Looking for thoughts on organic carbon dosing and nitrate

[Laith]

...

Prior to this dosing, my nitrates would sit around .5 to 1, a couple days into dosing its been absolutely 0. ...

I'm curious as to why you thought that you needed to reduce nitrates when they were already at those low levels? Or maybe I misunderstood your post?

I have no issues with having my Nitrates at between 15ppm and 20ppm. And I don't dose carbon though I did give it a try on my previous tank...

 

[taricha]

But what does it tell you that is actionable?

Almost nothing. It is quite difficult to come up with a scenario where the info given is actionable, and you would not have that info from other means.

But let me try anyway.

ACTION: Buy more random bottled bacteria products, or for the connoisseur, ampules....

Currently, I would say one of the major uses for microbiome testing is of the form - "that's not your problem."
You could get an aquabiomics result that says your tank has multiple types of ammonia and nitrite oxidizer organisms, and so you should never spend another dime on a bottle of nitrifiers.

Or you could get a result that says your balance score and family distribution is very close to typical for reefs, or Reef hobby tanks. This would tell you that if you have a problem, the bacterial cohort is not the source of that problem. It would also tell you that you don't need to buy any more live rock, unless you just really want some for aesthetics. And if you got that result, and weren't having a problem in your system, it would tell you that live rock and sand you already have is great material to start a new tank with, and you don't have to worry about getting new "fresh" "diverse" material for a new system.

Those are more "anti-actionable" info than actionable. But still of value, I think.
But if you had a system that was having problems, your coral did not do well in the system, but ICP results give you nothing to indicate chemical parameters are off, and a microbiome test says that your balance score is very far off from typical for Reef systems. I might consider that actionable info that would persuade me to hit up KP Aquatics and get some live rock in there.

 

[taricha]

Lol. Aquabiomics should mail you a certificate signed by a microbiologist that says "You are cycled!"

 

[Boogieman]

Hello so I am happy to report after a dose of 20 mls per day of vodka in my 120 gallon my phosphates and nitrates went from 0.185 and 40 to zero on both. My last increase was 5 mls. Also it stayed High for a long time 6 or 7 months then very quickly with in a month went to zero..
Now to figure out the maintenance dose

 

[Dan_P]

that would persuade me to hit up KP Aquatics and get some live rock in there.

Starting an aquarium with live rock will seed the aquarium and possibly make you happy about the resulting microbiome. Is there much evidence that supports adding live rock to an aquarium with an established microbiome and seeing substantial change to the microbiome? The bottle bacteria vendors hope you believe that, right?

 

[taricha]

Starting an aquarium with live rock will seed the aquarium and possibly make you happy about the resulting microbiome. Is there much evidence that supports adding live rock to an aquarium with an established microbiome and seeing substantial change to the microbiome? The bottle bacteria vendors hope you believe that, right?

If I did a dry Rock, dry sand, biospira start. And then added nothing but fish and a few Coral Frags for the first few months, I would guess that such a tank even a year later would have a microbiome that would shift dramatically if I later added some KP Aquatics-style live rock, covered in mussels, sponges, coralline etc.

Now, if I started with good live rock, I would have needed to do some very extreme things before I would believe that a new infusion of live rock a year or two later could make a difference.

And what about all the not quite dry rock cases? That purple painted concrete at Petco. Is that "live rock" that contains enough of a microbiome similar to successful coral systems to make me feel good about my system? I don't know. I could argue both sides of that one.

(but what I think you're getting at is that yes, I agree if you started a system with live rock, then you probably are in the category of your-microbiome-isn't-your-problem.)

 

[SDchris]

I prefer to view balance as key and diversity helps maintain balance. In the case of aquariums, the first 10 months are crucial. When growing acro, growth starts off slow and the coral appears less vibrant. However, after the six-month mark, there is a significant improvement in growth and colour. Interestingly, this growth improvement appears to occur regardless of whether nutrient levels are elevated or low, and whether or not carbon is dosed or bacteria is added. So what is happing during this period? Actually I think the whole diversity debate started due to that phenomena.

