Is growing algae for nutrient export a bad idea?

[saltyhog]

Why is coral allopathy preferable to assumed but not proven algae allopathy? What coral grows fast enough to be effective at nutrient transport that most would want in their tank?

I tried more grazers to fight my algae issues and the only thing that helped was GFO to get my PO4 down to 0.02-0.05 and carbon dosing to get my nitrates down to 2.5-5. Not only did my coral growth improve but color did also.

 

[reeferKen]

Been learning a lot, looking up definitions for holobiont, Allelopathy, sulphur based denitrator, hydrostasis
great thread Robert.

 

[robert]

Why is coral allopathy preferable to assumed but not proven algae allopathy? What coral grows fast enough to be effective at nutrient transport that most would want in their tank?

I tried more grazers to fight my algae issues and the only thing that helped was GFO to get my PO4 down to 0.02-0.05 and carbon dosing to get my nitrates down to 2.5-5. Not only did my coral growth improve but color did also.

"Why is coral allopathy preferable to assumed but not proven algae allopathy?" - its not, who said it was?

"assumed but not proven algae allopathy" - what proof do you want? Observational studies, experimental studies?

"I tried more grazers" - without grazers on the reef, algae takes over even with optimal water parameters - in our tanks it can be even tougher because we'll get overrun before a suitable type and population of grazers can be found. Sometimes you have to be the grazer.
Many, many marine algaes use sulphate to build stores of reserve nutrients to weather periods of limited nutrients. I'm not convinced that absent grazers you can starve algae into submission without starving your corals as well.

"What coral grows fast enough to be effective at nutrient transport that most would want in their tank?" Does it have to be a coral - clams sequester nutrients - dursa grow very fast - I expect I can export several large BTAs from my system per month...(I've had palys which grow almost as fast as algae - but with the same allelotoxic issues and no I don't want them in my tank.) Coupled with water changes and isolated (in my case sulphur) denitrification - as its not a closed system, I control my nutrient levels easily.

"the only thing that helped was GFO to get my PO4 down to 0.02-0.05 and carbon dosing to get my nitrates down to 2.5-5." I think you're phosphate reduction did the trick. No need to keep nitrates that low - doesn't hurt but isn't necessary either.

Carbon dosing has its own issues as carbon limitation holds bacterial populations in check. Disregulate these and you'll bleach or stn your corals.

 

[Pete polyp]

Why is coral allopathy preferable to assumed but not proven algae allopathy? What coral grows fast enough to be effective at nutrient transport that most would want in their tank?

I tried more grazers to fight my algae issues and the only thing that helped was GFO to get my PO4 down to 0.02-0.05 and carbon dosing to get my nitrates down to 2.5-5. Not only did my coral growth improve but color did also.

Pulsing xenia

 

[robert]

this ^^^ can be so true....

 

[Sabellafella]

Haha thats funny cuz one and only fuge is pulsing xenia and it acually works quite well , ive never had a problem with low nutrients up untill now plus , i sell the frags for gfo and carbon cant beat it

 

[Wiz]

Ironic that it is also one of the best-known soft corals for allelopathy

Pulsing xenia

 

[robert]

Along with live rock and macroalgaes - I aslo have the opinion that substrate, of any kind, is something you don't want or need for a reef tank. Other than "it looks nice and my gobies have to have it" - it serves no necessary purpose and will only lead to regrets later on.

Again - my opinion - and I would certainly love to hear why its necessary or beneficial.

A common complaint in established tanks - is an inability to keep nutrients up....blame the sandbed...
if you just have to have substrate - check out RFUGs - its helps but does not eliminate the downsides.

 

[robert]

How much coral is enough coral?

When you look down from the top and can't see anything but corals clams and nems - you probably have enough.
(now its time to fill the shadows - lol")

 

[Pete polyp]

Along with live rock and macroalgaes - I aslo have the opinion that substrate, of any kind, is something you don't want or need for a reef tank. Other than "it looks nice and my gobies have to have it" - it serves no necessary purpose and will only lead to regrets later on.

Again - my opinion - and I would certainly love to hear why its necessary or beneficial.

A common complaint in established tanks - is an inability to keep nutrients up....blame the sandbed...
if you just have to have substrate - check out RFUGs - its helps but does not eliminate the downsides.

I have an inability to keep nutrients up in a barebottom with no fuge, no skimmer etc.

 

[robert]

I have an inability to keep nutrients up in a barebottom with no fuge, no skimmer etc.

