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richiev said:
Fwiw the thing that fought back a bunch of dino issues in my tanks was a cup of sand from @under_water_ninja 's tank. It might've been coincidental, but I dumped it in two tanks and both got better right after. Whether it was pods or bacteria it just coincidental I have no idea, though I did see a lot more pods in my little tank after. More than I noticed from my bottled pods
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Bacterial, amphipod, and copepod diversity is my theory. Not just adults, but eggs too, which grow and replicate.

Matthew Meyer said:
You basically did a fecal transplant. I swear, this thread is basically a gut health case study. Do we have any other healthcare people on BAR?
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Does being married to one count? I know our president is one.
 
Matthew Meyer said:
I think with a more diverse population of bacteria in the tank there will be greater competition for nutrients and one bacteria wont take over (like algae or slime). I would say success would be a reduction in algae, but I don't think we can measure success with MB7. Just a theory.
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I am asking because I am in the midst of a major algae dieoff event - all of my turf algae (wasn't really bad, but it was there) is dying right now causing my phosphate to rise pretty quickly. I'm trying to figure out what is causing this dieoff. I actually STOPPED dosing MB7 many weeks ago. My current theory is the reduction in lighting - but I also made that change many weeks ago as well.

richiev said:
Since it's my new soap box trigger, competing for nutrients is a hard thing to really contemplate. Unless that nutrient is dropping to 0, there's always some around for algae/slime/... to eat.

What actually causes those things to dissipate I feel is very unclear, but all the nutrients we measure are never 0, so it seems like it has to be something besides that.

Predation is my personal unproven guess, though the BRS tank test videos I believe show pods have a high correlation to some of those getting reduced (pods eat some of this stuff). I also could swear I saw a microscope video of diatoms fighting dinos once, but I'm probably full of sh*t on that.

So might just be essential oils / probiotics / snake oils of reefing, might be competing for some thing we don't actually measure, might be introducing predators.

Fwiw the thing that fought back a bunch of dino issues in my tanks was a cup of sand from @under_water_ninja 's tank. It might've been coincidental, but I dumped it in two tanks and both got better right after. Whether it was pods or bacteria it just coincidental I have no idea, though I did see a lot more pods in my little tank after. More than I noticed from my bottled pods
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This makes a lot of sense. I never understand why 10ppm nitrates is meaningfully different than 3ppm or 25ppm. It's all just excess floating in the water - anything above zero essentially means that it's "available" for anything that wants it, right?

I actually noticed the heaviest algae growth during close to zero nutrients in my tank, but with very long/bright lighting. My nutrients have slowly gone up a bit but algae is dying off as I mentioned above. Like someone said in another thread (@Thales ?) I'm starting to doubt that there is any meaningful connection between nutrient levels at anything greater than zero and algae growth.
 
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I believe this age-old topic of nuisance algae control with nutrient manipulation vs adding something that eats it is the main thrust of Rich’s (@Thales ) talk he gave at MACNA and will be giving us soon at High Tide:

Featured - Cocktails and Coral Talk at High Tide Aquatics (HTA)

Ok guys! Here we go and get ready for some reefing fun! Kicking off my first event is Richard Ross aka @Thales ! This shit is going to be a blast! Come get some good reefing education in a fun setting, have a couple drinks and mingle with other reefers. I’m trying to cap this at 40 being...
www.bareefers.org

Hope to see you guys there!
 
SepToob said:
I actually noticed the heaviest algae growth during close to zero nutrients in my tank, but with very long/bright lighting. My nutrients have slowly gone up a bit but algae is dying off as I mentioned above. Like someone said in another thread (@Thales ?) I'm starting to doubt that there is any meaningful connection between nutrient levels at anything greater than zero and algae growth.
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Your nutrients were likely reading zero during algae heydays due to the nutrients being absorbed by the algae (same idea why you run chaeto to outcompete nuisance algae and do nutrient export)... and when the algae dies off, nutrient they held goes back into water... plus nothing is taking up newly created nutrients... hence the creep up. Inverse proportional relationship, almost.
 
