A huge neglected frontier in reefkeeping

[Readywriter]

In some cases that probably happens. But Dan's observed stuff like this... a thin film on a petri dish, no underlying substrate conditions to explain it. Spots that look like maybe the cyano film is suffering a localized killer of some sort.

Oh yea never saw that. Ive only noticed it as quarter or larger sized areas in large cyano outbreaks and it had clean edges iirc not like that.

 

[Timfish]

I had never thought of a coral being its own microbiome in that sort of way before. Interesting.

Edit: left words out

We're all have microbiomes and we all rely on microbial stuff to keep us healthy. Doing things that disrupt microbiomes balance leads to chronic and acute problems and even death. Rohwer's book is an excellent introduction to how microbiomes in corals and on reefs work. On a broader scale, his coauthor Merry Youle, a microbiologist, has an excellent book on microbial stuff herself.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

In some cases that probably happens. But Dan's observed stuff like this... a thin film on a petri dish, no underlying substrate conditions to explain it. Spots that look like maybe the cyano film is suffering a localized killer of some sort.

Seems to me that would be a really nice product: a bottle of viruses specific to cyano.

Next generation products: viruses for other pests we have.

 

[Garf]

I've seen this film, the monkeys take over.

 

[KrisReef]

"Circles" and viruses have been found in the Caribbean lately and the researchers say that bacteria and viruses may be working together?

More information from the frontier
Here.

Webinar in the link is interesting.

 

[AquaLogic]

Another good reminder of how hilariously quaint and inadequate our medical science, and really all scientific understanding really is at this point in our history. What I wouldn't give to see what we will understand in 10,000 years. (If we are still around, which is questionable at best.)

 

[PotatoPig]

My 2c, albeit as a relative newcomer…

We exist in a world of viruses and bacteria. Some are bad for us, some neutral, some good, some essential, and of those some are still bad if they end up where we don’t want them.

This microbial world, in a state of constant warfare, is essential to us and forms core and indispensable parts of our immune systems and digestive system.

Our tanks are the same.

The main attention is, of course, focused on bacteria in the nitrogen cycle and on pathogens that harm wanted residents in the tank, but viruses and bacteria as a whole fill many of the same roles as those we utilize them for, with a fair few creatures in these tanks directly using them as food sources.

My (uneducated) guess is the invisible masses of viruses and bacteria in aquariums are part of why we sometimes see radically different outcomes from nominally similar setups, or why two people running very different setups can both see success while having seen failure when running profiles more similar to the other, and also why some corals behave so differently in tanks than they do in the wild and have needs you wouldn’t expect just from looking at where they live in a reef.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying: Think twice before sterilizing your tank’s biome.

 

[Readywriter]

Another good reminder of how hilariously quaint and inadequate our medical science, and really all scientific understanding really is at this point in our history. What I wouldn't give to see what we will understand in 10,000 years. (If we are still around, which is questionable at best.)

What I would like to see is how many things that are currently held as entirely true wind up being disproven over the next couple decades and replaced with entirely different explanations.

 

[Readywriter]

The main attention is, of course, focused on bacteria in the nitrogen cycle

Good point. I dont think Ive ever seen a discussion on the bacteria and other organisms that break detritus down into ammonia. Id imagine there is wide variety of bacteria that do this and that the enzymes they release to perform that task are as varied as the organisms themselves.

 

[JHSteepat]

My head is spinning from this discussion. Even for a single organism, humans, we understand there are thousands of potential pathogens, symbionts, etc. With varying individual responses based on intraspecies genetic variance, immunological interactions, environmental interactions, etc. etc. And I am sure we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in understanding the role of virus, phage, other “movable” genomic elements, and noncoding genetic elements…..in health and disease.

Here we throw an almost infinite combination of organisms from thousands of sources, together in a fancy bucket and hope they thrive. And they mostly seem to reach a form of equilibrium until you throw in the new anthia you got from vendor A, and then have to see if equilibrim is again reached based on the web of interactions in that particular system.

