dvanacker
DID I SOUNDS SMRT??
Sure they can... but they are arguing an advantage to elevating PO4 AND NO3 higher than what is found on natural reefs. There is no worthy evidence of this.
Guess the Phosphate level
- Thread starter Thales
- Start date
dkeller_nc
New member
No, I am suggesting that a tank with near zero phosphate and nitrate similar to natural waters and little to no additional nutritional supplementation for the corals could run into trouble.
dkeller_nc
New member
Indeed, that is precisely the point.
dvanacker
DID I SOUNDS SMRT??
I agree. Why are we arguing symantecs? Thats not what my last few posts have been about.
Also there is a difference between 0.00000 and .03 or even .003
dvanacker
DID I SOUNDS SMRT??
Ah i think you are saying in the absence of proper nutrition perhaps corals can somehow utilize higher levels of NO3 and PO4. That is an interesting idea, although still not reasonable to conclude. Maybe that is the case some how but why not just offer proper nutrition. Its pretty easy, you get some fish and feed them some good food. Also how did the levels get elevated if you werent providing nutrients, food into the system.
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dkeller_nc
New member
That is indeed what I'm suggesting. Please don't get the wrong idea - I don't keep my tanks with high PO4 or NO3; the phosphate is typically 0.05 ppm or less, with undetectable nitrates. But I also put a great deal of phytoplankton, zooplankton substitutes and zooplankton (in the form of rotifers, copepods & copepod nauplii and occasional newly-hatched brine shrimp) into the system on a nightly basis.
The low dissolved inorganic nutrients are kept that way with aggressive skimming, carbon dosing, aggressive GFO use and GAC filtration. What this seems to provide is the ability to control rampant growth of algae without starving the corals.
Yet, this approach has some serious issues. There's a major PITA factor of keeping up with changing the chemical filtration media, and it takes a lot of auxillary equipment (to say nothing of the extra power usage).
However, in my view it would be considerably simpler to remove all of the chemical filtration intervention & carbon dosing, let the system's dissolved nutrients settle where they may at some higher level, and populate the system with lots and lots of different herbivorous animals that would keep algae growth in check. Unfortunately in my case, that's not possible as my tanks are really too small for herbivorous fishes or urchins, and snails of various types can be quite selective about what types of algae they will eat.
Allmost
New member
so, any one care to make a conclusion of what we have learned here ?
I fear it is going to be very misleading for new reefers ... last couple pages we read that po4 of 0.01-1 PPM makes no difference. and no3 of 0, 1 or even 10 or 20 also make no difference. so nutrients dont play a role ?
last decade or more, we have been able to keep/grow/ and color up acros, unlike before that. if its not the filtration/skimming/carbon dosing advances, then what has allowed this success ?
perhaps all this is ONLY applicable to really mature tanks ? with extreme sponge growth ? that is keeping the DOCs in check ?
galleon made a nice experiment, with low filtration and ... super powerful lighting, but corals never coloured up !
TIA.
I fear it is going to be very misleading for new reefers ... last couple pages we read that po4 of 0.01-1 PPM makes no difference. and no3 of 0, 1 or even 10 or 20 also make no difference. so nutrients dont play a role ?
last decade or more, we have been able to keep/grow/ and color up acros, unlike before that. if its not the filtration/skimming/carbon dosing advances, then what has allowed this success ?
perhaps all this is ONLY applicable to really mature tanks ? with extreme sponge growth ? that is keeping the DOCs in check ?
galleon made a nice experiment, with low filtration and ... super powerful lighting, but corals never coloured up !
TIA.
I think the OP's point was for people to not make any hard conclusions.
Allmost
New member
so how do we learn and move the hobby forward ? cant be all based on luck
we have all seen SPS coral reef tanks with brown or dead corals
M007
Acro Whore
FWIW, none of us will replicate NSW in a closed system. Mimic, maybe, but really the goal is balance. Trying to replicate with a host of chemicals and dosing regimes is fine until a miscalculation results in a gut wrenching crash. It is obvious that pretty corals can be kept either way but long term the balanced, simple approach, will yield better results. The argument that NSW P04 and N03 levels are zero only means that those elements are being consumed, kind of like the systems with algae growth and zero N03/P04. Trick is to keep those elements in check without GAC, GFO, or little glass bottles. Op has shown us what's possible, you take it from there
Thales
Active member
probiotic LOCKS it up in bacteria biomass .... planktonic bacteria biomass
Is there any hard evidence of this? Last time I looked at this and at Zeo, I could only find theory and anecdote.