SepToob said:
People always say this, but what does a WC do to combat algae?
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The very oversimplified view of things is that algae needs food to grow, the two sources of food it uses is what's available in the water column (some nitrogen derivative) and energy from light. Now the light presumably you're not going to change because you want your corals to look pretty as they do and grow, however what you can change is what is in your water column lets just call that "N". Do a 20% water change change and your N is 80% what it is, do another 20% immediately after and it's 64% of what it is another one and it's 51.2% etc. It's fun to note doing 3 separate changes is worse than doing one at 3x the size which is why I'm not a big fan of "weekly 10% changes" but that's another story.

So now we see we're reducing the amount of this "N" in your tank, and if you think of that like fertilizer for your garden the more of it in your tank the faster the algae will grow, however with none in your tank doesn't mean established algae won't continue to grow primarily because you never will have none in your tank. Now where this story gets more complicated is how much is being added to the tank, you feed the fish, fish don't eat it all it turns into "N", fish poop making more "N", other microfauna live poop and die all creating "N". So the real goal is to remove it faster than the rate you're putting into the tank, now that is one thing "do a water change" can't predict you could be feeding your tank like crazy, you could have a dead snail or something decomposing somewhere out of eyesight, etc. Either way you'll never get to zero, so while that will slow the growth of algae it won't reverse it (aka kill it)* (note: there could be some situation of way out of control algae is so numerous such that it starves itself out by doing massive water changes but that usually isn't peoples issue).

tl;dr in some way your tank is getting fertilized, water changes reduce the level of fertilizer available for algae to eat, slowing the growth of the algae.

Now that doesn't mean the stuff in the bottle doesn't work, plenty of magic elixirs for sale out there and I'm not smart enough to tell you what exactly they do on a microscopic level or to what level it does work versus water changes.
 
sfsuphysics said:
The very oversimplified view of things is that algae needs food to grow, the two sources of food it uses is what's available in the water column (some nitrogen derivative) and energy from light. Now the light presumably you're not going to change because you want your corals to look pretty as they do and grow, however what you can change is what is in your water column lets just call that "N". Do a 20% water change change and your N is 80% what it is, do another 20% immediately after and it's 64% of what it is another one and it's 51.2% etc. It's fun to note doing 3 separate changes is worse than doing one at 3x the size which is why I'm not a big fan of "weekly 10% changes" but that's another story.

So now we see we're reducing the amount of this "N" in your tank, and if you think of that like fertilizer for your garden the more of it in your tank the faster the algae will grow, however with none in your tank doesn't mean established algae won't continue to grow primarily because you never will have none in your tank. Now where this story gets more complicated is how much is being added to the tank, you feed the fish, fish don't eat it all it turns into "N", fish poop making more "N", other microfauna live poop and die all creating "N". So the real goal is to remove it faster than the rate you're putting into the tank, now that is one thing "do a water change" can't predict you could be feeding your tank like crazy, you could have a dead snail or something decomposing somewhere out of eyesight, etc. Either way you'll never get to zero, so while that will slow the growth of algae it won't reverse it (aka kill it)* (note: there could be some situation of way out of control algae is so numerous such that it starves itself out by doing massive water changes but that usually isn't peoples issue).

tl;dr in some way your tank is getting fertilized, water changes reduce the level of fertilizer available for algae to eat, slowing the growth of the algae.

Now that doesn't mean the stuff in the bottle doesn't work, plenty of magic elixirs for sale out there and I'm not smart enough to tell you what exactly they do on a microscopic level or to what level it does work versus water changes.
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Appreciate you taking the time to explain all of this, but my comment was a little facetious. I understand that WCs reduce nutrients. My point above was that there are still nutrients in the tank - nutrients were available to the algae before the WC and are still available after the WC.

I can see the logic behind doing LARGE water changes to reduce extreme nutrient levels, but not simply doing them to "reduce algae" because that just doesn't make sense to me. Either way, this is obviously an age old debate. Looking forward to the Richard Ross thing JVU mentioned above!

NanoCrazed said:
Your nutrients were likely reading zero during algae heydays due to the nutrients being absorbed by the algae (same idea why you run chaeto to outcompete nuisance algae and do nutrient export)... and when the algae dies off, nutrient they held goes back into water... plus nothing is taking up newly created nutrients... hence the creep up. Inverse proportional relationship, almost.
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My nutrients were never quite zero...just low. But yeah, I think you are correct! That is my theory now as well. I just wish I knew what was causing the algae to suddenly die off (not that I'm complaining).
 