With all the $$ spent on human research and what little we still know about that, I think we need to focus on tank maturity, changing things slowly, and creating systems that maintain the status quo in you tanks. I can’t say never, because it may come that we can just simulate systems based on biomics, but I can’t see in the near future based on current funding and research that we can make more than a small dent in our understanding that can translate to our reefkeeping.

 

[Lasse]

"In our experiments, the sponges reduced the presence of viruses by up to 94 percent within three hours," Welsh explains, although after a full 24 hours, that figure reached even 98 percent virus removal.

"Another experiment showed that the uptake of viruses happens indeed very quickly and effectively. Even if we offered new viruses to the water every 20 minutes, the sponges remained tremendously effective in removing viruses."

I think we need to focus on tank maturity, changing things slowly, and creating systems that maintain the status quo in you tanks

IMO - sponges are important in reef aquaria of many reasons - this is one more.

On the ich point, I am entirely confident that ich can exist in reef tanks without showing any symptoms.

My tank was up for 20 years, and I never had visible ich or other diseases, at least that I can remember, except when a power failure hit while I was on vacation. The stresses caused a couple of fish to show ich. They cleared it not long after getting things back on track, but obviously the disease organisms were present.

Thank you for this and I would not be surprised if it shows up that the immune system can encapsulate and control the parasite and then lose control during a stress outbreak. I have seen (and heard about) to many examples of outbreaks that can´t be explained with the general accepted explanatory models.



Sincerely Lasse

 

[Mwatts12]

My Aqua Ultraviolet sterlizier - “Hold my beer”

Hahaha

 

[doubleshot00]

I wish i had so much money I didn’t know what to do with it as I would do an Aquabiomics test on the ocean water near my house.

 

[AquaLogic]

Seeing as how beneficial sponges can be, does anyone know where to source them (other than live rock)? I'm surprised reefcleaners doesn't offer them.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Seeing as how beneficial sponges can be, does anyone know where to source them (other than live rock)? I'm surprised reefcleaners doesn't offer them.

Ornamental sponges are notoriously difficult to keep, but some people keep cryptic sponges (typically in a cryptic refugium), and those seem to be easier to keep:

By all accounts that I've heard (with exceptions for invasive sponges), ornamental sponges are incredibly difficult to maintain (not grow, just maintain) in our tanks; cryptic sponges seem to do quite well though (some people keep cryptic refugia where they use cryptic sponges as filtration).

You probably wouldn't be able to grow cryptic sponges in the tank, but you could probably grow them in the sump; ornamental sponges would probably die/just survive without growing regardless.

If you want to try ornamental sponges anyway, see the post linked below:

Help with ID

Recieved lr from tbs yesterday. I have an ID question. Is the red encrusting stuff a sponge??? I also got some form of sps (hard to see).

www.reef2reef.com

If you want to try cryptic sponges, Reeffarmers was the place to buy them; last I heard (late August of 2022) they were still selling, so I'd assume they're running, but I haven't seen any updates on them recently:
Farmed Sponges and Sea Squirts Reeffarmers

 

[Lasse]

Its a lot of sponges in my aquarium - 8 years old soon. My recipe is do not touch the rock formation, I feed cyclops around the day and have a Si concentration around 2-300 µg/L.

I have also a glass bottle on a magnetic stirrer connected to one head of my maxi Doser 2.1. The end of the pressure side of the tube is in my retur pumps intake. 7:00 in the morning I run it backwards and fill up the bottle with 600 ml. I put in 4 cubes of Ocean Nutrition´s freshwater cyclops when I wake up. I dose around 120 ml inwards 6 times until 19:00. after every dosing it runs backwards for 20 ml (cleaning the tubes) In the evening I fill up twice and empty twice. every time the dose pump is active - my stirrer is too. It will be some bacteria and with the rinse every evening - I clean it rather well and I clean the bottle once a week. In this way - I both get cyclops and bacteria out into the DT.

