What would agar gel do in a sump/refugium?

[philosophile]

So I have some agar powder just sitting in my cabinet, and I was wondering what it would do in my tank. would it harbor beneficial bacteria and effectively be a way of carbon dosing? would it end up as a snack for bristleworms? Would I just be effectively pouring a bunch of nitrate into the tank?

 

[Garf]

Do folks normally bump up 3 year old threads? The OP is M.I.A but has anyone tried agar as carbon dosing?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Fair question. I'm not sure what would happen.

Bacteria will degrade it. Not sure what impact it may have on nutrients. It might work fine, but could break apart into lots of little bits.

Studies on agarolytic bacterial isolates from agricultural and industrial soil

Soil is rich in microbes which can be used for a variety of purposes starting from decomposition to antibiotic production. Agar-agar, extracted from the marine environment, is an important polysaccharide that has multiple uses after degradation by microbes. ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Dan_P]

Do folks normally bump up 3 year old threads? The OP is M.I.A but has anyone tried agar as carbon dosing?

On first read, I thought you wrote “burped up”.

Agar is an agarose polymer. Not many things can digest it. It is widely used as a solid support to grow bacteria and fungi. Nothing grows on it unless you mix it with nutrients.