caulerpa dies fast in my tank as nitrates are still undetectable.
Few months later pods started reappearing at day light again, their number started to mount. And algae gave up bit of space.
I was enthusiastic and decided to give it a final blow and introduced skimmer. Once I did so number of filter feeders got reduced, but algae continued growing, then I had introduced more powerful skimmer. Nothing changed but pods disappeared again.
Now I have tank with clown and 6 line and very few feeding. Algae is slowly giving up. But it's interesting too see how pods population were adapting to conditions. I wonder if they gonna be back again?
As he said each level consumes not more that 10% of energy present in food the rest is getting produced as waste there are always animals that able to utilize remaining energy from product of other level metabolism.
And that established ecosystem practically does not have much waste as most is getting reduced.
Something like that I have seen in my tank during the first few months.
I had setup my 48 gallon tank 18 moths ago.
Initially I didn't had any fish at all. My tank was going through the rock curing and start up stage during 2 months. Nitrate levels raised to 120ml/l in German measures. All I did is added a branch of caulerpa to float in tank, it got fixed on some rock and become 4 time bigger in 2 weeks bringing nitrate to 5ml/l and soon reducing it to undetectable. I had to remove it very fast because due to lack of nutrients it started getting white.
Once all kind of algae was gone I introduced 1 fish to the tank, which was Clarki Clown. I had no idea how much to feed so I fed it with huge amount of food. Initially amount of detrious started mounting but soon the number of pods become so big that I could count 10 on square inch of surface, all surface, on a glass on a rock they were everywhere. Population of other filter feeding anymalls started growing rapidly. My tank become full of pods, worms, tunicates, and spiral worms.
Clown were not eating them, he was mostly ignoring them, so those animals were crawling around during the day light, and my tank was totally clear, with white sand.
I forgot to tell that during all of that time I didn't use any skimmer at all. I was running only external filter with active carbon. And nitrate and phosphate were undetectable.
Later own the population of flat worms started getting bigger, so as I read that they are not good for tank I have introduced 6 line wrasse into the tank. Within a week or two this hunter had decimated all pods and probably forced them to hide most of the day. Ate all flatworms, all visible pods so now I had to look carefully for few minutes to find one.
Detritus started accumulating, and hair algae returned back, I was pulling as much as I could but it didn't help. I still have this algae in my tank. I tried to cure it by growing caulerpa, but caulerpa dies fast in my tank as nitrates are still undetectable.
Few months later pods started reappearing at day light again, their number started to mount. And algae gave up bit of space.
I was enthusiastic and decided to give it a final blow and introduced skimmer. Once I did so number of filter feeders got reduced, but algae continued growing, then I had introduced more powerful skimmer. Nothing changed but pods disappeared again.
Now I have tank with clown and 6 line and very few feeding. Algae is slowly giving up. But it's interesting too see how pods population were adapting to conditions. I wonder if they gonna be back again?