As a hobbyist, I often struggle to reconcile conflicting information. Despite claims that high or low levels of various factors, such as phosphate, nitrate, temperature, or zinc can harm coral, there are just as many tanks thriving under those same conditions.
LOL, it makes you wonder how you could ever kill a coral.

 

[jda]

The thing with live vs dry that most do not understand is that the live already has the rock coated in things so that dinos cannot get a foothold.. even if it is just surface/film/matting bacteria.

There are many inverts and things on live rock that can be sensitive to the higher nitrate levels that people like to run. Mini brittle stars, pods, worms, etc. can all die back with no3 gets much over 10, IMO. Higher po4 plays a role in this too. Coralline can calcify and spread much faster with lower residual no3 and po4 levels.

This is a population game, not a diversity game. Even one type of matting/film bacteria that covered rocks already can keep dinos at bay whereas a few sweet rocks from the ocean will struggle to seed the rest of the tank fast enough.

There are many build thread on here with tanks full of dry rock and also a seed pack from the ocean. The ocean rock is beautiful and the dry rock is covered in nuisance algae and dinos still.

I just started up a smaller tank for Z&P. I grabbed some rock out of one of my tubs that has been kept in saltwater and mostly in the dark. I had a dino phase for about 3-4 days and it is gone now - this was pretty common in nearly every tank before dry/dead rock came about. While this rock is not from the ocean, it still has some bacteria on it and even some critters - saw a few worms and pods crawling around. The coralline and sponge will quickly come back too. I love how people either forgot, or never knew, that massive dino outbreaks were not common when people used real live rock... but I guess that is not in the BRS videos. Click on the $1000 tank thread in my signature and watch a year of growth and progress with no dino issues... again, not any dead/dry rock in there. Neither of these tanks had any detectable no3 and po4.

For me, this all comes down to expectations and definitions and why many think this is so hard. Diversity to me is not only things that we cannot see, but things that we can. I want my snails, starfish, pods, worms, etc. to be able to multiply. Some think of diversity as just two different kinds of bacteria that come in a bottle or sprayed dry on a rock. To each their own, but nobodies definition of diversity can outpopulate hair, dinos and cyano on dry rock fast enough.

I would argue that epoxy painted concrete will never be live rock. The microfauna need the porous structure to help them reproduce and survive, or at least I have always heard that and also believe it to be true. Also hard to buffer phosphate and have anoxic bacteria to turn no3 into N gas on surface epoxy.

For re-seeding, many tanks need this. If you used interceptor for bugs, it likely killed back your starfish. Levamisole any beneficial planaria. Algaecide kill your surface algae or antibiotic killed surface bacteria and some asternia are now dead. High no3 could kill other things. A pack from IPSF or a new piece of rock or two can gets most of these back.

 

[Dan_P]

If I did a dry Rock, dry sand, biospira start. And then added nothing but fish and a few Coral Frags for the first few months, I would guess that such a tank even a year later would have a microbiome that would shift dramatically if I later added some KP Aquatics-style live rock, covered in mussels, sponges, coralline etc.

That would be testable!

We should note that coral frags could bring quite a complex microbiome to an aquarium. Ditto fish poop. Given a year head start, a one year old biofilm might not be a weakling. The same thing could be done with bottled bacteria, adding to existing microbiome and noting any lasting shifts.

My little aquaria might be useful to at least observe microbiome shifts versus what one adds. Not sure though how well they model an aquarium…I would say crudely.

 

[bushdoc]

The thing with live vs dry that most do not understand is that the live already has the rock coated in things so that dinos cannot get a foothold.. even if it is just surface/film/matting bacteria.

There are many inverts and things on live rock that can be sensitive to the higher nitrate levels that people like to run. Mini brittle stars, pods, worms, etc. can all die back with no3 gets much over 10, IMO. Higher po4 plays a role in this too. Coralline can calcify and spread much faster with lower residual no3 and po4 levels.

This is a population game, not a diversity game. Even one type of matting/film bacteria that covered rocks already can keep dinos at bay whereas a few sweet rocks from the ocean will struggle to seed the rest of the tank fast enough.

