Forget what you know about algae!
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- Whats the best way to control algae in your reef tank ? Do you think that reducing nutrients will solve you algae issues? Learn what scientific research on natural reefs have to say about algae control!
Thumb nail pictures : Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0 [creativecommon...], via Wikimedia Commons
If you continue with videos like this (long and short form), I think you’ll quickly become one of my fav reef RUclipsrs 🤘‼️
thanks Bahama!
This is a fantastic video, well done
Thanks
Nice. This info is gold. Thank you.
thanks Steve
After years of “piloting” my tank trying to “control nature” using all kinds of products, methods and whatever manufacturers/“influencers”/sellers bombard us with, I finally got a stable and algae-limited system doing basically what you showed in your outstanding video. Congrats!!!
Thanks Edric. Please share the vid with your reefing buddies :)
Such great info mate! BRS should hire you too LoL ;)
thank you
You should look at the issue with the reefs in kaneohe bay hawaii. Nutrient enrichment caused by sewage outfall resulted in a significant growth of macro/micro algae ( even within acropora structures). When that sewage outfall was moved out deeper to the sea, the macro algae died off and the reefs improved. I dont think you can discount the role of herbivores in contributing to the phosporus cycle but I dont think they are enough to sustain a reef at high nutrient levels. Eventully a high nutrient reef will be outgrown by coral competitors.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention… I’ll give it a look. I am sure there are exceptions to most rules, and of course, if you flood an ecosystem with a lot of nutrients, bad things happen. I just wanted to bring attention to an important and understated feature of natural reefs; most scientific literature published supports a top down control of algae by herbivores and not because algae is nutrient limited in natural reefs.
I totally agree. I only check nitrates and phosphates to make sure it's not 0
Thanks Gabe
@@TheBioReef thanks for doing the research 👍🏾
I’ve come to the same conclusion over time. Now I battle low nutrients, by dosing PO4 and NO3, which is fine. I use lots of herbivores and life is much easier than fighting algae, stripping out nutrients, winding up with cyano/dinos. I’ve also turned off my UV because it kills an entire class of the most abundant bacteria that coral feed on and reduced skimming to daytime only with great results. This video was excellent. You should consider doing one on reef biome/bacteria, although not as much is known at this point I think will find that will be the next major breakthrough area. Thanks!
Thanks Roli... yes the reef microbiome is high up on my to do list!
cheers
amro
So the take home massage is: if you have algae, get more algae eater. I'm struggling with the statement that it's not that much up to the nutrient level, cause competition for nutrient uptake were in all three publication totally neglected. Also there was no information about the abundance of the herbivores compared to the control. One could easily imagine, that if they're places with more algae, than more algae eaters could be found there, which brings me back to the take home massage :)
Hi Tyro - some of the papers did actually record abundance /density of herbivores; check out the Sci Reports paper - its open access and you'll find info on density of their density data in the results. Its also not just 3 isolated studies - there are many more that clearly show that if nutrient levels are maintained at ambient and you remove herbivores - algae biomass increases
Great video, would you call copepods CUC?
They do feed on some times of detritus, so certainly CUC
Great video. I may have fell upon this way of reef keeping by mistake just because I neglected my system. When I did this the tank looked a mess but just added more cleanup crew and did nothing but clean the glass and a water change. The crew took care of the issue over time. The funny thing in all this was the corals looked awesome. The exposed rock sand and glass was all that looked bad.
thanks!
Great video! You literally described my exact journey when I started my reef tank - getting algae and trying to strip p04 as a result and then getting cyano and dinos.
Glad you found it useful.
Very well explained, Thanks! This video is a must see for every reefer. So, corals seem to be equiped to take up particulates from the water, which they must break down to get their N and P. But Although they live in low PO4 and NO3 water, it seems like they have the mechanismen to uptake PO4 and NO3. Any idea whether anyone demonstranter these uptake mechanismen?
Sorry for the poor spelling - Damn Norwegian autocompletion.
Thanks - please share with your reef friends :)
oh yes - many papers have showed that corals can directly take up inorganic N (nitrates) and P (phosphates) - here is the first paper that pop''ed up in my search - www.nature.com/articles/srep28821
Thanks, intetesting! they mentioned that PO4 is taken up with a Na/PO4 symporter.
