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Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.
Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.
Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.
When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?
There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.
How would we even know?
There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.
Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown reasons.
Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.
Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.
Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.
When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?
There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.
How would we even know?
There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.
Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown reasons.
If natural seawater contains that many viruses per liter and the viruses are the problem then Id think the world would look very bleak. In my mind it has more to do with orderly balance than anything else. This may be biased but ive noticed that a biome specific tank tends to be extremely healthy in a way that is harder to achieve with organisms that come from all over the ocean and only have temperature range in common.Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.
Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.
Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.
When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?
There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.
How would we even know?
There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.
Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown reasons.
If natural seawater contains that many viruses per liter and the viruses are the problem then Id think the world would look very bleak. In my mind it has more to do with orderly balance than anything else. This may be biased but ive noticed that a biome specific tank tends to be extremely healthy in a way that is harder to achieve with organisms that come from all over the ocean and only have temperature range in common.
Thats kind of what I was getting at. It seems to me that given the chance viral load tends to seek balance, just like bacterial diversity, only as we see with bacteria if some variable is overly skewed then that balance gets disproportionate. Which is, in my mind, an explanation as to why I have seen biome tanks generally do better in the sense of more easily finding that "everything is fine" equilibrium, maybe its that in nature those organisms are used to the bacteria/viruses present or maybe its that fish/corals from all over the place cause the populations to be too varied to strike a meaningful balance? Although I'd imagine that the understanding of the actual mechanisms behind these things are far from us.I’m not sure we have any info bearing on how problematic viruses are in any given aquarium. They may be no problem or they may be a bad problem, just as they are for other organisms such as people.
While I do not know if your observation is generally correct or not, there can be many reasons aside from lack of viruses to think a tank with organisms that have adapted to one another over long periods of time may do better together compared to organisms that have no history of living in close proximity.
I had never thought of a coral being its own microbiome in that sort of way before. Interesting.It's important to understand viruses or phages as they are commonly reffered to by researchers now, are omnipresent in coral microbiomes. As posts here demonstrate, the common perception is phages are bad. In reality phages are essential components of an organisms immune processes. There are good and bad phages. There are also phages that may be living in coral microbiomes without causing problems (lysogenic) and stress can switch them to a disease causing reproductive mode (lytic) causing cell death.
As coral microbiomes, which includes phages, are species specific it seems reasonable to expect species specific responses to stress events. Besides stress events like excessive changes in temperature, excessive changes in lighting, insufficient or excessive nutrients (particulate, organic and inorganic C, N & P) the microbial processes in a system in general (aurabiome if you will) are also factors.
The take away as I see it is reef ecosystems are an incredibly complex with layers upon layers upon layers and species specific variables at every level. Quoting Martin Moe "It's not rocket science, it's a lot more complicated." Since there is a great deal still to be learned and we know the microbial processes in a reef system are critical for sustaining corals AND corals are actively trying to promote processes benefical for themselves, to maintain corals sustainably for the decades or centuries they can live it seems we should not be promoting practices we know skew microbial processes especially as we can't easily quantify or identify which species is proliferating.
Ive heard and read about this...it's an interesting topic not restricted to this hobby but bacteriophage therapy is a possible solution for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections in humans which is highly interesting to me...(I know you're well aware of that but maybe some aren't)At small scales the intentional introduction of phages (viruses that kill particular bacteria) has been used against bacterial pathogens causing coral disease.
Phage therapy treatment of the coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus
Is it ready to be useful? I don't think it's close. That paper was 2013 and there hasn't really been a flood of progress on that front since (judging by the dates on the papers.)
I think the hobby would respond pretty positively to alternatives to widespread use of antibiotic medications.
Good point juxtaposing when we know about the effects on coral side where there is little study vs what little we know on the human side and it is a heavily studies topic.Each liter of natural seawater contains a billion bacteria.
Reef keepers prattle on endlessly about good and bad bacteria.
Each liter of natural seawater contains ten times that many viruses.
When was the last time a reef keeper asked whether any of those trillions of viruses in their aquarium might be contributing to the problems they are experiencing?
There's no easy answer to this issue. We can barely get a handle on a handful of human pathogenic viruses. Perhaps that's why it's not discussed much, but that doesn't mean it isn't playing a large role in reef aquaria.
How would we even know?
There is a constant stream of folks with problems that might be viruses. But there are no tests and no solutions.
Is ignorance bliss? Not to the guy who loses his prized organism for unknown reasons.
I always assumed that happened because the cyano in that area created conditions underneath it that it couldnt handleI'll add one more speculative idea on the concept about viruses/phages possibly being used as a directed tool, and the potential for development there.
@Dan_P has pointed out to me several times that growing cyanobacterial films will sometimes have these "circles of death" - spots in an otherwise growing film where the cyano is totally gone. The spots looks exactly like what you might guess would happen if there were some sort of infection of the cyanobacteria that was killing them.
perhaps phages that are effective at killing nuisance cyano mats can be found in our systems, and maybe an academic/professional with the an interest and the right tools could use them intentionally for that purpose.
The filaments at the edges of those clear circles under the microscope looked very different from the filaments in the unaffected part of the film. I never tried infecting other parts of the film with the ravaged filaments.I'll add one more speculative idea on the concept about viruses/phages possibly being used as a directed tool, and the potential for development there.
@Dan_P has pointed out to me several times that growing cyanobacterial films will sometimes have these "circles of death" - spots in an otherwise growing film where the cyano is totally gone. The spots looks exactly like what you might guess would happen if there were some sort of infection of the cyanobacteria that was killing them.
perhaps phages that are effective at killing nuisance cyano mats can be found in our systems, and maybe an academic/professional with the an interest and the right tools could use them intentionally for that purpose.
In some cases that probably happens. But Dan's observed stuff like this... a thin film on a petri dish, no underlying substrate conditions to explain it. Spots that look like maybe the cyano film is suffering a localized killer of some sort.I always assumed that happened because the cyano in that area created conditions underneath it that it couldnt handle