With all of the benefits associated with dosing phytoplankton to a reef tank, I was wondering if it was at all possible to culture and maintain a stable phytoplankton population in the tank. I assume things like protein skimmers and various reactors would need to be disconnected and some amount of feeding would be required, but do you think it would be at all possible or do corals and copepods etc. consume them too quickly for it to be viable?
Stable phytoplankton population in reef tank?
- Thread starter Sirduckington
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I don't think it's possible in a tank as we typically keep them. While they will grow and multiply, with the sort of water volume, lighting level, and stocking density we keep our tanks at, there are simply too many predators of them and too little energy input to keep a bloom going indefinitely. There will be trace amounts of phytoplankton in almost any system - I haven't done a plankton tow in a tank, but I'll bet you'd find phyto of some kind in it - but I don't think a bloom that's significant enough to effect nutrients measurably and provide meaningful food to the creatures of the tank is something that can be maintained.
A perhaps counter example is the diatoms we sometimes see in our tanks, but very often that bloom is simply eaten up by a growing copepod population, and I assume you're talking about fully pelagic phytoplankton rather than the benthic stuff that accumulates on rocks.
In nature, phytoplankton in volume isn't so much a thing that grows and stays in one place - it starts when currents carrying high nutrients flow and that flow of nutrients and plankton pass through reef areas. The passing through can be nearly continuous, but it's always got the time 'upstream' for the plankton to establish itself and multiply - far away from many filter feeders, the sea floor, and often even in colder temperatures. The plankton then gets to where all the predators are and is consumed - the local reef system isn't a closed one, there's constantly food and nutrients flowing in from elsewhere and water, some detritus, and some animal biomass being removed from it by the currents.
A perhaps counter example is the diatoms we sometimes see in our tanks, but very often that bloom is simply eaten up by a growing copepod population, and I assume you're talking about fully pelagic phytoplankton rather than the benthic stuff that accumulates on rocks.
In nature, phytoplankton in volume isn't so much a thing that grows and stays in one place - it starts when currents carrying high nutrients flow and that flow of nutrients and plankton pass through reef areas. The passing through can be nearly continuous, but it's always got the time 'upstream' for the plankton to establish itself and multiply - far away from many filter feeders, the sea floor, and often even in colder temperatures. The plankton then gets to where all the predators are and is consumed - the local reef system isn't a closed one, there's constantly food and nutrients flowing in from elsewhere and water, some detritus, and some animal biomass being removed from it by the currents.
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Any reason you wouldn't want to culture it outside of the tank? It doesn't take a lot of space or equipment to do so.
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Fantastic that but more pointedly to blooms, they must occupy every space but in normal numbers ,but surely everything needs feeding even if dosing with phytoplankton then zooplankton then copepods then whatever ha, so my point is ? Is there any harm to it ? It really is no effort .I may experiment on one of the tanks .for a couple of weeks .I shall get back with any parameter changes ,blooms and of course the dreaded algae increase ha ha
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