The result is sponges everywhere and different types. I have try to introduce ornamental sponges but the result is not very good.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[GlassMunky]

It's important to understand viruses or phages as they are commonly reffered to by researchers now, are omnipresent in coral microbiomes. As posts here demonstrate, the common perception is phages are bad. In reality phages are essential components of an organisms immune processes. There are good and bad phages. There are also phages that may be living in coral microbiomes without causing problems (lysogenic) and stress can switch them to a disease causing reproductive mode (lytic) causing cell death.

As coral microbiomes, which includes phages, are species specific it seems reasonable to expect species specific responses to stress events. Besides stress events like excessive changes in temperature, excessive changes in lighting, insufficient or excessive nutrients (particulate, organic and inorganic C, N & P) the microbial processes in a system in general (aurabiome if you will) are also factors.


The take away as I see it is reef ecosystems are an incredibly complex with layers upon layers upon layers and species specific variables at every level. Quoting Martin Moe "It's not rocket science, it's a lot more complicated." Since there is a great deal still to be learned and we know the microbial processes in a reef system are critical for sustaining corals AND corals are actively trying to promote processes benefical for themselves, to maintain corals sustainably for the decades or centuries they can live it seems we should not be promoting practices we know skew microbial processes especially as we can't easily quantify or identify which species is proliferating.

I was under the impression that phages and viruses are somewhat different.
The main difference being that phage an only really infect bacteria whereas other viruses can infect other things.


Are scientists now considering EVERY virus a phage?

 

[Timfish]

I was under the impression that phages and viruses are somewhat different.
The main difference being that phage an only really infect bacteria whereas other viruses can infect other things.


Are scientists now considering EVERY virus a phage?

T0 be honest I hadn't thought about phages in terms of mammalian viruses. I"m constantly getting notifications from google scholar (Ritchie, Rohwer, Thurber, Haas, de Goeij) that include phage use with humans. But thinking about it after reading your post it was phage use on human bacterial infections. This paper from NIH's National Library of Medicine defines "Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are viruses that infect and replicate only in bacterial cells". Doing a quick search on google scholar with the search term "mammalian phages", does lists papers looking phages interacting directly with mammalian cells besides interacting with bacteria. But a search using the term "mammalian virused" doesn't show any papers with the term phage. You are correct.

 

[Reefjnky]

Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.

Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.

Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.

When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?

There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.

How would we even know?

There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.

Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown the set up and new tank premixed sea water

Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.

Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.

Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.

When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?

There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.

How would we even know?

There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.

Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown reasons.

I wonder if people see different cycles when using their own mixed water vs seawater. I know I had a horrible first experience with my first tank. I used nutri seawater and had horrible algae issues. I mix my own water for the tanks after and its way more manageable. Someone told me they get that water from an intercoastal area by ft lauderdale buy i'm not sure.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I wonder if people see different cycles when using their own mixed water vs seawater. I know I had a horrible first experience with my first tank. I used nutri seawater and had horrible algae issues. I mix my own water for the tanks after and its way more manageable. Someone told me they get that water from an intercoastal area by ft lauderdale buy i'm not sure.

It’s pretty hard to tell anything useful about nutri seawater from the completely mixed up advertising, except if you actually believe it, organisms wouldn’t survive.

Aquarium Saltwater Natural Live Ocean Saltwater by Nutri Sea Water®

naturesocean.com

​ ​ CriticalElement​ Concentration(Micrograms/Liter)​ CriticalElement​ Concentration(Micrograms/Liter)​ Aluminum​ 43.65​ Manganese​ 1.650​ Antimony​ 0.20325​ Molybdenum​ 13.690​ Bromide​ 97,500​ Nickel​ 4.695​ Cadmium​ 0.129​ Potassium​ 664,500​ Calcium​ 7.088​ Selenium​ 1.147​ Chloride​ 29,055,000​ Silver​ 0.032​ Chromium​ 1.514​ Sodium​ 16,155,000​ Cobalt​ 0.070​ Strontium​ 15,000​ Iodine​ 21.600​ Thallium​ 0.0093​ Iron​ 14.985​ Tin​ 0.04125​ Lithium​ 278.250​ Vanadium​ 2.423​ Magnesium​ 2,085,000​ Zinc​ 24.525​