There are many build thread on here with tanks full of dry rock and also a seed pack from the ocean. The ocean rock is beautiful and the dry rock is covered in nuisance algae and dinos still.

I just started up a smaller tank for Z&P. I grabbed some rock out of one of my tubs that has been kept in saltwater and mostly in the dark. I had a dino phase for about 3-4 days and it is gone now - this was pretty common in nearly every tank before dry/dead rock came about. While this rock is not from the ocean, it still has some bacteria on it and even some critters - saw a few worms and pods crawling around. The coralline and sponge will quickly come back too. I love how people either forgot, or never knew, that massive dino outbreaks were not common when people used real live rock... but I guess that is not in the BRS videos. Click on the $1000 tank thread in my signature and watch a year of growth and progress with no dino issues... again, not any dead/dry rock in there. Neither of these tanks had any detectable no3 and po4.

For me, this all comes down to expectations and definitions and why many think this is so hard. Diversity to me is not only things that we cannot see, but things that we can. I want my snails, starfish, pods, worms, etc. to be able to multiply. Some think of diversity as just two different kinds of bacteria that come in a bottle or sprayed dry on a rock. To each their own, but nobodies definition of diversity can outpopulate hair, dinos and cyano on dry rock fast enough.

I would argue that epoxy painted concrete will never be live rock. The microfauna need the porous structure to help them reproduce and survive, or at least I have always heard that and also believe it to be true. Also hard to buffer phosphate and have anoxic bacteria to turn no3 into N gas on surface epoxy.

For re-seeding, many tanks need this. If you used interceptor for bugs, it likely killed back your starfish. Levamisole any beneficial planaria. Algaecide kill your surface algae or antibiotic killed surface bacteria and some asternia are now dead. High no3 could kill other things. A pack from IPSF or a new piece of rock or two can gets most of these back.

Totally agree, it's called succesion in ecology terms and surely it's possible to achieve climax community in a reef tank, based on dry rock, but how long will it take, how many interim phases is tank going to go through? Starting with Maricultured, Real or Aquacultured Live Rock will generally bring us closer and faster to Climax Community.

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I'm curious as to why you thought that you needed to reduce nitrates when they were already at those low levels? Or maybe I misunderstood your post?

I have no issues with having my Nitrates at between 15ppm and 20ppm. And I don't dose carbon though I did give it a try on my previous tank...

I am dosing Plus NP, a product that is meant to introduce carbon and increase phos and nitrates, so that when they finally do go up I can just continue dosing carbon to keep the microbiome adjusted to its presence.

 

[cvicente]

Could you give us the Cliff's?

Copy paste summary form one his coral research,

"An important implication of the coral holobiont model is that disrupting any one of these components may cause the whole community to collapse and lead to coral death. In order to test this hypothesis, we have performed several experiments exposing corals to different stressors and then looked at the changes in microbial dynamics and diversity, as well as coral pathology. In collaboration with Dr. Nancy Knowlton and Davey Kline at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we applied stresses to different coral species in the presence and absence of antibiotics. Our data showed that of the many commonly cited stressors of corals, organic carbon (OC) loading is the most problematic. Coral death induced by OC can be delayed with antibiotics. Additionally, OC loading causes the coral-associated microbial communities to grow much faster then normal. This strongly suggests that changes in the bacterial community, and not the stresses themselves, are responsible for coral mortality. (Kline et al. 2006, Kuntz et al. 2005). Additionally, when corals are placed next to algae with a filter impervious to viruses and bacteria, corals mortality is high. This mortality is also inhibited by antibiotics (Smith et al. 2006).