SepToob said:
Appreciate you taking the time to explain all of this, but my comment was a little facetious. I understand that WCs reduce nutrients. My point above was that there are still nutrients in the tank - nutrients were available to the algae before the WC and are still available after the WC.

I can see the logic behind doing LARGE water changes to reduce extreme nutrient levels, but not simply doing them to "reduce algae" because that just doesn't make sense to me. Either way, this is obviously an age old debate. Looking forward to the Richard Ross thing JVU mentioned above!



My nutrients were never quite zero...just low. But yeah, I think you are correct! That is my theory now as well. I just wish I knew what was causing the algae to suddenly die off (not that I'm complaining).
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TBH I personally don't feel the logic that if you reduce N through water changes from 7 to 5 it will suddenly stops algae growth or kill algae makes sense (same for P). Algae can grow at 7, it can also grow at 5, it can also grow at 1. If you change your water to reduce that number, it doesn't make sense to me that suddenly algae would be starving. Unless you're reducing it to 0, but no one does that (at least anymore).

Similarly I don't understand how a refugium or algae reactor fight algae, unless again you're running nutrients down to 0.

My reasoning for water changes is to make sure anything weird that got in the water gets replaced. Dead dino toxins, aerosols from a candle burning, my grubby arm oils, fish good preservatives, blah blah, and in some cases dropping N or P or ... if it's spiking.

My reasoning for a fuge is a way to grow pods and maybe phyto and help keep nutrient levels from constantly climbing. Similarly I could see why having a scrubber could be useful to help you feed a billion cubes of food without N&P going to infinity.

I'm not a researcher, and there's likely complications where the answer is maybe both (maybe the sub-type of N&P matters, or another nutrient or ...), but it all feels like dark age science to me.

Conversely the predator idea seems obviously correct. At least as a way that's certain to work versus all the other ideas. Things eat algae. You then don't have algae.
 
richiev said:
TBH I personally don't feel the logic that if you reduce N through water changes from 7 to 5 it will suddenly stops algae growth or kill algae makes sense (same for P). Algae can grow at 7, it can also grow at 5, it can also grow at 1. If you change your water to reduce that number, it doesn't make sense to me that suddenly algae would be starving. Unless you're reducing it to 0, but no one does that (at least anymore).
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That's why I refer to "N" as a fertilizer, much like a plant if you stop fertilizing the plant won't stop growing, it just may slow the growth somewhat, it may help out for plants that may not get as much light as others, etc. But the key there is slow the growth, if you manually pull out a cup of algae every week as maintenance that cup removed will represent a larger percentage that was removed if it's growing slower, similarly any herbivores that you may have whether fish or invertibrates would be "more effective" at removing it, they really aren't any more effective it's just what effect they do have looks like it's working more.

You're right though it won't suddenly "starve", as long as it can in some way get energy to grow (or stay alive) which the lights we put over our tank to help feed the symbiotic ALGAE that lives in our corals well even then non-symbiotic stuff that we want to boot into outer space, but there is a limit to that light energy that is going into your tank (whatever you set your lights to) so the other x factor is how much other stuff you put in the tank for the algae to use as food.

richiev said:
Similarly I don't understand how a refugium or algae reactor fight algae, unless again you're running nutrients down to 0.
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Same idea as water changes, something else is consuming nutrients and with manual removal it can work like a water change. But you're right, refugium won't make tank algae disappear unless maybe you're running a NPS tank with very little lights.

richiev said:
I'm not a researcher, and there's likely complications where the answer is maybe both (maybe the sub-type of N&P matters, or another nutrient or ...), but it all feels like dark age science to me.
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Absolutely, I'm not sure Rich Ross' N & P numbers, but they are "abnormally high" for the tank he has, now what does abnormal mean? Well the numbers we are force fed. Why does it not affect him but if my tank so much as hears me take a P algae will start growing :D

richiev said:
Conversely the predator idea seems obviously correct. At least as a way that's certain to work versus all the other ideas. Things eat algae. You then don't have algae.
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It's all about maintenance, whether you reach into a tank and pluck it out, or a fish eats a bunch, it removes it to a level less than what it was before, but it'll always be there just maybe not a level you can recognize.
 
