Lets talk about carbon dosing, the Redfield Ratio, and bacteria in an SPS system

[Serioussnaps]

Dots-

Thanks for stopping in. I don't even have 9 months of dosing under my belt yet ...another good reason for kicking that proverbial can that Cham shared with us.

The nano crashing just cracks me up.....I wish I had another tank set up to just try to see how far I could push it. How did you find your dosage level exactly? Just using a nitrate test kit?\

I also agree that a lack of nutrients can be a problem in an extreme BB tank. I actually pulled a Tunze 6000 out of mine because I have been on a blasto, chalice and goniopora streak, but until then I had basically the same philosophy...avoiding the dreaded nutrients and nuisances that come along with it. I believe that when keeping Acroporids that nutrient balance in our system is one of the most important aspects if not the most.

Do you know the size of the cube you were adding? to the 75 right? I am virtually just wetting my finger in Tank water and dipping the tip and nail in sugar and then dipping my finger in the sump...taking it very slow and much less than a normal cube. That is a ton of food at once and it seems that without the sugar your tank would be a bomb despite being well skimmed? Were all other params in check before the growth spurt? It seems as though all the input is the catalyst for the growth...that and the fact you rip it out so it doesnt pollute thus negating your efforts. This is a great example of the usefulness of c-dosing and bacterial boosts.

BTW the bonsai looks sweet. Only time will tell the long term effects, but I think in a well maintained system and without going overboard the long term effects will mimic the shortterm that you are seeing.(of course what do i know?)

Finally, have you tried the same regimen without the sugar? This may only be anecdotal, but I would venture to say you would experience more negative effects without the sugar in the long term.

Something everyone has mentioned is a dosing regimen...if we found one that was safe and effective(something even close to being quantitative) in most all applications then that would be the groundbreaker I spoke of in the original post in the thread.

Cheers and thanks for sharing

 

[DarkXerox]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10376572#post10376572 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Serioussnaps
Way out of my league unless I research it more. Maybe you can give me some reading materials? I am definitely hesitant to add yeast to my system, but at the same time I'll try everything once judiciously.

It's not "yeast" at this point, it has been digested by enzymes and you're left with peptides and vitamins (think pre-chewed food).

Also tryptone (a peptide) which is a digest of caesin (found in cheeses, high in glutamine) and then is digested by a protease (usually trypsin which is a pancreatic enzyme). This is the protein source.

This is actually a good post to look at if you haven't had molecular biology or microbiology before: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar2001/984870351.Mi.r.html

It shows how LB is kind of the "catch-all" when you're trying to do incubations, but some bacteria grow better in that environment than others do.

Someone has to have a frag tank they want to test this on, wouldn't be too difficult.

 

[dots]

A couple of times the crash was on accident, I was just pouring it in willy nilly and sometimes too much. I got tired of nuking the tank......oh and especially the smell......the girl thought we had a broken sewer pipe broke once.

I got tired of the accidental overdoses and pushing the limit too much, I suffered Ph and alk spikes due to the overdoses in the big tank. Finaly I realized......as with it all......less is more.

The cubes are just normal everyday 4g cubes and this doseage seems to be working. Without it, the tank reacts very quickly being BB and browns. Need per each tank should vary based on daily nitrate production.

Like I said, its hard to determine the "exact" effect of doing it. But currently, I have undectable Phospate and Nitrate.

I use this as another "tool" in the toolbox to help "tune" the colors and growth of the tank. Because of the BB, it reacts very quickly to individual changes like light, feeding and skimming.

Currently I am on an upswing and I am very satisfied with the growth and coloration I currently have. However, a month ago it was a little brown all over.

This is a long term project for me and do like the results I see, I believe that it helps clear the water.

I may try to create a controlled test with the nano soon, (easy to build up the nitrates quickly), and I will get back to you with some hard data to try to do some causality if I do.

Thanks for starting this....I enjoy speculative threads like this

 

[Big E]

I couldnt agree more about the last statement, however, we still know very little and what I meant is the more we know the closer we would be to something ground breaking. Certainly the nutrient balance in lieu of bacteria in our systems is quite simple, but we lack a true understanding. I believe we havent even scratched the surface.

My point is dosing a carbon source is not necessary to reduce the nutrients to low levels. There's many ways to accomplish this. I have manipulated my BB system from end of the spectrum to the other without carbon dosing. I cleaned my front glass maybe twice in four months & wasn't even running a skimmer during one time, of course the corals suffered light coloring.

The "key" is finding a sweet spot for each individual system. Once you've cleaned up the system you have to find a feeding regime or bioload match to keep the corals from melting away.
Dosing a carbon source is the easy part. It usually works too well & the corals suffer from nitrogen depletion.

If your goal is to come up with a home made zeo type system I say have at it. Seems like a very worthwile goal. I'd focus less on what's happening with the bacteria & more on how the corals look.........good luck.

I'd caution as some have already mentioned, it's easy to crash your reef. These type of systems are running on a razors edge.
Even the commercial systems are quite vague & have caused plenty of crashes on these "expert's" tanks.

 

[stony_corals]

I doubt that my bacteria blooms were precipitation of carbonates
- alkalinity was constant throughout this period
- live rock and sand didn't have the white caked on that you see by adding too much kalk causing a pH spike.
- I wish I would have taken pictures to show the skimmate, both the quantity and the pure stench during this time and up to water clearing

I'm not trying to debunk anyone, just my experience over which the sample size is 2, not statistical....

Throughout this time, I've been testing PO4 with Deltec/Merck and am waiting on my LaMotte's NO3, right now said system under discussion is running 0ppm PO4 and the Salifert NO3 test kit result is clear with no tinge of pink. I am dosing aminos to (hopefully) prevent any great stress caused by N and P limitation. A caveat is that we are only able to test for inorganic forms of N and P. Who knows, DON and DOP may be high.... Since getting to this level, skimmate production and color has declined and is more light yellow....

 

[spongebobby]

I have been dosing sugar since Mar/Apr and using Blu coral method with Amino Acid (AAHC) also.

My dosage are 1 tsp sugar, 3.6 ml of pappone, 6 drops of AA.

My success has been nice but not great. I have excellent growth rates but colors seem to go back and forth.They color up nice for a week or two than fade a little. I believe that when the skimmer neck gets dirty the colors would fade but after a good cleanig they would start to get deeper so I have been cleaning the neck and skimmer cup daily for the last few weeks and colors are getting better and better.

Things I don't understand about this...... NO3(salifert) and PO4(DDELTEC) test show undetectable but my cheato grows very fast. I recently pulled out all the caulerpa from sump and replaced it with the cheato.This was about 45 days ago. Cheato was a clump that fit into a small ziploc bag, today it's the size of a basketball. That is how fast it grows. I use Miracle Mudd in my sump and think that this is what is fueling the cheato growth. I have been toying with pulling all the mudd and macro out of the sump and seeing if any improvements are noticed....just haven't got the nerve up to do it yet.

 

[glassbox-design]

the lb media is interesting and could be useful in terms of nitrogen limitation...but the rest has been beaten to death. the redfield ratio is useless. we have no idea what cnp levels should be at...

until total C,N, and P levels can be tested in captive top systems such as TOTM's i dont think we'll get any where. in freshwater planted tanks there are calculators, as it's much simpler...in sw it's not so... imo the cnp could be the key to finding that sweet spot, but i dont see that type of testing happening anytime soon.

for those of you interested in this check out the early articles posted by the man, better known as mesocosm, in zeoville.

jmo.