Tell me about this tank...feeding, stocking, pics, sump, rock, eveything....I know its a 40-you feed mysis - 6oz/month

 

[Pete polyp]

Tell me about this tank...feeding, stocking, pics, sump, rock, eveything....I know its a 40-you feed mysis - 6oz/month

I have put 1" of reef flake in it. But even before that there was so little nitrate it would kill corals and consume cheato. I have somewhere around 40 lbs tukani rock (the reason for low nutrients) The fuge was empty for quite a while and it made no difference. It's a 40b with 40b sump, sicce 5.0 with manifold running a tlf reactor and added uv about a month ago. Before the latest crash I had lots of fish
Fish list
2x black ice clowns
2x Helfrichi firefish
1 firefish
1 Carpenters flasher wrasse
1 Yellowfin flasher wrasse
1 yasha goby
1 red stripe goby
1 ruby red dragonette
1 yellow eye kole tang
1 black cap basslet
1 rainsford goby
I know I had 13 fish

I started dosing kno3 last July because like I said, corals were dying. A ball of cheato would completely be consumed in 2 months. It had a ball of cheato in the fuge somewhere around March of last year and it was completely gone by June. I tried feeding more and more, at one point feeding 6oz rods original monthly and feeding about a tsp of reef roids or coral frenzy daily. All this did was make the Po4 level rise. So I started dosing kno3 and everything turned around. The remaining corals colored up within a couple weeks and started growing finally. I added 1 bag of reef flake right about a year ago. For several months everything was going pretty good. Around may I bought another ball of cheato to control phosphate and stabilize pH. Just a little bit of the cheato ended up making its way into the display so I had to buy a sponge to put in the baffle. Around June of this year I started noticing a little bit of what looked like cyano starting in the sandbed. It wasn't maroon looking but more of a rust color, I figured it was just thin. I used chemiclean and it did absolutely nothing to it. So at that point I was thinking dinoflagellates, and it was confirmed. I started losing fish at a pretty rapid pace and the corals were starting to look pretty bad. I tried 3 days lights out, which worked, but it returned. I tried hydrogen peroxide dosing while 5 days lights out, and it returned. I dosed hydrogen peroxide for about 2 1/2 weeks straight and it was just getting worse. After the first week I thought maybe it needed a skimmer to be effective, so I put my skimmer online and it made no difference. Someone suggested using a uv sterilizer, so I ordered one. Since adding uv it has been kept in check, but still not completely gone. I had always suspected that the ball of cheato I had must have come from a tank with a dinoflagellate problem. After you started this thread it got me to thinking maybe it's the cheato that's the problem. So just now I have removed the cheato and will do everything I can to get any that remains out of the system to see what happens.

 

[Pete polyp]

From this

To this

And it was worse than that at one time

 

[rygh]

Rygh - Its pretty hard to disagree with "maybe, maybe not"..."some are good and some are bad"
It would be helpful to me if you could expand on "the different types of systems" and why live rock might satisfy a specific need in one of these types...
...

For the most part, I used dry dead rock for my tank.
I made some rather fun structures using AragoPoxy. (Epoxy instead of concrete, but same idea)
For the live rock: That came from both established systems and fresh from reef.
The few pieces I put in were for two reasons: Coraline algae and small critters like micro brittle stars.
While you can seed coraline from strips and other things, real live rock has a larger variety.
That matters because parts of your tank are different (high/low light/flow etc)
There are other sources of pods and detrivors as well, but again, not the variety you might get from real live rock.
Doing so was a risk on my part though. You can get the bad with the good.

 

[Pete polyp]

For the most part, I used dry dead rock for my tank.
I made some rather fun structures using AragoPoxy. (Epoxy instead of concrete, but same idea)
For the live rock: That came from both established systems and fresh from reef.
The few pieces I put in were for two reasons: Coraline algae and small critters like micro brittle stars.
While you can seed coraline from strips and other things, real live rock has a larger variety.
That matters because parts of your tank are different (high/low light/flow etc)
There are other sources of pods and detrivors as well, but again, not the variety you might get from real live rock.
Doing so was a risk on my part though. You can get the bad with the good.

Talk about variety of coralline. This has been in my tank for 3 years

 

[robert]

@Pete polyp
what killed your fish - any idea? Your right...nothing looks to be growing too well. The peices I recognize between the two pictures seem stagnant and even the polyps seem stretched. If I imagine a tank in a state of starvation - yours might be what it would look like.

If you've ruled out parameters - and had them double checked - and ruled out any contaminats...then you have to decide how you want to proceed. You can continue your dosing...which I think is a stop gap and a dead end. Or you can eliminate your denitrators and clean out the excess carbon sources which I think might be better to get your corals back on track.

