Help me understand low phosphates regarding Cyano Bacteria

[Lasse]

This is a new perspective on an old topic for me: an aquarium having a chronic cyanobacteria infection and recurring mat formation. I think @taricha has this situation because he seems to be able to conjure up a luxurious red cyanobacteria mat quite readily.

My fish only system supports many species of cyanobacteria but mat formation is not an issue. I find a scattering of cyanobacteria on most surface samples, the aragonite sand seems to have the largest diversity. About 6 months ago a weak but persistent mat formed, about 10 cm by 10 cm, but was gradually replaced by a persistent diatom mat at the same location which slowly spread to several other locations. So my system also has a chronic cyanobacteria infection but the cyanobacteria microbiome is likely different from your system. That makes me wonder if @AquaBiomics would be interested in a collaborative survey of aquaria cyanobacteria microbiomes, looking for data to support the notion that of the many factors behind mat formation is the cyanobacteria microbiome or maybe the heterotrophic microbiome.

Thanks for your thought provoking reply!

May I ask for your NO3 and PO4 readings in that tank

Sincerely Lasse

 

[flampton]

Cyanobacteria will always be present in your aquarium, always - it is the forming of mats that´s problematic.


You ask me for alternative suggestion - here is one based on my experiences of many starts of both fresh and saltwater aquarium. From 20 L to 1 400 000 L. It is inline with my other experiences

If you start with a total sterile aquarium - there will be no nutrients in the start. I have started aquariums with dry rocks, dry sand and new equipment without any signs of forming of cyano mats. But I always start with a fish and very sparsely feeding regime. I also - in that case with all brand new - add around 2 ppm nitrate to the water. Because I start with fish and and CUC during the first days - normally no need of PO4 addition. If you start your aquarium in a fishless way - you have a to add PO4 - IMO. I neither found of the method with "chock addition" of NH3/NH4 - if a fishless cycle is chosen - it is enough with addition of around 0.01 ppm NH3/NH4 a day and slowly rise it - IMO.

Another question with "sterile" starts - where does the benthic cyanobacteria comes from if you do not introduce any "wet or living rocks". They are always present but forms mat under specific circumstances.

You ask me to prove my theories wrong - methods that have been tested for many years and slowly a hypothesis has grown - and you present an article that's not even is printed yet as prove for your standpoint - the online version comes as a teaser 18/9 this year (22 days ago). that´s is - of cause strongly IMO -

Note - I am probably one of the person on R2R with the strongest voice for advocating the greatest possible diversity within all trophic levels found in an aquarium. I do not say that predation not is important - IMO it is the most important factor according to "normal" microalgae growth. The dream scenario is to find a predator on the mats - but it is not easy because many of them have toxic substances incorporated. Because of -IMO - the mats is the key for benthic cyanobacterial blooms - disturbing them is on good thing to do. A rather huge amount of CUC - as diverse as possible - can be one factor for lack of mats. Also note that I not have say that all blooms is caused by low nutrients - there is some examples - even in my own experiences there the trigger clearly not have been lack of nitrogen. I have try to write in that way that if low nutrient concentration (and especially lack of nitrate) precedes the outbreak of the cyano bloom - when rising the nutrients will help. In this case - it is also important to stress that all known (till now) hobby tests is sensitive for nitrite - it means that if nitrite levels is around 0.05 ppm - the hobby tests nitrate will automatically show between 2.5 and 5 (depending on brand) ppm nitrate already from the beginning.

But I have seen cyano blooms coming up in nitrate levels over 5 and lower nitrite levels than 0.05 ppm. Very seldom - but they are there. My old aquarium (2011 - 2016) never ever shown any benthic cyanobacteria mats and with nutrients level that would make @Thales jealous - crashed and all my CUC die. Most of my fish too - however - never have had better looking corals - not before or not after. Short after the CUC disappear - there was cyanobacteria mats all over - all dead fish was taken up. So odd events exist even here - but it does not change my overall impression of the problem. Life - and especially ecology is not black and white - it is more 4K

Another fact is that there is a lot of species and genera among the the benthic mat forming cyanobacteria. The different outbreaks can maybe be explained with species or genera factors. @twilliard succeeded to show that both "normal" cyanobacteria from the genus Oscillatoria and cyanobacteria from the genus Spirulina could produce red mats in a saltwater aquarium. Just do a search here on Cyanobacteria and author Twiliard - and you will have reading for at least three christmas eves

Sincerely Lasse

First its not really proof of my standpoint, it's just evidence to help support my hypothesis. And it's grounded in the well known fact that there are bacteriovorous ciliates and carbohydrate liking rotifers. Not really a big shocker of a paper. We call that low hanging fruit as their hypothesis was almost guaranteed to be confirmed.

