Biome conversations from BRS

[sixty_reefer]

Sounds like we're in agreement on pretty much all of it

Yeah, is just a shame we will never see any answers to the questions we have

 

[Aqua Man]

is that copepods play an essential part of the reef and can help mitigate/prevent the uglies from getting out of hand. I

Agree! They are the Micro CUC!

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Yeah, is just a shame we will never see any answers to the questions we have

What kind of questions would you like to see answered?

 

[sixty_reefer]

What kind of questions would you like to see answered?

On episode 2


And this on episode 4


what we discussed was mentioned on this two episodes, my question would be why not include a N-Doc test as well to properly test for residual nitrate and phosphates.

 

[Timfish]

Aquabiomics article along with BRS' video by Randy are good intros to microbiomes in reefs systems but they don't touch on the roles of DOC and corals health or the roles of some sponges in processing DOC (cryptic sponges can process DOC 1000X faster than bacterioplankton removed by skimmers). I'm often posting these videos by scientists who are researching reef ecosystems.


"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems

Changing Seas - Mysterious Microbes

Nitrogen cycling in hte coral holobiont

BActeria and Sponges

Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)

Optical Feedback Loop in Colorful Coral Bleaching

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

As best I can tell at the moment, for most reefers, knowing which species of bacteria are being detected seems like a “fun to know” result rather than something that typically has an actionable result.

Scientists are just getting to the point where we are beginning to get a handle on the extensively studied topic of bacteria in the gi tract and what it means and what can be done with that info.

I just don’t see reef aquaria at that point now or any time soon as a tool in regular aquarium husbandry.

 

[ReefGeezer]

It's amazing that BRS discovers this exactly at a time when some of the products it sells hit the market. They do know how to market stuff. I don't mean that in a bad way. It is their job to make money and stay in business. I like ordering from BRS & find their prices to be reasonable and their delivery great. I do find their videos interesting. However, I take their conclusions with a grain of salt.

That said, I do like the trend that reefers are thinking in a holistic manner about the way nutrients are processed and its connection to the food web. If I inferred correctly from the data @Timfish and others have posted, if we could expand that thinking beyond the just the microbiome, we could really start to get an idea of the processes occurring in our tanks and take advantage of them.

 

[Jubei2006]

Bacteria and algae are organisms that thrive under nutrients. having a hole experiment aimed at looking to see the effects of different organisms without mentioning inorganic and organic nutrients once is just a bonkers sales pitch, do anyone really believes that the folks involved in the experiment don’t know that? And still left the main variable that can aid nuisance algaes and bacteria out of the discussion. They talk about photosynthesis like throwing sand in your eyes, we can’t have photosynthesis without nutrients to synthesise is not just about light. Light alone is useless and let’s not forget most of the beneficial bacteria doesn’t require light they require a good constant input of inorganic and organic nutrient if they not present nuisances will always prevail.
They have mentioned the names of heterotrophic bacteria and then just casually not mentioned if there is enough nutrients for that bacteria to grow in all the different experimental tanks.
Most of this ugly stages bloom once inorganic nutrients are lower than optimal specially in a new system that can’t manage organic nutrients quite well yet. In the Marco rock tank diatoms only lasted a week, that tells me that that particular system has very low residual of organic nutrients in comparison with some of the others.

You did see the clownfish in the tanks, right? They had to be fed. There's your nutrients.

 

[Nano sapiens]

As best I can tell at the moment, for most reefers, knowing which species of bacteria are being detected seems like a “fun to know” result rather than something that typically has an actionable result.

Scientists are just getting to the point where we are beginning to get a handle on the extensively studied topic of bacteria in the gi tract and what it means and what can be done with that info.

I just don’t see reef aquaria at that point now or any time soon as a tool in regular aquarium husbandry.

My take is that for a healthy system/corals, the microbiome test is more to satisfy the curiosity than anything else. That being said, I find it a fascinating topic and I was happy to submit a sample from my reef to add to AquaBiomics's database.

IMO, where the results from a test can be especially useful is when there is unexplained coral mortality (possible pathogen(s) involved) in an otherwise 'reef parameter normal' system.

Considering that there is not just the aquarium microbiome, but also each coral's individual microbiome, we still have a great deal to explore and comprehend.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

My take is that for a healthy system/corals, the microbiome test is more to satisfy the curiosity than anything else. That being said, I find it a fascinating topic and I was happy to submit a sample from my reef to add to AquaBiomics's database.