In a separate experiment, corals were exposed to one of four types of stressors currently threatening coral reefs: elevated nutrients, temperature, and organic carbon, and lowered pH. We then isolated the microbial and viral communities and performed whole-genome sequencing (pyrosequencing, 454 Life Sciences) to look at how the diversity and function of these organisms changed following stress. Our data showed that stress led to a shift towards a more pathogenic microbial community in all cases, with pathogen-associated genes also increasing in abundance (e.g. motility, virulence, and secondary metabolite genes) (Vega Thurber et al. Env Micro 2009). The viral assemblages also changed on the coral, with viruses related to the Herpesviridae family greatly increasing in abundance (Vega Thurber et al. PNAS 2008). We found that one herpes-like virus was undetectable by quantitative PCR (qPCR) prior to stress, but then increased dramatically within 1 hr of stress exposure, indicating an increase in production of the virus under stress."

There is another interesting research about how turf algae exudates (organic carbon) alter coral microbial communities and the importance of grazers like urchins and many other species of fish in the coral reefs. I invite you to read his work, very interesting. Dr. Rowher credentials are unquestionable, when a bacteria is named after you, you know what you are talking about.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Copy paste summary form one his coral research,

"An important implication of the coral holobiont model is that disrupting any one of these components may cause the whole community to collapse and lead to coral death. In order to test this hypothesis, we have performed several experiments exposing corals to different stressors and then looked at the changes in microbial dynamics and diversity, as well as coral pathology. In collaboration with Dr. Nancy Knowlton and Davey Kline at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we applied stresses to different coral species in the presence and absence of antibiotics. Our data showed that of the many commonly cited stressors of corals, organic carbon (OC) loading is the most problematic. Coral death induced by OC can be delayed with antibiotics. Additionally, OC loading causes the coral-associated microbial communities to grow much faster then normal. This strongly suggests that changes in the bacterial community, and not the stresses themselves, are responsible for coral mortality. (Kline et al. 2006, Kuntz et al. 2005). Additionally, when corals are placed next to algae with a filter impervious to viruses and bacteria, corals mortality is high. This mortality is also inhibited by antibiotics (Smith et al. 2006).

In a separate experiment, corals were exposed to one of four types of stressors currently threatening coral reefs: elevated nutrients, temperature, and organic carbon, and lowered pH. We then isolated the microbial and viral communities and performed whole-genome sequencing (pyrosequencing, 454 Life Sciences) to look at how the diversity and function of these organisms changed following stress. Our data showed that stress led to a shift towards a more pathogenic microbial community in all cases, with pathogen-associated genes also increasing in abundance (e.g. motility, virulence, and secondary metabolite genes) (Vega Thurber et al. Env Micro 2009). The viral assemblages also changed on the coral, with viruses related to the Herpesviridae family greatly increasing in abundance (Vega Thurber et al. PNAS 2008). We found that one herpes-like virus was undetectable by quantitative PCR (qPCR) prior to stress, but then increased dramatically within 1 hr of stress exposure, indicating an increase in production of the virus under stress."

There is another interesting research about how turf algae exudates (organic carbon) alter coral microbial communities and the importance of grazers like urchins and many other species of fish in the coral reefs. I invite you to read his work, very interesting. Dr. Rowher credentials are unquestionable, when a bacteria is named after you, you know what you are talking about.

I recommend that folks take this work with a grain of salt. I do not think the research being quoted there really applies to what we do.

First, they stressed the corals with an antibotic treatment. We do not typically do that.

The corals were grown in a system where there was literally nowhere else for bacteria to grow except on the coral or the smooth sides of the tiny container:

"Coral nubbins were maintained in 100 ml opaque plastic incubation vessels that sat in water baths at ambient reef temperatures"​

Then they added "organic" carbon, but different organics than most of use use. At extremely high and continuously maintained concentrations.

Finally, they did not even measure whether nutrients were depleted by the huge amount of organic carbon dosed, and whether corals might be killed by lack of nutrients.

"Individual treatments that had significantly greater mortality compared with controls included 25 mg l–1 lactose (p < 0.001), 25 mg l–1 starch (p < 0.01), 25 mg l–1 galactose (p < 0.05), 12.5 mg l–1 glucose (p < 0.05) and 25.0 mg l–1 glucose (p < 0.05)."​

25 ppm lactose? Continuously? WOW!

On a strict weight for weight comparison, how much vinegar would that be?

Vinegar at 5% acidity (50,000 mg/L) contains 25 mg/0.5 mL.

Thus a 100 gallon (378.5 L) tank would get a dose of 190 mL, and the concentration was maintained at that level by continuous flow through. When I tested vinegar at levels approaching that, lots of bad stuff happened, including the tank turning clouding, corals browning up, etc. It is not reflective of doses folks normally use.

https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2006/314/m314p119.pdf

As a final thought: where are the dead corals from organic carbon dosing if this paper is to be believed as pertinent?

 

[Mperry622]

Whenever I dose Red Sea NO3O4-X within 2 hours my skimmer def shows the signs. same thing happens if i does micro7... skimmer goes haywire. i dose around 30ML to my 140g setup

 

[Genetics]

I'm going to follow along with this. Personally, I think there are some areas that are often cited but more or less hearsay.

One was that carbon dosing increased bacterial count aerobically. After years of following threads it seems that the more surface area you had the quicker the response you saw in nitrate reduction. So gravel free aquariums usually required much more carbon to get a reduction than an aquarium with a sandbed. Additionally there isn't any concrete data that the bacteria growing are aerobic but could quite possibly anaerobic. I believe the aerobic nature is from the respiratory issues you see in fish if too much carbon is added too quickly.

The idea of monoculture. It doesn't make sense. If there is a pathway to utilize a carbon source that bacteria species will grow. Many of the same pathways exist repeatedly in nature. There are many presumed reasons for why they are repetitious.

I remember trying sucrose and it resulting in a browning nature of sps. Glucose on the other hand would cause a lightening of sps. Whether this change is beneficial/detrimental was never shown.

Vinegar was a fantastic additive. In this hobby using an acid such as vinegar is great for cleaning powerheads and pumps. Its readily available and even helps dissolve a little extra calcium in kalkwasser. The only issue I have had with it was on too much addition my aquarium would become covered in a white slime that took a few days to breakdown and get removed. With filter socks these days it still takes about two days.

Ethanol. Really gets some nasty smelling skimmate. If I had to guess this additive works better anaerobically and can really mess up an aquarium if too much is added.

 

[Genetics]

25 ppm lactose? Continuously? WOW!

On a strict weight for weight comparison, how much vinegar would that be?

Vinegar at 5% acidity (50,000 mg/L) contains 25 mg/0.5 mL.

Thus a 100 gallon (378.5 L) tank would get a dose of 190 mL, and the concentration was maintained at that level by continuous flow through. When I tested vinegar at levels approaching that, lots of bad stuff happened, including the tank turning clouding, corals browning up, etc. It is not reflective of doses folks normally use.

25ppm? That's like doing a study where you force feed people McDonald's three meals a day and then state the obvious detrimental results.

 

[Dan_P]

I just reread the posts on carbon dosing and will take a shot at answering Randy’s question.

It is frequently claimed that it takes a long time (sometimes weeks) for organic carbon dosing to reduce nitrate.

Do folks believe that is true, and if it is, why would it be true?

When the time to reach an effective dose of organic carbon is included in the time required to reduce nitrate concentration, then nitrate reduction to the desired level can take weeks. The effective dose seems to be near 1 mL of vinegar (5% acetic acid) per gallon of system water or about 1/8 mL per gallon for vodka (40% Ethanol).

When the effective dose is reached, nitrate concentration can be depleted in days. Often associated with reaching this dose is cloudy water, slime on filter medium and large skimmate volumes.

Phosphate depletion, and possibly trace element depletion, seems to negatively affect nitrate reduction.

Are most folks just starting to dose too slowly?

Yes, and some quit before reaching the effective dose.

Bacterial number increase is sometimes cited as a reason, but why would it take that long?

Bacteria numbers are probably linked to available nutrients. Bacteria living in the aquarium are likely growing at steady state, i.e., birth rate equals death rate. Also, their metabolism is not necessarily adjusted to consume acetic acid and ethanol. With the sudden influx of a new carbon source, the bacteria require time to adjust their metabolism. A big unknown is accounting for the slow diffusion rate of nutrients to and through the biofilm. This would limit the rate at which the bacteria are fed. At higher concentrations of organic carbon, the diffusion rate would be expected to increase and permit faster growth. I have no estimate for how this might slow down the activation of rapid bacteria growth.

Another reason contributing to the delay in the reduction of nitrate concentration is that nitrate is not consumed until other easier to consume nitrogen sources become depleted. The initial organic carbon dose stimulates bacteria to quickly consume the system’s surplus nitrogen. Once that steady state concentration reaches a very low level does the bacteria switch to nitrate.

If bacterial numbers increase is the reason, then where is the organic carbon going in the meantime? Accumulating? Being used somehow in a way that does not consume nitrate? What way is that?

A large part of any organic carbon meal ends up as energy and CO2 not biomass. Making biomass requires nitrogen. You can imagine a situation where a sub-effective dose of organic carbon is causing very little change to the biomass and below detection of nitrate depletion, just maintaining bacteria steady state. Also, bacteria may not be the only organism to consume acetic acid or ethanol.

Another reason for no detectable nitrate consumption is a no net decrease in organic carbon. Initially, the shift to acetic acid or ethanol consumption might not result in biomass production if the bacteria in steady state simply reduce consumption of other carbon sources and replace it with acetic acid.

 

[jda]

Generally, I don't like to link or quote many studies or articles since people take them with absolutism and do not have the breath or depth of knowledge and experience to apply what they might have read to their situation.

What I got from that article is that too much OC, too fast, could be bad. We know this from other things, like oxygen starvation. ...so what is the big deal to go slow and ramp up smartly? Also, any building block in the correct amounts is good, and too much is a stressor and then a poison. We knew this too. Heck, I have just a many issues with Jay's study with A. Bahanius, GAC and HLLE - I have never gotten HLLE and I use GAC a lot... but I pay attention to the dust, or make sure that there is none, and stay away from lignite carbon. You can learn small things from a lot of these, even if the whole premise does not apply.

Many of the other studies linked in the articles and from Scripps researchers can lead you down a rabbit hole of awesome information, but it also needs digested and applied. It is like people who ask me how to get started listening to Jazz - I tell them that if they really dig in, be prepared for a year or listening to nothing else. For example, they list elevated nutrients as a stressor and they have many studies and sources that indicate that it is - however, if you dig in, they are talking about true coral, not any kind of softies - true coral leave skeletons. There are many other long-standing and respected studies that show reduced calcification with elevated nutrients as well as interruptions in zoox cellular processes. However, to the average person here who only keeps softies and maybe a few more tolerant hard/true corals, a quote from this article will ring as untrue. If you want to learn a lot, then find some Scripps stuff and start to read and follow links, but it will require quite a lot of thinking.

I have offspring at UC San Diego. Scripps, and the whole university that I can tell, has high standard for research. They are not trying to help us folks who keep coral in a box. They are trying to study and understand the actual reefs. If you are ever nearby, they are a great place to visit if you like such things.

 

[taricha]

The effective dose seems to be near 1 mL of vinegar (5% acetic acid) per gallon of system water

I know that you did a long enough term vinegar dosing study in your tank that you calculated the ratio of acetic acid to nitrate reduction on a molar basis.
@Lasse has enough recent data in his system of dosing (multiple different amounts) of ethanol up through his sand bed while simultaneously tracking nitrate that the same calculation can be done approximately for his setup. There is no particular reason to think that a comparison between these two situations would yield similar numbers. But we should run the numbers and check anyway. Might be educational. My sense without calculation is that Lasse's setup gives an unusually high bang for the buck in terms of nitrate decrease per carbon dosed.

 

[Lasse]

My sense without calculation is that Lasse's setup gives an unusually high bang for the buck in terms of nitrate decrease per carbon dosed.

I´ll think you are right. My dosing is not random in the aquarium water - its directly injected there it is needed as electron donators in the anaerobic metabolism there NO3 is the terminal electron acceptor. It means that most of it goes to denitrification and not as organic carbon in the food chain

Sincerely Lasse