Torches response to Selcon

[5380]

Passing time while SAS slowly ticks away in the background, so I thought I'd share an observation.

I decided to dose selcon straight into the tank to see if I could get any response from one of my acans that has been looking haggared. I dosed 1ml into my system (100g) and the response by my orange torch was rather interesting - in seconds my orange torch went from full, long tenticles waving in the water to short stocky and curled.

The second torch I picked up at the swap was not tolerating the tanks flow well upon initial acclamation. I could see the tentacles were getting deformed by the water flow. I tried the selcon again and I got an almost identical response. The selcon also coaxed out the frogspawn.

I searched the LPS forum and only found a people using selcon as a soak for mysis in feeding. The reaction was extremely fast, and it makes me wonder if lps may have a very high need for omega-3 supplementation and/or dedicated means to extract these compounds from the water column.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

interesting.

Sounds like a feeding response. Beware fueling a cyano outbreak.

 

[pascal32]

interesting.

Sounds like a feeding response. Beware fueling a cyano outbreak.

please educate us on why this could fuel an outbreak...I've done this a few times out of curiosity...

 

[5380]

I assumed it was a warning not to dose concentrated solutions into the tank?

 

[redrider911]

The price of that stuff why would you lol

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

please educate us on why this could fuel an outbreak...I've done this a few times out of curiosity...

I don't have a bottle handy but doesn't Selcon list fatty acids etc. as ingredients? Selcon is usually used to soak fish foods in. High nutrient levels fuel cyano growth.
Limit and export is the solution. Great skimming is best weapon.

 

[5380]

Yeah selcon is concentrated fatty acids. I looked from some scholarly articles but didn't turn up anything useful to add to the conversation.

 

[tmz]

Nice observation. Thanks for sharing it.

I keep some euphyllia in low nutrient highly skimmed water in the sps dominant system. . They do not do as well as they did in higher nutrient water in terms of growth and respond to direct feeding more. In fact I put a failing anchora in a 65 g which is off system and runs on a cansiter filter and it recovered in water with unspeakably high NO3 and PO4 and just 192 watts of pc lighting.
I just spray them with a mysis,brine,cyclopeezee and bllodworm mix once a week or so. Selcon could work but it's concentrated ,sounds like they like it ; too much in the water could lead to excessive waste and the bacterial bloom Gary cautioned about though.

I think lps generally and some leathers need more feeding when there is less in the water to absorb and any bacteria contributed by carbon dosing doesn't seem to be enough except for the zoanthus .