chefjpaul
2500 Club Member
The relationships and differences between ocean reefs and aquarium reefs to my blind eyes seems biodiversity, and the fear / addition of.
This has been chatted many times, but I'd like to have a serious discussion regarding.
Are we just sterilizing our aquariums, too afraid of a little almost harmless nuisances, to the point of altering the food web dynamics leading to the expansion of pathogens to likes dino, ich etc.. these are all related somewhere in an ecosystems "balance".
A balance to me, is when, everything is working in a harmonious relationship, take one creature, one strain, Benthos away and they all fall down.
I don't know most of us seem to be too quick to eradicate anything unknown, not letting a system develop that symbolic, competitive, symbiosis, instead - dumping, changing, adding, subtracting prior to a true knowledge of how this really works.
Can we replicate the oceans? Probably not, but we should at least let creatures, corals, bacteria and such have the time of stabilizing a bio variety before a full blown Armageddon.
Two separate articles that can be related: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/centers/cmbc/research/biodiversity-and-human-impacts/coral-reefs/
There are thousands of species that share coral reefs, and these species interact in countless ways. Because of the many relationships among these species, the overall ‘health’ of a coral reef cannot be assessed by focusing only on one group of organisms. Fish depend on the many species living on the bottom (including corals, seaweed, and the many mobile invertebrates) for shelter and food. The species living on the bottom (composing the so-called ‘benthos’) survive because marine bacteria maintain stable water chemistry. But the individual health of species on the benthos and of fish can be compromised by dramatic changes of the microbial community.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012144511.htm
"One of the other key things the research team observed happening in the tanks with corals as a result of the bacteria grazing was a remineralization of nitrogen in the water. In healthy coral reef ecosystems, concentrations of ammonia -- a toxic waste product produced by most animals -- are close to zero. The reason is that microbes are constantly converting ammonia to different and less toxic forms, such as nitrate, returning nitrogen back to the water. While researchers were aware of this detoxifying process in reef ecosystem, the source of the microbes responsible was a mystery.
"Until now, it wasn't known exactly where the process was occurring, whether it was happening in the sand or in the water column or in association with corals," explains Alyson Santoro, a microbiologist at UCSB and coauthor. "This study shows that this detoxifying process is directly and physically associated with the corals."
This has been chatted many times, but I'd like to have a serious discussion regarding.
Are we just sterilizing our aquariums, too afraid of a little almost harmless nuisances, to the point of altering the food web dynamics leading to the expansion of pathogens to likes dino, ich etc.. these are all related somewhere in an ecosystems "balance".
A balance to me, is when, everything is working in a harmonious relationship, take one creature, one strain, Benthos away and they all fall down.
I don't know most of us seem to be too quick to eradicate anything unknown, not letting a system develop that symbolic, competitive, symbiosis, instead - dumping, changing, adding, subtracting prior to a true knowledge of how this really works.
Can we replicate the oceans? Probably not, but we should at least let creatures, corals, bacteria and such have the time of stabilizing a bio variety before a full blown Armageddon.
Two separate articles that can be related: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/centers/cmbc/research/biodiversity-and-human-impacts/coral-reefs/
There are thousands of species that share coral reefs, and these species interact in countless ways. Because of the many relationships among these species, the overall ‘health’ of a coral reef cannot be assessed by focusing only on one group of organisms. Fish depend on the many species living on the bottom (including corals, seaweed, and the many mobile invertebrates) for shelter and food. The species living on the bottom (composing the so-called ‘benthos’) survive because marine bacteria maintain stable water chemistry. But the individual health of species on the benthos and of fish can be compromised by dramatic changes of the microbial community.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012144511.htm
"One of the other key things the research team observed happening in the tanks with corals as a result of the bacteria grazing was a remineralization of nitrogen in the water. In healthy coral reef ecosystems, concentrations of ammonia -- a toxic waste product produced by most animals -- are close to zero. The reason is that microbes are constantly converting ammonia to different and less toxic forms, such as nitrate, returning nitrogen back to the water. While researchers were aware of this detoxifying process in reef ecosystem, the source of the microbes responsible was a mystery.
"Until now, it wasn't known exactly where the process was occurring, whether it was happening in the sand or in the water column or in association with corals," explains Alyson Santoro, a microbiologist at UCSB and coauthor. "This study shows that this detoxifying process is directly and physically associated with the corals."
