Algae infested test tank - glucose + vinegar experiment

[Miami Reef]

Update!

Tonight I caught my foxface nipping at my new brain corals (I wondered why they were receding.)

By absolute luck, I caught the foxface.

I put him in the 10 gallon tank, and I will return him tomorrow at 11am.

I won’t feed him in this tank.

This might “ruin” my experiment, but I’m so elated I caught the fish!

 

[TokenReefer]

This is great! Good on you to take this on. @brandon429 and @sixty_reefer bring up good points about the algae starving eventually anyway. What's your plan there?

 

[Miami Reef]

What's your plan there?

My plan is to let @taricha tell me what I should do lol.

I trust my dream physics teacher a lot.

 

[KrisReef]

The Foxface has really thrown a spanner in the works of this experiment. In the name of science I implore you to remove it from the test arena.
I am glad you caught him too, Let’s call him secchi and feed him to simulate real life? I don’t think they eat dinos so the experiment may continue!

I put vinegar in my rock barrels and fish tank today based upon your expected results

 

[taricha]

@taricha

Does this sound like a good idea? I don’t want to add more variables, but I was thinking of adding some source of N P to simulate a tank.

Agreed. Feed fish food at something close to plausible for a 10gal volume and add something that will eat the food. Need not be a fish. Shrimp, crab is fine. They eat fish food and excrete some amount of ammonia etc like fish.

food inputs is not so much a variable as one of the few constants across the whole hobby. Everybody's system gets fish food of some sort going in.

(Might need to aerate with a bubbler or similar if you are going to carbon dose that tank and you decide to add a fish in it. )

 

[sixty_reefer]

Dosing ammonium chloride wouldn’t mimic reef conditions and could mess up the test imo. Looking at the current set up my guess is that the algae would really starve in a short period of time.

I meant to say, that algae “wouldn’t” starve in a short period of time. Just redirecting nutrients from organism to organisms.

 

[Miami Reef]

(Might need to aerate with a bubbler or similar if you are going to carbon dose that tank and you decide to add a fish in it. )

I will return the foxface and get an invert.

The tank is heavily aerated with a powerhead.

 

[Miami Reef]

Day 6

I gave away the foxface today (he was fed a few pellets daily for the 2-3 days he was in this tank.

The Dino look worse.

I am not surprised. I have small amounts of dinos (ostreopsis) in my display tank, and carbon dosing vinegar + glucose seems to make them worse. The only reason I initiated the glucose dosing was because of @Beuchat article. I wanted to prevent dinos lol.

In my display, I did a large silica dose and I think it’s starting to outcompete the dinos. Last time I checked my nutrients in the display, there were enough nitrates and phosphates.


So @taricha

I’m planning on continuing the glucose + vinegar experiment and see how far these dinos want to take over this tank. Once it’s clear that the carbon dosing was a fail, I will see if silica dosing has an impact on the ostreopsis.

 

[Miami Reef]

It’s hard to say if carbon dosing make dinos worse, or if the dinos would have outcompeted everything regardless.

If the carbon dosing was a fail, I am considering to experiment with silica or vibrant. I think I’ll try vibrant first, since my LFS said it removed all their dinos. I’m skeptical, so I guess there’s one way to find out.

I still need to buy a fish or invert for this tank.

 

[sixty_reefer]

It’s hard to say if carbon dosing make dinos worse, or if the dinos would have outcompeted everything regardless.

If the carbon dosing was a fail, I am considering to experiment with silica or vibrant. I think I’ll try vibrant first, since my LFS said it removed all their dinos. I’m skeptical, so I guess there’s one way to find out.

I still need to buy a fish or invert for this tank.

How long will you leave it running with Carbon before change tactics?
I just would like to emphasise that you may be missing an important step in the eradication of dinoflagellates. From what I can observe you don’t have a way in the system to compete for ammonia, I believe you have used dry sand and I may be not seeing well but it seems that there isn’t any live rock in the system.
I believe that there isn’t a way to mechanically remove the bacteria that you are promoting growth from the system either, therefore never truly removing those nutrients out.

 

[Miami Reef]

How long will you leave it running with Carbon before change tactics?
I just would like to emphasise that you may be missing an important step in the eradication of dinoflagellates. From what I can observe you don’t have a way in the system to compete for ammonia, I believe you have used dry sand and I may be not seeing well but it seems that there isn’t any live rock in the system.
I believe that there isn’t a way to mechanically remove the bacteria that you are promoting growth from the system either, therefore never truly removing those nutrients out.

There is live rock inside the tank. The tank had green algae, cyano, diatoms, and dinos. I’m sure there is also coralline in the system.

I am trying to figure out which conditions allow certain organisms to bloom.

There is a source of N and P (the feedings I did and will continue to do.)

I just don’t know if I should dose phosphates or not. It seems like the phosphates that were bound to the algae are getting transferred to the dinos.

 

[Miami Reef]

Here’s the part I scraped for my microscope sample six days ago. it looks like it’s white. Perhaps white dying dino/algae?

We definitely need to continue this experiment.

 

[sixty_reefer]

There is live rock inside the tank. The tank had green algae, cyano, diatoms, and dinos. I’m sure there is also coralline in the system.

I am trying to figure out which conditions allow certain organisms to bloom.

There is a source of N and P (the feedings I did and will continue to do.)

I just don’t know if I should dose phosphates or not. It seems like the phosphates that were bound to the algae are getting transferred to the dinos.