What scientific evidence supports the hypothesis that nitrate levels DIRECTLY signals to the cyanobacteria to disperse? And why does it have to be direct? That's the part I'm not understanding. What is the big deal if it occurs in a different way then you propose? Especially when it fllies in the face of all established science in the area. I mean the overwhelming evidence is that it can't be direct. How do I know, well the thousands upon thousands of aquariums that have nitrate over 5 over 20 over 100 that have cyanobacterial mats. All anecdotal, but all fit the known accumulated scientific data from the lakes to the oceans. I mean you just talked about dead fish and cuc which would lead to higher nutrients and you saw cyano mats form.

BTW For the record I have not said once that increasing nitrate in CERTAIN aquariums does not help with cyanos. I'm not calling you or @Sallstrom liars. So I pray you're not taking it that way. In fact definitely keep doing what you're doing if it's working for you.

However the way this comes off is that you have this magic bulletproof method. Now a newbie is going to hit this site, see that you can cure cyano mats with nitrate. Dose their aquarium, probably fail miserably and quit the hobby. That's why this is important to me. My posts are not really meant for you per se.

And now a bit off topic diversion on a pet peeve of mine:

Hopefully on these boards we can eventually start clarifying what we mean so newbies won't end up so confused. Take the beneficial cyanobacteria like Synechococcus which is an extremely important to the reef as primary producers. I mean without Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus there would be no Acropora (well no oxygen either, but that's a different story) So let's not besmirch this phylum as a whole.

So imo we need to somehow figure out how to separate this phylum up as words have power. And once someone gets something in there head it is hard to change. Such as

All cyanos are bad guys
All dinos are bad guys
Ammonia is a poison that will wreck your aquarium

 

[flampton]

I also want to clarify that I've already stated two hypothesis on how raising nitrate may work. Here's a couple more

Nitrate increases the capability of a competitor to secrete carbohydrate digestive enzymes

Nitrate increases the capability of the bacteria below the cyano mat to produce prokaryotic toxins (antibiotics)

So I just don't know for sure, so if that's unclear I apologize, I did not mean to suggest that the posted paper explained everything. I truly have no idea yet because we have no data nor the resources to even figure this out with any reasonable certainty.

However if you diversify you will likely have less troubles with pest overpopulation. While all the reports are anecdotal they have plausible biological explanations

 

[Sallstrom]

@flampton
No worries, keep up the good work

Synechoccocus is really something that should be talked more about when it comes to coral food I think! We did use it for a while but haven’t cultured it ourselves yet. But it’s on my to-do list.

 

[flampton]

@flampton
No worries, keep up the good work

Synechoccocus is really something that should be talked more about when it comes to coral food I think! We did use it for a while but haven’t cultured it ourselves yet. But it’s on my to-do list.

Oh good I'm glad to hear that

As for Synechococcus well It's on my to do list too. Of all the phytos out there it's the only one that is consistently shown to be consumed by different SPS in the wild. So I think it's worth a shot. And even though I'm not expecting miracles with it I feel that this live food is ecologically sound and just makes sense for my goals.

 

[Lasse]

hypothesis that nitrate levels DIRECTLY signals to the cyanobacteria to disperse?

Why do you put words in my mouth that I not have say.
Once again -
I have said that low nitrate or zero nitrate in the water column can trigg mat forming among benthic cyanobacteria - including and/or PO4.
I have said that nitrate in the water block the forming of H2S below the mats. hence hinder release of bound PO4 from the substrate
I have said that if mat forming benthic cyanobacteria can not use nitrate as nitrogen source (that Dan-P:s experiment indicate) - nitrate in the water column can favour competing organisms for space and other nutrients.

As I know - I have never said this

nitrate levels DIRECTLY signals to the cyanobacteria to disperse

- Please show me that part in my post and I will change it directly.

