Jollyreefer
New Member
it looks very nature nice!
The benefits of detritus.
- Thread starter Paul B
- Start date
Thanks! Yeah I love filming them because afterward you can see so much more detail, than you can see with your eye.
That's them!!
Willie McDaries
Well-Known Member
Thanks, this may be the only decent picture I have, I can't seem to get them clear like I used to with film camera's.
This is a couple of years old. I have added about 10 corals since then.
Paul,from what I've read on these forums,its hard to get a good pic when you are using LED lighting,it messes with the cameras ability to correctly display the true colors of the tank,but yours seems to be doing alright,at least the pics look good to me....this pic looks more like when you were running halides
I have those web slinging things in my tank too,every time I move a rock or stir the sand a little,I get those webs everywhere,I never really worried too much about it as my tank seems to be doing great but I was always curious as to what was causing it,now I know...thanks for sharing
it seems like the less I do to my tank,the better it responds,I tried keeping everything spotless and always had problems....now,I just use a powerhead and every few months,I'll blow the ditritus build-up off of the rocks and use a filter sock in the sump to catch it...but during that,I notice some of my coral will open up more and some will close up,my fish love it too,I have them spoiled,they'd rather catch food that's floating than to pick it up off the rocks LOL
I hardly ever do water changes anymore,maybe 10% a couple times a year,I replace what the skimmer removes and what I remove when cleaning my GFO and GAC reactors,I do test ofter and I dose to keep the Ca,Kh and Mag levels in check and run a kalk reactor at night to help with the Ph swing...this is the best my tank has been in the 3 or 4 years that I've been reefing
Paul B
Well-Known Member
Willie I am glad your tank is doing so well. I think that picture above was with the MH lights as I just installed the LEDs a couple of months ago. After the LEDs some corals are doing better and some like the monti's that were doing great have bleached. Like people, you can't please everyone all the time.
You might note that sps corals eat very high quantities of food particles.
They don't have the inflatable fleshly tissue of LPS or softies (which help feed on DOC's), so they use more solid food particles to get the nitrogen needed (note: photosynthesis cannot provide any nitrogen at all)
So, an sps tank packed with flowing food particles (like real reefs) is best for them. Provided, of course, that you can keep nutrients down. A "super clean" tank, with no flowing food particles in the water, is the opposite of what sps need to grow. Acro's grow 12 inches per year in wild, with 20+ inches measured sometimes.
A true "eco-system", if you are emulating a reef or lagoon, has very high food particles, and very low nutrients. This is because of the gigantic amount of algae on reefs and in lagoons. Matter of fact, lagoons (which have more even more algae than reefs) have lower nutrients readings than reefs.
OTS is caused, in my opinion, by metal accumulation in DSB's. If you have no algal export (as real reefs do), there is no way for metals to be removed unless you run polyfilters, etc.
However, as far as just detritus (food particles) go, as long as you can manage your nutrients you can never have too much detritus (food particles). Real reefs are made up of huge amounts of dead food particles. And the total amount of food delivered to a one-cubic-meter area of reef is estimated to be one pound of food per day. That's 16 ounces of found.
Actually, detritus is just the first step of decomposition. Each step only takes about 10 percent of the carbon out of the material. After passing through 10 different animals (bacteria being the last), the material is finally converted to ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus This is called re-mineralization. Then it is re-converted into living material again by the photosynthesis in algae.
Waterchanges are not replacing what the skimmer removed. Skimmers remove food particles; only by feeding more will you replace that. GAC remvoes DOC, which is food for (primarily) softies and LPS, but also for bacteria which feed SPS; so waterchanges do not replace anything removed by GAC either. And GFO removes phosphate. I would hope that you are not replacing more phosphate into your system.
mojoreef
Just a reefer
Going to need a bit of an explanation on this one, every study I have ever seen or read says the opposite.
SPS type corals slime net, the do this by releasing an amount of slime from just under their cilca. As soon as it is released bacteria and similar move onto it to reduce it, then they withdraw it and digest. They have no means of capture, so yes I guess if a particle happens to land in their mouth with enough force to push it down into the gut you might.
Two completely different enviroments, a true reef (fore/crest) has virtually no nutrients and virtually no algae. A lagoonal reef has alot more nutrients due to lack of flow, run off by local rivers and similar.
Again no study or even a decent explaination can be offered for this. OTS is caused by DSB's inability to export any product including Nitrogen based products. Pretty much the same thing as live rock does with the exception that LR has the ability to shed, where as a sand bed cannot because their is a glass bottom on the tank.
Wow, Actually detritus is just detritus and has nothing to do with decomposition. detritus is a product consisting of fish/creature waste, left over food, bacterial flock and any other deleterious material. decomposition is a bacterial process stated by bacteria that turn the detritus into ammonia and then so on down the bacterial cycle. When a higher form (fish/crab or so on) poops that waste is set upon by bacteria and other microscopic organisms and reduction begins. To say that it is going to be digested by and excreted by 10 animals is a little crazy, perhaps a couple will get portions (and will pop out 90% of that) but once bacteria form biofilms/flock it becomes unusable.