Thanks!
Thales
Active member
so how do we learn and move the hobby forward ? cant be all based on luck
we have all seen SPS coral reef tanks with brown or dead corals
Anecdote is pretty powerful, and most of the time in this hobby it is all we have. I get nervous though when anecdote becomes dogma, or when product claims become dogma. There were many people who said that a successful tank needed Marc Weiss products, and many of them said it with vehemence - turns out not so much.
AcroporAddict
There is no substitute.
Anecdote is pretty powerful, and most of the time in this hobby it is all we have. I get nervous though when anecdote becomes dogma, or when product claims become dogma. There were many people who said that a successful tank needed Marc Weiss products, and many of them said it with vehemence - turns out not so much.
Love that statement. If it were not for anecdotal observation, testing and reporting in the reef hobby, I would still have a tank full of redbugs, bryopsis, and blue clove polyps. And thank Gawd I never bought into that garbage marine product line from Marc Weiss.
Big E
Premium Member
Anecdote is pretty powerful, and most of the time in this hobby it is all we have. I get nervous though when anecdote becomes dogma, or when product claims become dogma. There were many people who said that a successful tank needed Marc Weiss products, and many of them said it with vehemence - turns out not so much.
It is, but it holds a lot more water when backed by quality pictures. I've learned alot from them over time, because you aren't relying on memory.
This hobby would be a lot better off if people took the effort to learn how to take quality pictures instead of that cell phone junk. You don't even have to know what you're doing...........just a bunch of pics through trial and error will get you there. An all blue picture to show how great the colors look is useless.
At the very least, everyone has a reef friend that knows how to use a camera.
When I hear how things are looking better two days later, I ignore those comments as someone seeing what they want to see. I needs to be backed up by a good picture.
Good quality pictures and especially before/after are very helpful. Ever notice how those supplement companies always show a bunch of pretty coral pictures but never any before/after pictures.
I have done far more damage to my sps tank chasing numbers using carbon dosing and gfo than having a bit of nutrients floating around. My tank looked far better back when I completely ignored phosphate/nitrates and only ran gac once in a while to clear out the yellow.
I was talking about vodka dosing. No gfo. Though it still comes in a bottle
So as others said as well we need more experiments to prove or disprove the theories, and limitations.
Can anyone propose some experiments we might be able to run in a home or small lab settings ?
I think there is quite a bit of evidence that points to nitrates not being the concern it once was at least at moderate levels up to 5 or so. There is even some talk that zero nitrates for SPS isn't great for coloration although I suspect nitrate itself isn't the issue but rather just a symptom of an underfed system.
So focusing in phosphates there was some older studies that shows that it slows calcification. There are newer studies that it makes SPS grow faster (with somewhat less dense structure). If you look at the "increased growth" Red Sea regimen for sps corals they suggest holding to .1 phosphates and nitrates of 1-2 ppm. This is for growth and not coloration though.
Thales
Active member
Pictures are fine, but they are still anecdote, and anecdote is not a great way to move forward. If there were more simple side by side experiments testing only one change, it seems the hobby would move forward much faster. Anyone remember the Inland Reef experiment on the Eco Aqualizer? People were debating if that product could actually do what it said it would do. In stead of debating, Inland Reef got ahold of two of them, took one apart to see what made it tick (kitchen magnets), and set up a simple side by side experiment using 2 10 gallon tanks set up as identically as possible, but one had the Eco Aqualizer and one didn't. You can see the results here: http://web.archive.org/web/20041015223401/http://www.inlandreef.com/Testing/EcoTest.html
Anecdote in our hobby seems particularly difficult because when someone has an issue in their reef, they don't just do one thing to try to address it, they do multiple things, which makes it difficult to know what of the things, if any, actually had an effect. Combine that with the idea that there are different things going on in every aquarium as well as products with often unsubstantiated claims and it becomes understandable why there is so much superstition in our hobby. Sure anecdote can be powerful, and can become more powerful when you have a lot of people doing the same kind of thing, but it isn't like doing simple side by side controlled experiments like Inland Reef did on the eco equalizer.
Simple side by side controlled experiments are focused and to the point like Shakespeare writing a play, while reef aquarists are like the mythical million monkeys banging on typewriters that given time will eventually write the same play. I think the hobby would be served more by focused and to the point experimentation, rather than the million monkey approach.