I do really hope that I do not need to do this clarifying statements again

However the way this comes off is that you have this magic bulletproof method. Now a newbie is going to hit this site, see that you can cure cyano mats with nitrate. Dose their aquarium, probably fail miserably and quit the hobby. That's why this is important to me. My posts are not really meant for you per se.

It is your opinion and personal concerns - not any proven facts. We had advise a lot of people here in Sweden and at R2R too, there is a lot of threads showing that it works in aquariums all over the world - if NO3 and/or PO4 are zeroed and a mat forming benthic cyanobacteria outbreak has taken place. The method is not endemic to around 20 Swedish aquariums.

If it is an outbreak occur with NO3 levels above 2-4 mg/L (after compensation for NO2 error) and PO4 levels over 0.05 mg/L (and that you can rely on the analyses) I had never advises to rise the nutrients. My advises in these case have always been to destroy the mats as often as possible and go down in intensity with the light to around 50 % of the normal value and slowly rise it back during 10 - 30 days.

Some years ago - the general advice when a benthic cyanobacteria or dinoflagellates start to bloom was - lower your nutrients. But they are zero - does not matter - lower it more your tests are bad or something else. I´m glad that these advise mostly are gone today and a better understanding of N and P:s importance for corals (read zoox in corals) and other photosynthetic organism has evolved

Also hopefully we can eventually start clarifying what we mean so newbies won't end up so confused. Take the beneficial cyanobacteria like Synechococcus which is an extremely important to the reef as primary producers. I mean without Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus there would be no Acropora (well no oxygen either, but that's a different story) So let's not besmirch this phylum as a whole.

I hope that you have notice that there is at least one person in these discussions that have try to not to use the generic word Cyanobacteria and instead try to use the more precise term - mat forming benthic cyanobacteria -

to separate this phylum up as words have power

This is already done - at least from me - I have try to use the term mat forming benthic cyanobacteria - so many times now that I only look at my keyboard and it type the term per automatic

cyanobacteria like Synechococcus which is an extremely important to the reef as primary producers. I mean without Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus there would be no Acropora (well no oxygen either, but that's a different story) So let's not besmirch this phylum as a whole

I´m total adware of this - if you read through the posts again you will see the term mat forming benthic cyanobacteria dominate my posts. Every one reading my post can not get any other opinion than that I mean mat forming benthic cyanobacteria - nothing else.

Funny you mention Synechococcus - here in Europe it is sold as an remedy against mat forming benthic cyanobacteria - Here is more - only in german but the nisch you seek is already occupied here in Europe I have tested this as coral food but because of long transport times up there I live - it is difficult to get it alive.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[flampton]

Oh sorry @Lasse that ending was just a generalized rant and not meant for you... I'll go back and add a transition

As for selling Synechococcus? Well there are numerous suppliers over here as well but unfortunately they're all mixed products, like nano, iso, etc with Synechococcus. I have a feeling though if you made a product that was just Synechococcus and it became popular the big aquaculture companies would come in and just crush you.

Oh and if you've ever grown Nano or the like it's basically the same except you use a lot more nitrate. BG11 medium plus ASW will get you in the ballpark. So you can start a culture up there and not worry about freshness

 

[flampton]

Okay let me address this sulfide signaling hypothesis. I propose you grab some Jars off your shelf and put in ASW, NO3, PO4 and add a bit of flow/air bubbles. Then add the cyano mat former of your choice and stick the jars under grow lights. Give it some time and record your results. Then you'll at least have some data moving forward to suggest your hypothesis is plausible. Personally I know where I'd wager my money...

You can start with 0.03 mg/L for native reef water and
0.5 mg/L
1 mg/L
5 mg/L
20, 50, 100 etc.....

Record what nitrate levels there are no mats formed verse the levels there are mats

 

[taricha]

I think @taricha has this situation because he seems to be able to conjure up a luxurious red cyanobacteria mat quite readily.

Right. I have a sandbed that I refuse to vacuum - more interested in the long-term accumulation and behavior of grunge. And my system "defaults" to cyano and GHA as its preferred nuisances. It has a habit of higher than average PO4 ~.10-.15ppm, and NO3 (and NO2) at or below the limit of detection for tests. So my system is stereotypical of what @Lasse describes:
Aragonite, particulate organics, PO4, and low NO3 tending to be an environment where cyano mats do well.