 

[Pete polyp]

The only way to eliminate dinitrators would be to ditch the rock. Carbon sources being what exactly? I don't dose any forms of carbon. Those pictures were only 3 months apart and nothing grew at all at that time. The dinoflagellates killed the fish because they ate it. All the ones that died were fish that picked at the rocks or sand. I saw lots of growth for about 2 months and then this happened.

 

[saltyhog]

"Why is coral allopathy preferable to assumed but not proven algae allopathy?" - its not, who said it was?

I must have misunderstood you because I thought that was the gist of the whole thread(macro algae was bad because of allopathy). I have algae living side by side in my tank without any negative effect on the coral. One cyphastrea is actually out competing the algae.

"assumed but not proven algae allopathy" - what proof do you want? Observational studies, experimental studies? Yes! Controlled scientific studies would be good, was there one linked? Sorry I missed that.

"I tried more grazers" - without grazers on the reef, algae takes over even with optimal water parameters - in our tanks it can be even tougher because we'll get overrun before a suitable type and population of grazers can be found. Sometimes you have to be the grazer.
Many, many marine algaes use sulphate to build stores of reserve nutrients to weather periods of limited nutrients. I'm not convinced that absent grazers you can starve algae into submission without starving your corals as well.

? Corals thrive in "nutrient starved" conditions where algae is not growing. I've been able to see my algae problem drastically reduced by reducing nutrients while my corals have improved. That certainly isn't the same as eliminating the algae but it's approaching submission (I'm sure I saw a white flag from some turf algae last night, LOL). Being the grazer can be tough. I didn't think about that when designing my scape. I can't remove rock to manually remove algae because they are connected in large chunks. But I do my best to manually remove algae where I can.


"What coral grows fast enough to be effective at nutrient transport that most would want in their tank?" Does it have to be a coral - clams sequester nutrients - dursa grow very fast - I expect I can export several large BTAs from my system per month...(I've had palys which grow almost as fast as algae - but with the same allelotoxic issues and no I don't want them in my tank.) Coupled with water changes and isolated (in my case sulphur) denitrification - as its not a closed system, I control my nutrient levels easily.

I don't want Xenia, clams or nemes. I want to keep fish that aren't compatable with clams. I don't want Xenia for some of the same reasons I don't want algae. Anemones...probably will have one but I certainly don't want a tank full of them. I want a display tank ....not one where I'm using the whole tank as a nutrient export tool. I'm sure it's possible but that's not what I want my tank to be.

"the only thing that helped was GFO to get my PO4 down to 0.02-0.05 and carbon dosing to get my nitrates down to 2.5-5." I think you're phosphate reduction did the trick. No need to keep nitrates that low - doesn't hurt but isn't necessary either.

I think your're right. I cut my carbon dosing by 2/3 to keep it around 5 where it is now.

Carbon dosing has its own issues as carbon limitation holds bacterial populations in check. Disregulate these and you'll bleach or stn your corals.

I agree with this also. That might very well result from a dosing accident with malfunction of a dosing pump/owner-operator error.

 

[brandon429]

Up until now I've lurked but salty hog has done it now, must chime in.


That part you said about algae taking over on a natural reef without grazers even if the water is perfect whether we are talking Fiji, GBR, Caymans, Virgins, or any of the most pristine reefs one is lucky enough to find, goes against 30 yrs of formal books, articles and sage advice on aquariums so I'm not sure that's Ok to claim. It would mean that a huge portion of algae issues are not nutrient problems
what would that mean about 30 yrs of aquarium advice, that's a lot to have to redact. I think we'll just stick with if you have algae there's bad phosphate somewhere and keep acting on the water and never the algae or it's a waste of time

 

[Pete polyp]

Up until now I've lurked but salty hog has done it now, must chime in.


That part you said about algae taking over on a natural reef without grazers even if the water is perfect whether we are talking Fiji, GBR, Caymans, Virgins, or any of the most pristine reefs one is lucky enough to find, goes against 30 yrs of formal books, articles and sage advice on aquariums so I'm not sure that's legal to claim.

Someone needs to stick up for the status quo, because clearly they have control over algae problems.


It would mean res publica and author X were mostly wrong for decades as 100% of people asked will claim nutrients are the cause of any algae problem. You're not claiming the masses could actually be wrong about perhaps the single most important aspect of long term reefing, are you?

Because if you are then for the love of Pete come hang out in a fix thread one of these days we see few kindred souls

But everyone loves Pete [emoji6]