Marine plant substrate?

[drouner]

I have read several articles and threads on marine plants and substrates. I have never been a big fan of DSB, mainly because of the look, not clean as it ages against the glass.

But I want to do a lagoon style tank. Some of the plants I am considering are Shoal Grass (Halodule) and maybe one or two others.

My question to the experts is on the substrate and to make sure I have this right. I can use fine aragonite such as SouthDown or Carib-Sea Sugar Sized Sand, or maybe something a little larger or a mix of the both. I can also use or should consider using a Mineral mud either prepacked from Carib-Sea or Florida pets. Layer that in with the aragonite. The mineral mud supplies trace elements such as iron. On an older thread I also saw were some recommended SeaChem's Onyx.

Using a mineral mud in conjunction with the aragonite do i still have to go 4-6" on the sand bed? How much should I use of the mineral mud?

 

[moosejac]

I used CaribSea's AragaMud, which is a mix of mud and sand. Best of both world's, but you still should probably have at least 4"

 

[drouner]

Did you use anything else? That could be quite expensive.

 

[graveyardworm]

What I'm currently using in my lagoon tank with Thalassia is a mixture of southdown, caribsea reef grade, and crushed coral. Its a mix of stuff which has been in various tanks since I started all mixed together. If I was to do it again I would go with just the southdown.

No experience with muds or other substrates.

For Halodule you can go with a shallower sand bed, 2 - 3 inches is sufficient of coarse deeper is better up to about 6 inches. If you want to keep other seagrass like Thalassia you will need a deeper sand bed however. Since you dont like the deep look on the front glass you could do something which is shallow at the front and gets deeper towards the back.

 

[Ironsheikh]

i have a tank w/ calcite substrate and sawblade caulerpa thats growing fine with out any help. using just a pengiun 100 for a filter and a stock flourescent light

 

[algaeguy]

Hi Guys:

What I'm going to use in my up-and-coming Seagrass biotope is a mixture of a few different substrates:

1) About 150lbs of Carib Sea Aragamax

2) 48 lbs of Kent Marine Bio Sediment

3) 16 lbs of Carib Sea Mineral Mud

4) 1 container of Fiji Mud from Walt Smith

5) About 200 lbs of Carib Sea "Fiji Pink" aragonite

6) Maybe some "live mud" from an established system or biotope (right, Sarah? )

My thinking is that I get a mixture of grade sizes (weighted towards the finer sizes), as well as the possible benefits of some of the enriched "mud" substrates. I'm shooting for a sandbed depth of around 4"-5" deep in a 40"x40"x 22" aquarium.

Graveyardworm's idea of sloping the substrate is a great one! In addition to being utilitarian, I think it will be aesthetically nice!

Looking forward to seeing your system evolve!


Scott

 

[drouner]

Scott,

Why all the different types of "mud"? Seems like over kill. Are they that different?

I am going to add some LR and stonies in the mix as well.

Doug

 

[Samala]

Not really overkill on the muds. Some are more like your traditional muddy goo (Walt Smith Fiji) and others are non-silty small particles that seem to have some iron available on them (like Caribsea's Mineral mud, which didnt cloud my water at all and seemed to have very little in organics). Miracle mud might fall inbetween, but I havent used it. So Scott's combining iron available and organic available muds. Walt Smith may have some iron in it too.. not sure.

Kent's Biosediment is supposedly close to natural lagoon substrates, but jury is out on how beneficial it is. Really, jury is out on all of these, but many of us have had great luck with them. Plants in mud-enriched substrates (such as mixed or layered in as you noted) seem to grow better, bigger.

Scott's note with the live mud from another system or from the wild is a good point. Seagrasses that arrive and are planted with a little mud from their native beds seem to do better. There are some reports from the scientific literature pointing to beneficial relationships with microbes that live on and around the roots. Smaller seagrasses like Halodule, Halophila that I've attempted have gotten along without native bed material, but if you have access to it, I'd include it. Ask for it to be shipped along with the plants if at all possible. Just a handful or two is enough to 'seed' microbes. Still I must say, this is just a plausible scenario, that jury has a lot to deliberate.

Anywho, I also love the idea to have mixed grades of sand. I liked medium grain sizes just for ease of planting and such, but these plants can come from very very fine and silty substrates, or pretty coarse oyster shell hash. Wide range.