I can and have shifted the organisms in the past with the following interventions:
-PO4 via GFO + vinegar dosing = dinos
+SiO2 in the few tenths to 1ppm range = cyano disappearance
+massive organic carbon (vodka+vinegar) dosing = cyano lost its N-rich photosynthetic pigments Phycoerythrin & Phycocyanin (measured spectrally) and disappeared. Even cyano can get N-starved.
[Just occurs to me: does flooding it with organic carbon and it showing N-starvation count as some evidence against N-fixation in my cyano? It had lots of energy source available and no nitrogen, but it couldn't fix the N2 it needed and starved.]
+NO3 dosing locally via ~1g of NaNO3 pellets dropped into beaker in my sump to dissolve = rich deep red cyano mats colonized the beaker. (Cyano mats love a burst dose of 100s or 1000s of ppm of NO3?)

Some of these are easier to explain than others. All were repeated. Stopped intervention until the change reversed, restarted and the change reappeared. Except dinos. I haven't put much energy into trying to get dinos back in my system.

Probably the one I think is relevant here is the Si addition, because the mechanism can only really be the competition theory, right? cyano mat formers should be entirely indifferent to Si except that diatoms are good at getting things cyano also wants in the places cyano wants to be.

And it's grounded in the well known fact that there are bacteriovorous ciliates

Having observed a lot of dino blooms under microscope, I totally buy this. Ciliates are the only class of organism I've seen that ate any significant numbers of purportedly toxic dinos without themselves dying off. So I totally believe they could find a meal in a cyano mat.

So imo we need to somehow figure out how to separate this phylum up as words have power.

As Lasse emphatically stated in the hobby - when people say "cyano" they mean mat forming benthic filamentous cyanobacteria usually red, rarely green - in the family Oscillatoriaceae (oscillatoria, phormidium, lyngbya) or less commonly spirulina.
I'm fine with that meaning for "cyano" - we can be more specific if we're talking about something else.

 

[Lasse]

Okay let me address this sulfide signaling hypothesis. I propose you grab some Jars off your shelf and put in ASW, NO3, PO4 and add a bit of flow/air bubbles. Then add the cyano mat former of your choice and stick the jars under grow lights. Give it some time and record your results. Then you'll at least have some data moving forward to suggest your hypothesis is plausible. Personally I know where I'd wager my money...

You can start with 0.03 mg/L for native reef water and
0.5 mg/L
1 mg/L
5 mg/L
20, 50, 100 etc.....

Record what nitrate levels there are no mats formed verse the levels there are mats

I let some other debunk the theory

Probably the one I think is relevant here is the Si addition, because the mechanism can only really be the competition theory, right? cyano mat formers should be entirely indifferent to Si except that diatoms are good at getting things cyano also wants in the places cyano wants to be.

Interesting because I have run this by bad construction in my own aquarium. Because that I use siporax in my anaerobic part of the DSB - I got very high Si levels - see graph

​

nearly 20 ppm as highest. During this time I did not see any mat forming benthic cyanobacteria - not even on a postcard - in my aquarium. On the other hand - did not see any serve bloom of diatoms either. Could see some on the sand now and then - but when my sea cucumber pass by they was gone. And the sea cucumber become at least 4. Today with more normal Si levels (around 0.15 mg/L) I got some small local (very local) bloms of MFBC (mat forming benthic cyanobacteria ) but never on the sand - there is sometimes diatoms but when one of my now at least 3 sea cucumber pas bay - also they are gone

Maybe some would test with elevated Si levels - it will at least get you a lot of good sponges but it could be wise to get a sea cucumber at the same time

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Lasse]

+massive organic carbon (vodka+vinegar) dosing = cyano lost its N-rich photosynthetic pigments Phycoerythrin & Phycocyanin (measured spectrally) and disappeared. Even cyano can get N-starved.

I saw an article once from a spirulina farm in Hawaii there they change the colour of the mats with some tricks. I can´t remember how and I can´t find it again.:mad:

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Dan_P]

May I ask for your NO3 and PO4 readings in that tank

Sincerely Lasse

You are certainly welcome to such information. Did you want today’s numbers or numbers during cyanobacteria growth? A trend of 2020? Let me know.