Oh and back to the original post, double check the exp. dates on the stuff. It does have a shelf life, not sure how the potency drops over time, but that may be why the company on Amazon is flash selling it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
You're right though it won't suddenly "starve", as long as it can in some way get energy to grow (or stay alive) which the lights we put over our tank to help feed the symbiotic ALGAE that lives in our corals well even then non-symbiotic stuff that we want to boot into outer space, but there is a limit to that light energy that is going into your tank (whatever you set your lights to) so the other x factor is how much other stuff you put in the tank for the algae to use as food.
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The real question though, is what @richiev and I are pointing out - all a water change does is reduce N and P by some percentage. Does algae grow slower with 5ppm nutrients than it does with 7ppm? or 20ppm? It seems it does not...which would indicate a WC for the sake of managing algae doesn't make a lot of sense.

The measurable levels of N and P in the water are what's in the water. Not being used, excess, superfluous, etc etc. The point is that they are "there" for anything that wants to use them. If I'm hungry, it doesn't matter if I've got 2 hamburgers in my lap or I'm sitting on a pile of 100 hamburgers. I've got enough to eat, and the excess is irrelevant. Removing 10 hamburgers via water change doesn't have any impact on the rate at which I consume hamburgers, as long as some hamburgers are there.

This could be all wrong, if scientifically the presence of these excesses has some impact on the rate of uptake, but I think that's the big unknown?
 
SepToob said:
The real question though, is what @richiev and I are pointing out - all a water change does is reduce N and P by some percentage. Does algae grow slower with 5ppm nutrients than it does with 7ppm? or 20ppm? It seems it does not...which would indicate a WC for the sake of managing algae doesn't make a lot of sense.

The measurable levels of N and P in the water are what's in the water. Not being used, excess, superfluous, etc etc. The point is that they are "there" for anything that wants to use them. If I'm hungry, it doesn't matter if I've got 2 hamburgers in my lap or I'm sitting on a pile of 100 hamburgers. I've got enough to eat, and the excess is irrelevant. Removing 10 hamburgers via water change doesn't have any impact on the rate at which I consume hamburgers, as long as some hamburgers are there.

This could be all wrong, if scientifically the presence of these excesses has some impact on the rate of uptake, but I think that's the big unknown?
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I'm stealing this hamburger analogy for future reference. Way better than how I've tried to explain it.

H2OPlayar said:
HERBIVORES!!!!
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Don't want grass in your yard? Buy a goat.
 
SepToob said:
The real question though, is what @richiev and I are pointing out - all a water change does is reduce N and P by some percentage. Does algae grow slower with 5ppm nutrients than it does with 7ppm? or 20ppm? It seems it does not...which would indicate a WC for the sake of managing algae doesn't make a lot of sense.
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He specifically said "stop growth and kill" not "grow slower". I would think it does grow slower at 5 than at 7, however that amount may be miniscule, and how it works from one tank to the other could be wildly different.

SepToob said:
The measurable levels of N and P in the water are what's in the water. Not being used, excess, superfluous, etc etc. The point is that they are "there" for anything that wants to use them. If I'm hungry, it doesn't matter if I've got 2 hamburgers in my lap or I'm sitting on a pile of 100 hamburgers. I've got enough to eat, and the excess is irrelevant. Removing 10 hamburgers via water change doesn't have any impact on the rate at which I consume hamburgers, as long as some hamburgers are there.


This could be all wrong, if scientifically the presence of these excesses has some impact on the rate of uptake, but I think that's the big unknown?
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I get where you're going with this, and I'm really not smart enough with biology to know if I'm just shooting stuff out my butt about this, but I think when you have 100 hamburgers you're not sitting on a pile of them, they're not even spaced out throughout your whole house where they are within arms length, they're spaced out throughout the whole state and if one happens to be close enough to you then you can call Doordash and get a delivery but the fact there are 99 burgers throughout the state doesn't mean you'll have access to them all, it doesn't even guarantee that you'll be full after eating one, and sure have 10 less probably isn't changing that much at all, but if there are just 2 in the whole state you may be unlucky with whether or not you can get one to eat. Ok that's as far as I go with the hamburger analogy.

But there very well could be some surface layer boundary conditions that affect the nature of how much can get "eaten", when you do a test you're getting a relatively macroscopic average of the whole tank yes, but right next to the algae the amount of N & P could be absolutely is vastly different than the macroscope average.. due to "scientific reasoning" :) and more or less in the water column could basically just allow more to be near by the parts of the cell that are responsible for "eating" it.
 
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