Have you seen the Reefkeeping article on seagrass aquaria?

HTH --

>Sarah

 

[moosejac]

The price was not dramatically more than sand by itself. A gallon jug of the Mineral Mud (about 12 pounds) runs $34.99, and a 30 lb. bag of AragaMax sand is also $34.99. The AragaMud that I used runs $49.99 for a 30 lb. bag, and I used 4 bags in my 40 gallon. That is a price comparison of $199.96 for the AragaMud, to $209.94 for 3 bags each of the other.

Of course these are retail prices at the shop I work at, and I of course didn't have to pay retail....hehe

Nathan

 

[drouner]

Thanks everyone for the input.

Sarah - I actually printed off your Reefkeeping article. I have also read through your website.

I beleive that FloridaPets has some live seed mud that I am planning on purchasing. As well as some plants.

 

[algaeguy]

drouner -I believe that you can't have too rich a substrate, and that a variety of grades and compositions will prove beneficial...Just a theory, of course-but one I'm going to test!

Sarah,

I'm fascinated by the microbial populations in the muds and their possible benefits for Seagrasses...That said, are these specific species of bacteria, etc., or are they commonly found in various substrates? One of the things that I'm curious about is the claim that Carib Sea's "Mineral Mud" product claims to have some live bacteria associated with it.

I'm wondering if the bacteria are simply nitrobacter and nitrosominas (like you find in many "live sand" products), or some other strains naturally found in these Seagrass substrates? Any thought on this?

Thanks!

Scott

 

[Samala]

Scott.. no idea I'm afraid. I have a stack of rhizosphere microbe papers that I need to read but I've been too busy elsewheres! I would be quite surprised if they were Nitrobacter or Nitrosomonas myself. I'm not sure if they are species specific (say Thalassia has one, or two or more, and Halodule has another set of distinct microbes) or if they are shared across groups of plants by evolutionary descent or region (say Caribbean basin grasses all share similar rhizosphere populations) or what. I too find it fascinating.

A good place to start to think about this might actually be looking at nitrogen fixing bacteria in legumes, which there is a lot of information out on, both scientific and less jargon-heavy sources. They wont be related to legumes of course, and we're talking terrestrial vs. aquatic, but perhaps a start.

-------

Here's an interesting experiment I did this last month though. I took wildly prolific Halodule plants and subjected them to two identical tanks (bioload, enrichment, CO2, everything the same) and made one change to the substrate between the two. I used only wild seagrass bed mud in both. But, in tank one, I used mud that had been freshly collected and still had a noxious sulfurish smell to it. In tank two I used mud that had been baked at 480F for a day. This mud had no smell after baking, which I hoped meant that the sulfur/methane producing bacteria, and hopefully all bacteria, had been killed. [Unfortunately I hope it did not aversely affect any organic matter in the mix, which there is usually quite little.]

I then took wildly prolific Halodule plants and applied antibiotic known to destroy legume associated microbes as a soak for several hours. I was hoping to kill microbes that might have been within the plants. No confirmation for this step unfortunately, it would have been too time intensive and I wanted this, what we like to call, quick and dirty. (Ha!)

So, two tanks, two amounts of treated Halodule, one month of growth. Plants in the heat killed mud substrate did very very poorly. Just a few new plants of growth, rhizomes were and stayed small, leaves lost size and width. Colony lost overall mass. Plants in the wild fresh mud tank did beautifully. Doubled colony size in two weeks, doubled again by the end of the month. Colony tripled its starting mass.

So, interesting results from a limitedly scientific attempt to look at potential microbe effect on a seagrass. Looks like if you kill the interior microbes they can recolonize from sediment. And plants without any microbes do poorly, despite water column enrichment and support. Also, substrate that smells might be an easy indicator that your good microbes may still be alive. As always with my quick and dirty fun experiments, these are just suggestions, and by no means the final word. I'd need to do real controls and such to get anything really meaningful from this sort of thing.

>Sarah

 

[Samala]

Oh, and Drouner, see if you can talk John into a handful or two of bed mud. I really think it helps. Even just a bit from out his backyard in the lagoon would be beneficial. I hope the website and article were helpful!

>Sarah

 

[algaeguy]

Interesting stuff, Sarah!

Now, another interesting thing would be to see if there is any correlation between the density of the microbial population and growth. In other words, the more beneficial microbes, the better the growth of the Seagrasses? Of course, this would assume that other parameters are acceptable, as well.