Dan

 

[Dan_P]

I saw an article once from a spirulina farm in Hawaii there they change the colour of the mats with some tricks. I can´t remember how and I can´t find it again.:mad:

Sincerely Lasse

I have not see that article but cyanobacteria have the talent for changing color to adapt to light conditions (red to green or green to red). Complimentary chromatic adaptation is the term to Google.u. They can also adjust color when their nitrogen source is changed from nitrate to ammonia. All of this in service of adjusting their photosynthesis apparatus.

 

[Lasse]

I´m interested of both without and with MFBC (mat forming benthic cyanobacteria ) problem - and if possible your nitrite concentrations (and brand of test)

Sincerely Lasse

 

[flampton]

Right. I have a sandbed that I refuse to vacuum - more interested in the long-term accumulation and behavior of grunge. And my system "defaults" to cyano and GHA as its preferred nuisances. It has a habit of higher than average PO4 ~.10-.15ppm, and NO3 (and NO2) at or below the limit of detection for tests. So my system is stereotypical of what @Lasse describes:
Aragonite, particulate organics, PO4, and low NO3 tending to be an environment where cyano mats do well.

I can and have shifted the organisms in the past with the following interventions:
-PO4 via GFO + vinegar dosing = dinos
+SiO2 in the few tenths to 1ppm range = cyano disappearance
+massive organic carbon (vodka+vinegar) dosing = cyano lost its N-rich photosynthetic pigments Phycoerythrin & Phycocyanin (measured spectrally) and disappeared. Even cyano can get N-starved.
[Just occurs to me: does flooding it with organic carbon and it showing N-starvation count as some evidence against N-fixation in my cyano? It had lots of energy source available and no nitrogen, but it couldn't fix the N2 it needed and starved.]
+NO3 dosing locally via ~1g of NaNO3 pellets dropped into beaker in my sump to dissolve = rich deep red cyano mats colonized the beaker. (Cyano mats love a burst dose of 100s or 1000s of ppm of NO3?)

Some of these are easier to explain than others. All were repeated. Stopped intervention until the change reversed, restarted and the change reappeared. Except dinos. I haven't put much energy into trying to get dinos back in my system.

Probably the one I think is relevant here is the Si addition, because the mechanism can only really be the competition theory, right? cyano mat formers should be entirely indifferent to Si except that diatoms are good at getting things cyano also wants in the places cyano wants to be.



Having observed a lot of dino blooms under microscope, I totally buy this. Ciliates are the only class of organism I've seen that ate any significant numbers of purportedly toxic dinos without themselves dying off. So I totally believe they could find a meal in a cyano mat.


As Lasse emphatically stated in the hobby - when people say "cyano" they mean mat forming benthic filamentous cyanobacteria usually red, rarely green - in the family Oscillatoriaceae (oscillatoria, phormidium, lyngbya) or less commonly spirulina.
I'm fine with that meaning for "cyano" - we can be more specific if we're talking about something else.

Well most likely with the silicates you'll consider the direct competition from the diatoms, however within a complex system it might be something funky also playing a role e.g. sponges utilize silicates as well. It might even be a direct inhibition to some extent.

I understand what cyano means on the board. I just think it's unfortunate as all the while most people on this board are out there breathing oxygen, enjoying the trees and eating their vegetables while cursing the existence of cyanobacteria, lol

Oh and @Lasse you do realize there is nothing to debunk right? You realize you have nothing to even support your hypothesis but this cause and effect which we know is not 100% effective

Cyano-add nitrate-less cyano

Here's one for you
I have a dog-I fed the dog- my dog died... Food caused my dogs death

Oh and
I have a coin-flip coin ten times-i have 8 heads and 2 tails... This coin flips heads 80% of the time.


So seriously stop with the nonsense. You'll have people believing it's some universal theorem when it's just some hard core wishful thinking

I can tell you right now without any doubt that you'll never even be able to delineate that the successes you're seeing in the aquarium are not do to human intervention aka increased care of the aquarium. Because believe it or not people care for their aquarium more when there is a problem.