Thank you for doing the research and deep dive. I appreciate your videos very much. For our reef tanks I believe the one thing that causes algae is algae. And the thing that can combat algae is other living things (coral, macro algae, herbivores, bacteria, sponges, squirts, inverts) life is always fighting and finding a way to dominate. If we can eridicate or quarantine algae before it gets into our tank, or if we can have enough other life to outcompete it, algae will not thrive. I have noticed algae in my tank does not occur at high nutrient levels or low except for glass dust algae. Thanks again!
Thanks Mike
In my Evo the game changed for me when I added 5 Trocus snails and an Urchin, wow.
there you go! the trick now is to keep this system stable, enough nutrients that allow the algae to grow so your CUC can quickly mow it down.
Thanks for this. Very informative. Did that last study indicate the specific small herbivores?
thanks Clyde. They mention in the paper that the dominant small herbivores included a sea urchin and a small parrot fish
I had a similar reefing journey as you described earlier in your video lol
Back in 2012 Started with 55 gallon tank with 35 gallon sump with refugium.Soon GHL took over , added GFO then Dino and Cyno happened and added more GFO lol..
Fought with GHL, Dino for 2-3 years closed the tank ,still have all the equipment stored in parent’s basement lol (one day will setup once I learned how to beat all the algae’s 😂 )
In 2019 setup a fluval 13.5 gallon still going, learned how to beat Dino! Yes finally thanks to your videos and BRS!!
Struggling with Bryopsis for almost 2 yr treated with reef flux 2-3 times but Bryopsis returns after 3 months or so.
I am trying brightswell Mg Hydra and keeping my magnesium elevated which is helping Bryopsis growth to minimum but not disappeared completely let’s see !! Do you any input with regards to fighting Bryopsis?
After watching your video regarding the herbivores my opinion have changed regarding the inverts and I just bought 5 turbo snails and 10 blue hermit legs.
Excited ! For the outcome
Thank a lot for sharing your Reefing knowledge with all of us and I am your big fan from Windsor ON.
Thanks. Bryposis is tricky because there isn’t a lot of choices of cuc available to the aquarist that prefer to munch on it. I would keep whatever your doing and see if it improves over time. There is this anti fungal drug that is supposed to help with bryposis but I would use it as a last resort. I think it’s called Fluconazole
I had grape caulerpa spawn in my tank, and now it grows from almost every crack in the rocks but you would never know unless you took a camera and zoomed all the way in. It's constant food for my tangs. Hooray, happy accident!
Another good example that is inline with the main message of the research; imagine what your tank would be if you had no tangs :)
thanks for your effort on sharing this very informative video in reefing hobbies.
Thanks man - please share the video among your reefer circle. Cheers!
What are some small herbivorous fish, other than the algae blennies?
Other types of blennies, some species of damsels, and juvenile tangs rabbit fish. Yellow eyed kole tangs tend to stay small(ish)
Thoughts on macro like bryopsis? I think I'm fighting an outbreak. My nutrients seem to be consistently low.
Hi Rich - Bryopsis is a bit tricky because there aren't a lot of CUC that we can actually buy that will consume it There are some other algae that we just don't have the natural grazers to control it. In such situations - you may have to do something drastic to get he upper hand (flucozonal or some other additives); but once you get over that outbreak - be mindful of the important role of CUC in naturally controlling algae in our reef
How long did your hair algae problem persist? I see that you have a yellow tang at the time you have that hair algae problem and I know you have other cleanup crew as well. Did the hair algae grow so fast that your cleanup crew can’t keep up?
I think it was my snail population going down because of attrition actually. Most snails are unable to naturally reproduce in a reef tank, so periodical additions are necessary to keep their numbers up. I added about 2 dozens snails (of different species) plus a sea hare (short lived) and that helped
Do you freedive? I see freedivers in the video! I love freediving.
i scuba and freedive; prefer scuba for video though, although free diving is great when you don't have your kit!
@@TheBioReef yes, for video/pictures, scuba would be ideal! I was 100% a spearfisherman until I started reefing a few months ago. Now, I’ll go down at look at the small fish/coral and bring a net/go pro!
@@bahamareefer cool… yeah I’ve been curious about spear fishing… was checking out some guns at a dive shop just this weekend…
@@TheBioReef it’s super fun! In the Bahamas, we can’t use guns, we have to use slings or pole-spears. I usually go for spiny lobster, but grouper and bigger fish are much more fun!