What’s your current residual N and P in the tank?

 

[Miami Reef]

What’s your current residual N and P in the tank?

I will test it now.

 

[Miami Reef]

Nitrates: 0.1ppm
phosphates: 0.03ppm

Should I get a microscope slide?

 

[sixty_reefer]

@Miami Reef I don’t want to intrude to much on your experiment I’d just like to give you a couple things to take in consideration:

carbon dosing has two effects in our systems.

effect 1. Reduces nitrates and some phosphates

effect 2. It aids decomposers, meaning that It aids heterotrophic bacteria at reducing organics trapped in the system, by accelerating the decomposition process less Ammonia will be produced as the organic matter is transferred in to the bacteria body mass.

one aspect I found recently is that heterotrophic bacteria can’t reduce free ammonia the only way I see heterotrophic bacteria being helpful is by reducing organic matter therefore reducing the amount of ammonia being released into the water column.

A quick answer is yes, if you continue to dose DOC into the system eventually the diatoms will starve depending on how much organic matter is in the system. This is what beuchat and other carbon dosing methods promote although in a system full of coral I find it detrimental as it could starve coral once a system gets fully depleted from all sources of nitrogen (including no3) that’s why he mentions that having detectable nitrates and phosphates is not important.

I believe you could take it much further and make the method more safe for coral by adding the only aspect to the system that carbon dosing doesn’t help. That is free ammonia, only nitrifying bacteria and phototrophic organisms can reduce it.


If we were to put it all together I would say:

1• keep adding nitrates and phosphates to the system wile using the carbon dosing

this will ensure that there is a source of nitrogen for coral to survive the treatment and ensure that heterotrophic bacteria doesn’t get limited for growth and division. By doing so you would be targeting only the organic compounds unfortunately as a result during treatment no3 and po4 will also be used and therefore would need to be topped up as needed, through conversation we had earlier most will agree that phototrophic organisms will require to use more energy to use this form of nitrogen.
You would also need to have a protein skimmer to remove those nutrients from the system.

2• targeting free ammonia with Chemotroph and phototrobhic organisms

this is we’re you could get creative as there is many organisms that would work here.

2.1• bottled nitrifying culture like one and only by dr. tims or adding cured live rock with good populations of nitrifying bacteria, this can be done by curing new rock in a vat and only feeding ammonia to it ensuring that there is no phosphates or nitrates on the water to limit the heterotrophic bacteria growth in those rocks.

2.2• silica dosing to promote diatoms (phytoplankton really uses ammonia well) and copepod or snail to eat those diatoms transfer the energy into the mass of those organisms.


2.3• live phytoplankton dosing during the photoperiod of the tank, this will allow for the phytoplankton to assimilate some nitrogen forms wile in suspension in the water column once the phytoplankton perish the carbohydrates content will stimulate heterotrophic bacteria and aid the decomposition of organic matter.

The information above is one of the reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread that dosing ammonium chloride to mimic reef conditions would affect your results, we would be skipping the step of adding organic matter to a system and skipping this process could give a wrong idea of what’s happening in a system that is actively being carbon dosed especially if we take in consideration that DOC won’t reduce free ammonia directly.

if you were to take this information into consideration you would not just beat dinoflagellates in your experimental system but would also eliminate the algae, and if you were to continue with a DOC maintenance dose you would also observe that you may not need to use GAC as often in the system. Reason being that organic compounds are being disposed more efficiently from the system compared to just using mechanical filtration. This is the reason I haven’t never needed to use both gac and GFO in mine.

hope you don’t feel I’m intruding to much, your success could be fairly beneficial for the hobby

 

[taricha]

Something I find really hard for me in experiments is asking too many questions at once. I don't know it's too many questions until the test is done and the experimental answer is "I am wrong" and I realize I had too many questions in the experiment to figure out what part I was wrong about.
Sixty_reefer's emphasis on the centrality of ammonia to nuisance growth is interesting, and worth an investigation, but far too complex to analyze in a 1-tank observational test like this.

Beuchat's article premise that sustained (give it some weeks) modest carbon dosing can push out problem dinos is plenty worthwhile to focus on and show that it's replicable.

Here’s the part I scraped for my microscope sample six days ago. it looks like it’s white. Perhaps white dying dino/algae?

observations like this - colorless bacterial growth becoming more dominant on some surfaces - are signs things are going towards success.

To make the test more like typical aquaria, a tiny skimmer would be appropriate - since some portion of carbon-fed bacteria (and their products) get exported. Maybe this export is an important mechanism for setting up a nutrient competition that dinos would lose.
But on the other hand, you may wish to show that carbon dosing can work by other mechanisms and skimming isn't necessary. With a Carbon source, bacterial growth rates will certainly exceed the dinos. Whether that will actually cause a decrease in the dinos in your tank remains to be seen.

 

[Miami Reef]

Thank you!

I will not add a skimmer; I can do weekly water changes from my display tank.

But I think doing water changes from my display will add another variable because I am dosing silica, and my nutrients are much higher in my display.

I don’t want anyone coming after me by saying that the dinos left were that the water changes added nutrients.

As for the nutrient situation. I will just feed it fish food.

 

[taricha]

Water change from another tank would be an unusual thing. More typical to do normal small water changes with new SW.

 

[Miami Reef]

I added a Halloween crab to the tank; he was fed a single pellet.

I will make 1-gallon water changes (10%) once a week using fresh saltwater.