Okay I'm done

Peace

 

[Lasse]

But yet it move

Sincerely Lasse

 

[SMSREEF]

I understand what cyano means on the board. I just think it's unfortunate as all the while most people on this board are out there breathing oxygen, enjoying the trees and eating their vegetables while cursing the existence of cyanobacteria, lol

Everything in moderation... If you were healthy and breathing 100% oxygen... not good. All trees in the landscape with nothing else... not good. Only one kind of vegetable to eat... not good.
When I write about problems, it’s not the organism itself, but the overpopulation that is causing issues with the other life in our tanks.
I do recognize the importance of being more precise in my posts now that you pointed it out though.

 

[flampton]

Everything in moderation... If you were healthy and breathing 100% oxygen... not good. All trees in the landscape with nothing else... not good. Only one kind of vegetable to eat... not good.
When I write about problems, it’s not the organism itself, but the overpopulation that is causing issues with the other life in our tanks.
I do recognize the importance of being more precise in my posts now that you pointed it out though.

I don't think you got my gist. Prochlorococcus just by themselves provide 13-48% of our oxygen supply

But more importantly to everything is that ancient cyanobacteria are responsible for the great oxidation event, which was a mass extinction event that changed the earth's atmosphere from a reducing environment to an oxidizing environment. Most anaerobic bacteria and archaeal species perished while some evolved to become aerobes. A few years down the line (lol) a primordial preeukaryotic cell (a possible Archaea) found itself not succeeding well as it was anaerobic, so after an astronomical probability event it ingested one of these bacterial aerobes which became fixed in place. This was the first eukaryotic cell and the bacterial aerobe eventually became the mitochondria.

And if that wasn't ridiculous enough...
Trees and vegetables and all plant matter, true algae etc are direct descendants from an event in which a eukaryote (already with it’s mitochondria) took in a cyanobacteria (the plastid.)

BTW these processes are continuing to this day and new organelles in some species are on the horizon. However nothing as close to impactful as these two events, which were all brought about by cyanobacteria.

(NB, there are some challenges to these hypotheses however they have extremely strong evidence backing them)

 

[flampton]

But yet it move

Sincerely Lasse

So I know people might be rolling their eyes at this, and feel I’m attacking Lasse. Think for a second what you would tell me if I told you that you can cure COVID in most people with hamburger meat? That is much stronger than this hydrogen sulfide hypothesis. To take up that COVID analogy a bit more, if I said well almost everyone who ate hamburger meat survived COVID you would absolutely role your eyes at me. Yet when things take on big words it gets a lot harder. But all you have to realize is that cyanobacterial mats have formed at pretty much all nitrate levels in both freshwater and saltwater aquariums (barring a true zero). And so the hypothesis of adding nitrate to fix a cyano problem is immediately falsified. ( Basically if you dose nitrates to 5 mg/L you know that cyanobacterial mats have formed at this level, so it's gone) And so you would need to select an alternate hypothesis to test, one possible example would be that aquarists take better care of their tanks when they dose nitrate. The hamburger one is actually harder to refute then the nitrate one. Go ahead prove me wrong

You might ask why that’s a problem as people can believe what they want to. It’s because reefing already has enough troubles with the shady companies, the pseudoscience and all the trade secret garbage. If this hobby is going to move forward all the pseudoscientific crap has to go. It needs to be based on reality. On actual things. If hobbyists get to the point where they realize they have been constantly lied to or snookered they will stop in this hobby and it will crash. No matter how well intentioned the information provider is.

Let's see what could happen if this hypothesis grows...
So let's say a twenty year old very popular R2R member who knows everything (lol) find Lasse’s hypothesis and says, hmmm that sounds really cool and scientific. Then since he's taking chemistry at school he does a cursory look up if the topic and discovered that it is actually nitrite produced by DNRA microbes (they take nitrate and convert it to ammonia but they leak nitrites in the process) that blocks sulfate reducing bacteria’s ability to produce hydrogen sulfide. (Yes again not nitrate.) Obviously they would get super excited at their new found cutting edge knowledge and would start dosing nitrite. Now as I already discussed that when one is taking extra steps to take care of their aquarium while there is a pest outbreak it will automatically improve the odds and so chances are he gets rid of his cyano mats eventually. As a popular member he hits the forums triumphantly and telld everyone, HEY DOSE NITRITE FOR CYANOS!! And so now using big words and his popularity he recruits a lot of people to this methodology. And so as usual per this hobby it would be successful because of the extra attention but of course never close to one hundred percent effective. He'd be looked at in the forums with awe, that person really knows his stuff, a forum hero! Challengers using logic will be roasted and will quit the forum. The people who it didn’t work for will be told they did it wrong, to tweak the dose higher, to tweak the dose lower, or that it was really phosphate in their case, or they just don’t plain understand it. So it would become a thing in the hobby for a bunch of years until the fad would finally fade away, and during this period we'd lose a bunch of people because of uncontrolled cyano mats and nitrite harassment and reefing would have gone completely backwards on the cyano question.

So that's how serious this can become and if you couldn't guess this has already happened in various ways many many times over in this hobby.


And as the so called scientist bad guy people eventually become afraid to communicate with me. They see posts like these and feel I’ll tell them they’re stupid. Or that I’m a know it all who will push only their way (see the last paragraph of this rebuke) No! If anyone wants to reach out and discuss their hypotheses I more than welcome it. We can discuss possible hypotheses to address your question, how to look in the literature, how to design an experiment, analyze the data etc. For instance someone may now want to explore growing ciliates or rotifers for cyano biocontrol. WONDERFUL. Maybe they’ll work, maybe they’ll be iffy, or maybe they'll be a dismal failure. However it will be grounded in known science and not science fiction.

Oh and fair warning if anybody reaches out or posts something telling me or the forum how something absolutely works, well you best back it up. Which brings me to this.

Oh and as far as the nitrate/cyano question. I really do not know the answer. I’ve presented a few ideas, but I DON’t KNOW...So why is that freaking so hard? In the forum you'll see me argue my position however you'll never see me say you must do this to achieve this unless it's seriously grounded. (E.g. add calcium to raise calcium) There's so many variations on reefing that work, I'll definitely discuss how I think they work based on my own knowledge. I'm also here to stretch the envelope and will probably do funky things to my tank. Yet I'm not infallible and will really admit when I get something wrong, but rest assured that my hypotheses will be based on something that has already been observed and not wishful thinking.

Oh and I mean I’ve got twenty plus years in microbiology and genetics and I say I don’t know all the time. That’s the freaking point! If I am interested enough then I can say, I don’t know, let me look in the literature, make sure I understand the literature and then decide on a reasonable hypothesis, then test the hypothesis utilizing the proper controls, then confirm, deny or rework the hypothesis. Repeat this until a hypothesis is confirmed by probability. Then going broader you must have someone completely different test the hypothesis and see if they have the same result. Repeat this a thousand or so times with all confirming the original hypothesis and now you’ll finally arrive at a scientific theory. (which still might be challenged in the future with the creation of new tests and new instrumentation, haha!!!)

For lurkers and forum members be safe out there and don’t believe everything you read, and that includes believing me! (basically do your homework and place trust when it has been earned, and remove trust when it’s been broken)

Sorry for the long post... I'm just already so tired

 

[Nano sapiens]

Sorry for the long post... I'm just already so tired

I'm not sure that anyone is going to touch this one with a ten foot pole, so I'll dive right in!

Here are my observations (FWIW):

1. These types of general public forums are prone to becoming 'cults of personality' over time. Human nature, it's inevitable. I'm sure that somewhere, in the dark recesses of R2R, someone is even following me

2. The tactic of using witticisms to gain favor/advantage with an audience is as old as our civilization. Interestingly, we often don't even know that we are being played until someone glaringly points it out (as politicians know all too well)

3. Forums that are open to the general public can be a challenge for scientists since the vast majority of the audience is not trained in the discipline of scientific method and is not familiar with many of the scientific terms. As laymen, many of us will automatically assume that someone who speaks 'in big scientific words' is an authority and knows what they are talking about, and so feel intimidated to the point of possibly not contributing to a discussion...or worse, just pack up and 'leave the room'.

5. Related to #4 above, my favorite quote comes from the well known and respected physicist, Richard Feynman:

"If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t really understand it."

Disclaimer: I am NOT a trained scientist...and even after a long period of reef keeping there's still a heck of a lot of reef related stuff that I would like to know more about.

Ralph.