Detritus is a waste product or basically inorganic and organic P and N, which in our closed reef tanks is the mother of all things bad. If you are not doing all you can to remove it and are instead trying to bind it biologically into your system you are fighting a losing battle.
Mojoreef
Read some real reef studies here:
ReefBase :: Main Publications
Are you kidding? What do you think the nematocysts are for? Google "nematocysts coral food capture"
You are off by a universe. Real reefs have more algae than anything else, biomass wise. Low nutrients, correct: Nitrite, nitrate, phosphate are low, because they are consumed by algae. But NUTRITION is high, very high. About 1 pound of food particles is consumed per day, per cubic meter.
As for lagoons, if you read some reef studies, you will see that inorganic nutrients are LOWER than in open oceans because the high algal content consumes them. Now if a river dumps stuff in, such as the mouth of the Mississippi which is fed by phosphorus from up-river agriculture, then yes inorganics will be high.
Try this one:
What We Put In The Water by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D. - Reefkeeping.com
Also there is the small field of physical oceanography. Looks at some of the studies of metal binding, sedimentation and subduction.
Nitrogen products are the one thing that DSB's do export, as nitrogen gas.
LR is not shedding anything. It can only dissolve via low pH or physical destruction a la boring animals.
How do you think detritus gets to be detritus? What do you think happens to detritus? It's all decomposition, including the process of biological digestion within animals.
Do a little research on "trophic pyramids". Start with an easy one like this video:
Ocean Food Webs - Trophic Pyramids - YouTube
Completely wrong. Detritus is 100% organic, and 0% inorganic. Inorganics are called "minerals", and the process of converting organics to inorganics is called "remineralization". Google "trophic food remineralization".
If you mean binding organics, then just let your clean up crew and filter feeders eat it. If you mean binding inorganics, the only things that "binds" inorganics are photo autotrophic organisms, a la algae.
mojoreef
Just a reefer
I have a library of hundreds of studies and all say the opposite, perhaps you could find me one that says what you are saying?
Yea I do know what nematocysts are, I also know that species of corals hobbists call SPS have nematocysts that are not barbed and have short teathers (some do not even have the). I would suggest you move away from google and perhaps try some published scientific papers, that way you can get away from the hobby myths
You were taking algae not nutrition, and haven dived on some 30+ reefs I can tell you that if algae is present in any large degree you will not see a thriving (SPS/Hard corals). Algae is a direct competitor to corals and it is a battle corals typically don't win. Yes their is algae present but it is mowed down to virtually none each day by herbavoirs.
Lol come on friend, algae does not and cannot touch inorganic nutrients not one tiny piece.
Come on now. Now your going to put up a study done by a guy who has never even seen a reef, never mind study one. This study is completely flawed ad that has been proved b almost everyone with a real degree. No one has even come up with a tiny bit of evidence that it actually occurs. If you look at the studies you are asking me to look at you will see that metals are taken up and reduced by SRB's IF they were even being accumulated.
Yes for about the first couple of months, then because ammonia represses assimilative nitrate reductase, the first enzyme in this nitrate reduction pathway it converts the nitrates into ammounium and ten recycles it until end product ad then sinks. Again this should be the last thing you need to worry about with the use of sand as it is already supper saturated with P and N prior to leaving the bag.
In biology detritus is a non living particulate organic material period. Micro-organisms do the decompositon or reduction. And no eating is not considered decomposition.
Where are you getting you information?? LR are filled with bacteria, the first order of bacteria is to create biofilms, and flock that they for transport, disolving of inorganics, and biproducts of their reduction process. This whole thing is refered to as tugor. The process of tugor and gravity causes materials from with in the LR to push out and thus it sheds. Take a LR and clean t as best as you can, ten put it in a bucket wth a power head for a week, then take a peek. The bottom of the bucket will be covered with detritus.
So your going to compare a trophic pyramid in the ocean to a reef tank??
The detritus being refered to in this thread is a combination of waste and left over food and so on, or as related to this conversation. But if you wish to go by the scientific definition then yes detritus is organic.
What I mean is that the main problem with reef tanks is maintaining nutrient levels, these levels are elevated because we need to feed our fish and so on. SO you have a couple of choices, remove the waste mechanically and be done with it, or try to lock it up by binding it to biologicals. SO then you use sand beds which dont export, LR that sheds, algaes that pose their own problems and so on, which are inefficient because we are not able to recreate the scale needed.
Mojo
Paul B
Well-Known Member
Dam, I wonder how much metal my reef has, I don't use PolyFilters
You can run a reverse UG filter with a DSB I would imagine, but I don't like using "DSB" in the same sentence with RUGF.
This I agree with, as for the rest of this thread, I am not going near any of it. :whstlr:
dmatt88
Has been struck by the ban stick
Damn near a fist fight. Gentlemen to ur corners......
Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk
Anselth
Well-Known Member
Ah, ok. I'm just trying to figure out other methods for nutrient export.