Also, is it safe to assume that the microbial populations multiply over time, or do they tend to wax and wane in our closed systems? Could this account for diminished growth and/or die off of previously thriving seagrass colonies in captivity?

Gosh, I'm still a few weeks away from getting my system up and running and I have tons of stuff I can't wait to experiment with! Grr...

Scott

 

[graveyardworm]

Excellent discussion I have some questions. Currently my substrate contains no muds, and I'm thinking I might like to add some. What would be the best way to do this, I dont think I want it on top ( I like my white sand ), can I just mix it in, or would it be better to create a layer of it within my sand bed? I recently ordered some Halophila which I think will be tomorrow or Friday, I believe this is going to come with substrate, I was planning on just kinda mixing this into my substrate around where I plant the seagrass.

The benefits of microbes is very interesting and I know similar questions have been asked, but I live close to the ocean and can go collect mud. Would the microbes from a temperate location be able to adapt to reef temps, or would they perish?

 

[Samala]

I think the microbes that really have an effect may only be found near and within seagrass beds. If you're near an eelgrass bed, its worth a try. Like I said, I've no idea if the root related microbes are widespread across seagrasses, regions, temperature regimes, etc., so hard to even guess if temperate ones will have any good effect. Just having the organics in the mud may be helpful though.

What I did with the silty/oozy Walt Smith mud was add liquid till it was more or less a solution, sucked that into a turkey baster, stuck the baster into the substrate, and applied it that way, underneath. I think you could mix it in no problem but it will cause a silt storm in the tank. (Well, if you dont drain the whole thing first I suppose but I doubt thats a realistic option.)

The substrate for the ovalis I mixed in myself and didnt baster it. Its closer to the wild lagoon mud I get.. lots of silica, lots of smell, little silt and organics that I could see.

>Sarah

 

[Samala]

Scott - I'm really not sure! You have so many great questions. Culturable microbes, say the lab workhorse E. coli, tend to proliferate very rapidly in good conditions. They can divide and produce two cells from one in ten minutes for some species. Enough to make visible mounds of bacteria on petri plates overnight. I would think root microbes would also be quick to respond to changes in their environment.. say they get more fuel from the substrate they'd respond. I imagine there is some natural rhythms in the total population.. there are natural cycles in almost all biological populations, why not microbes?

I would hope that you could seed a substrate with a mud sample with microbes and hope that they spread to colonize areas near and in the roots throughout the tank. I dont think I mentioned it yet, but the plants themselves seem to be able to bring the microbes along in root tissue itself.

Would more microbes get more nutrition into the plants? Dunno. Is it possible to grow seagrass totally without microbial input? Dunno. Is it possible to grow seagrass completely on water column fertilization, without microbes, in an almost underwater hyrdroponic setup? Dunno. Lots of cool things you could look at to be sure.

>Sarah

 

[graveyardworm]

Thank you, I just got confirmation that my order should be here tomorrow so hopefully I'm ready. I may collect some local mud and just put it in a QT for awhile for observation, and perhaps throw in some tropical seagrass.

 

[drouner]

Interesting thread. I thought keeping SPS were demanding!!!

I really did not want to put alot of money into buying mud. I though a right mix of aragonite and seed mud would do the job. But.........

From what you all are saying the jury is out on which flavor of "mud" is the best. Scott looks like he blending 3 together.

I have looked at Walt Smith's Fiji Mud but dismissed it as way too expenisve. Is it a concentrate? I can't really find much info except it is collect at some "rare mud" patches 40 feet down.

I was thinking about Carib Sea Mineral mud, but Sarah's not real positive on that. Kent marine Biosediment seems interesting from a particle size, but their web site really does not disclose what all is in it, aragonite, CaCo3 and MgCo3.

I gather if I am looking for trace elements, add on of the commerical of the shelf products. If I want mirobes and some trace elements go with some seed mud.

 

[algaeguy]

Great Stuff, everyone!

OK, Sarah- you know where this hobby-geek is going with this one:

It would be fascinating to see just what bacterial species we're dealing with...Imagine the ability to obtain pure cultures of these microbes and to apply them to substrates as sort of a "living fertilizer"... Perhaps to be able to culture them from the Seagrasses themselves.


Anyways...good luck with the new 'grasses, David!

Scott