<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15236842#post15236842 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gabbagabbawill
why wouldn't you add zooplex? what's wrong with liquid/ kent? I'm asking b/c you say that but don't say why.
Thanks!
Because they're all dead, and dead planktonic cultures will immediately break down into nitrogenous compounds and phosphates once introduced into the tank. The live can at least hold their own briefly, and then break down, which is why you keep them refrigerated, to keep them alive (briefly) but they still go bad if left too long. The difference between most foods and dosing phytoplankton (they should be thought of as the same type of deal) is that phyto is too small to really be eaten by much other than specific small organisms in the tank, so it sits in the watercolumn for the most part, breaking down, where as mysis shrimp will be eaten by fish and inverts, so those nitrogenous and phosphoric compounds are getting absorbed into those organisms as biomass, versus breaking down in the water column.
Think of them as mini fishes. When you add a dead fish to your tank, you pollute your tank with the nitrogenous compounds and phosphates from the carcass. If you add a live fish, it survives long enough to do whatever you want it to do (in most of our cases, we feed the fish so that they live longer, happy lives).
anything not refridgerated I wouldn't trust. That being said, you should also know what you're dosing and why you're dosing it. I see too many people trying to feed their SPS using Phytoplankton, which is stupid because SPS don't eat phytoplankton, they eat zooplankton. But this thread is about azooxanthellic corals (lol "azoo," like the cheapo fan and other random aquarium stuff company), which may or may not consume phytoplankton, but I don't know much about them, so I'll stop here.