IMO, where the results from a test can be especially useful is when there is unexplained coral mortality (possible pathogen(s) involved) in an otherwise 'reef parameter normal' system.

Considering there is not just the aquarium microbiome, but also each coral's individual microbiome, we still have a great deal to explore and comprehend.

I think it can help track the progression of your tank as it matures and changes but agree with you that it's primarily to satisfy curiosity since marine microbiology is a little studied field so we don't know exactly how to interpret the results. However if you started with all dry rock and sand (which I wouldn't recommend but a lot of people do it) increased diversity could be a sign of the tank maturing.
I don't think these tests would be particularly helpful in explaining coral mortality at this point for precisely the reason you mentioned which is that each coral has an individual microbiome and they're just testing the aquarium overall. Diseases like brown jelly disease are caused by groups of bacteria to my knowledge and other diseases are caused by unnatural imbalances in the individual coral microbiome which we just don't know enough about yet to be able to diagnose an issue.

 

[kenchilada]

Which journal was their findings published in? Who peer reviewed it?

 

[trevorhiller]

As best I can tell at the moment, for most reefers, knowing which species of bacteria are being detected seems like a “fun to know” result rather than something that typically has an actionable result.

Scientists are just getting to the point where we are beginning to get a handle on the extensively studied topic of bacteria in the gi tract and what it means and what can be done with that info.

I just don’t see reef aquaria at that point now or any time soon as a tool in regular aquarium husbandry.

This^

It's a cool concept, but the bacterial testing isn't exactly perfect. If you listen to some of the videos from the aquabiomics owner, sample collection has a lot to do with test results. For instance, you can have aiptasia in a tank and show none on the DNA test just because there happened to be none in the sample.

In healthcare we often collect 2 culture samples to analyze independently because it so easy to screw up collection by contaminating the sample. These are trained professionals and in this process we are talking about hobbyists collecting samples for bacterial analysis. That potentially can skew the results.

Combine this fact with not knowing what bacteria are good/bad for a reef tank, the reports are currently (IMO) not actionable in any reliable capacity.

I also got the vibe that the balance & diversity scores they give is based on the specific "batch" of samples they are running which introduces another variable into the testing. I initially thought they were comparing to some sort of running database that was forever growing, but after listening to an interview with the owner, I no longer believe that's the case (correct me if I wrong). If I heard him correctly, the sample you submit is compared to samples in the same batch.

For example, you submit a sample and that batch has 10 <1 year old aquarium samples and I submit a sample and that batch has 50 samples of tanks 2-10 years old. Whether or not they are all old or new tanks or the mix of the two would likely have a dramatic result on the diversity/balance "scores."

I do believe a running data of bacteria in the tanks and knowing some information about the tanks COULD be potentially useful in the future. However, like I said above, that is not exactly the results you are being given from my understanding of the interview with the aquabiomics owner.

Like everything else in this hobby, the confounding variables makes it difficult to draw conclusions. I do enjoy the fact that hobbyists are trying to learn new and interesting things about reef tanks though. But I think there may be a little bit of cart before the horse currently with the "biome diversity" trend.

I do think adding copepods/phyto after the cycle is a great tip though, this should probably be standard advice for every new tank owner. We already know they are beneficial in multiple ways-hopefully BRS will make that "trendy" advice to give.

 

[sixty_reefer]

You did see the clownfish in the tanks, right? They had to be fed. There's your nutrients.

The two fish present can’t tell anything about nutrients

 

[Nano sapiens]

I think it can help track the progression of your tank as it matures and changes but agree with you that it's primarily to satisfy curiosity since marine microbiology is a little studied field so we don't know exactly how to interpret the results. However if you started with all dry rock and sand (which I wouldn't recommend but a lot of people do it) increased diversity could be a sign of the tank maturing.
I don't think these tests would be particularly helpful in explaining coral mortality at this point for precisely the reason you mentioned which is that each coral has an individual microbiome and they're just testing the aquarium overall. Diseases like brown jelly disease are caused by groups of bacteria to my knowledge and other diseases are caused by unnatural imbalances in the individual coral microbiome which we just don't know enough about yet to be able to diagnose an issue.

We may not know all the different bacteria (or combinations) yet that can cause problems for coral, but we do at least know some of them:

...and then there are also the fish pathogens: