Phytoplankton question

[Back where it all began]

Dana has posted a thread about phytoplankton possibly reducing nutrients. Fascinating idea.
My question is:
It’s mentioned that upon addition of the phyto to the DT, the water turns a light green. My question is where does all of this phyto go? I am making the presumption that the corals cannot use all of it, so what happened to the remainder, I.e. “when the water clears.” Any thoughts as to how long phtyo stays viable in the DT?

 

[Cory]

Dana has posted a thread about phytoplankton possibly reducing nutrients. Fascinating idea.
My question is:
It’s mentioned that upon addition of the phyto to the DT, the water turns a light green. My question is where does all of this phyto go? I am making the presumption that the corals cannot use all of it, so what happened to the remainder, I.e. “when the water clears.” Any thoughts as to how long phtyo stays viable in the DT?

Most likely is eaten by sponges or removed by skimmers and filter socks.

 

[AcroNem]

Phytoplankton is utilized by a very broad range of animals. There are a couple papers I've read that show the depletion of phytoplankton in water as it passes over a reef, many corals can consume large amounts of phytoplankton. Along with other invertebrates in your system that feed on it, it could definitely be depleted just by their feeding if no filtrationis present. But in a lot of systems we also have plenty of mechanical filtration that removes particulates very quickly, and that's a factor as well. For nutrient reduction it will be difficult to keep enough phytoplankton in the system to be beneficial in that way. There are a couple bacteria products that could work well, PNS probio/yellosno products are interesting and there is a lot of research behind them.

 

[Kenneth Wingerter]

i don't think much of the phyto gets stuck in the filter socks or most other mech filters (15 or 20 microns is huge for a phyto cell size). maybe if you use very, very fine mech filters? skimming might remove some, but you'd see that happen pretty clearly. so long as there is adequate light, co2 and and nutrients (as in the typical aquarium), phyto could remain viable and indeed reproduce indefinitely. but it's very quickly eaten by sponges, forams, clams, zooplankton etc. in addition to the corals. if you doubt at all that filter-feeders could eat phyto that fast, just dig up a before/after video of a mussel or some other bivalve filtering green water from a tank--totally mind-blowing stuff.
as acronem mentioned, the bacteria in pns probio (incidently on sale at algaebarn right now) are well-known to substantially reduce nutrients in aquaria. these bacterioplankton are like one micron long, so almost certainly not filtered out in mech media. also, they colonize cryptic/anaerobic areas of the tank such as the sand bed, and so remain (to continue removing nutrients) where they cannot be totally consumed by filter-feeders.

 

[sde1500]

Almost no chance filter socks catch it. Typical socks are what, 100 or 200 microns? Nanno is around 5 microns, iso is 2ish, tet 14. So the most commonly seen varieties are all significantly smaller than the socks we employ. Skimmer would pull some, but the vast majority would be taken up by the life in the tank, from pods to filter feeders and corals.