It's part of the secret of zeovit
I'm not sure what secret you're referring to?
Do you mean there's a theory on what some or any of these trace elements actually do?
Do tell!
(I'm looking over the scholar to see if there's anything out there.)
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It's part of the secret of zeovit
At one point I wanted to go zeo. I admired what a zeo tank could achieve and did some research on the system. Granted I think one could figure it out and be successful no matter the "system". But they have all those little blue bottles with unknown elements inside, hence me referring to the fact that they don't want you to know what's in them. Basically just trust their dosing regimen. Btw.. also the part that swayed me away.. I don't like the fact that they run the tank at zero nutrients as to me that's running a risk I don't want to take. But as far as the bottles go.. at least some are said to be trace elements. I theoretically do the same thing but my bottles are just labeled as what element they are. And instead of "dosing 3-5 drops of bottle x per day per 100 gallons" of water it makes more sense to me to test and add accordingly instead of hoping I got it right with drops.I'm not sure what secret you're referring to?
Do you mean there's a theory on what some or any of these trace elements actually do?
Do tell!
(I'm looking over the scholar to see if there's anything out there.)
For lack of a better reference it's like buying a frag on line at its best appearance, best lighting, etc but when you put it in the tank it's never has quite the same look as that picture.
I just feel it makes a noticeable difference in appearance, basically.
Awesome tank! And don't change a thing – but corals do "eat" plenty of dissolved nutrients in the wild. Nothing bad or even abnormal about it.
(I bet you'd be surprised at how much your corals consume in your tank if that was something we could know.)
Thank you
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966842X1500075X
Above is a link you may find interesting. Here's a quote from the link.
"Tropical reef-building corals commonly flourish in nutrient-poor environments. The contradiction of high coral productivity on the one hand and limited nutrient availability on the other hand has been coined the ‘Darwin Paradox’"
If these corals did "eat plenty of dissolved nutrients in the wild", we would not have the "Darwin Paradox". There isn't "plenty of dissolved nutrients in the wild" for them to "eat" even if they wanted to. Which they don't. They have evolved to thrive without plenty of dissolved nutrients. In fact, many coral reefs around the world are now in serious trouble because there is now plenty of dissolved nutrients in the water.
This belief, that corals are highly dependent, or receive plenty, of dissolved nutrients from the water has been fueled, in part, by an industry that makes millions selling magic liquid potions to "feed" our corals. More recently, this belief has received a boost in popularity with the ULNS, and the addition of things like stump remover and other inorganic sources of nitrogen and phosphorus, or even additives with "proprietary" ingredients. Unfortunately, most hobbyist don't quite understand what's taking place here. People starve their corals to achieve the ULNS status, then begin to see negative symptoms of that starvation. They then add fertilizers (inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus) and the corals improve. Problem solved, right??? No..... No it's not.
In the wild, on healthy growing coral reefs, these coral obtain the vast majority of their nitrogen and phosphorus from capturing and digesting tiny organic particles. Everything from microbes up to tiny zooplankton, or even fish poo. (One tiny copepod contains a concentration of nutrients that is many, many, many, many, many times greater than the water around it.) Their zooxanthellae then obtain their nitrogen and phosphorus from the waste produced by this feeding. In lean times, when food is scarce, the coral animal can temporarily meet its nutritional requirements by digesting its own zooxanthellae.
Another quote from the link above. "Control of algal numbers by degradation/digestion [35]. Via this process the host may benefit from the organic nutrients contained in the symbionts."
Science has also shown that when a coral captures food, it stops digestion of its own zooxanthellae. https://www.google.com/url?url=http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/139/m139p167.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm0kjzDcaNuAESmAcXJneit7K4f72A&nossl=1&oi=scholarr&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHvaKZ57TZAhUJDKwKHSuDBP8QgAMIKCgAMAA&usg=AOvVaw1BIA9DHcMg8BAVoYr71Y1N
A quote from this link.
"(4) the polyps regulate the intensity of algal degradation which is stimulated by a deflciency of food, and degradation is rapidly terminated upon reintroduction of food"
So in other words, when a coral is starving it will resort to digestion of its own zooxanthellae, but the moment it obtains food it stops feeding on its own zooxanthellae.
By starving a coral, then adding fertilizer to the system, people are forcing their coral to sustain itself on its own zooxanthellae. Not on real food as nature intended.
Through this process, the coral is able to utilize its zooxanthellae similar to the way we use fat cells. If we could take a starving person and artificially increase his or her fat cells, that person would likely improve through the degradation/digestion of these new fat cells. However, the person would still be starving. This is not a method to achieve optimum health, growth, and reproduction. It is simply a survival technique. .
When we add dissolved PO4 and/or NO3 to a starving SPS coral, we are artificially increasing its zooxanthellae population. The coral can improve, but it's just an improvement over total starvation and death. It's hardly a path to optimum health, growth, and reproduction. For that, the coral needs to feed. Just as they do in the wild. By feed, I mean the coral needs to capture and digest solid organic material. They have very very little, if any, direct dependence on dissolved nutrients in the water.
Peace
EC
For those of us who are not biologically inclined...SPS corals do not have mouths like say an LPS. If they need food, how does an aquarist manage that? I know I dose Reef Energy A & B to the tank daily, and I probably over feed my fish.
How do I go about "feeding" my coral solid organic material or is that just something that happens with their polyps? I know my Stylophora about an hour after I feed the fish, it is often seen with it's polyps pulled in, and I just took that as, it went from flow, to no flow, back to flow, and it's ******. Or am I actually not seeing displeasure but rather possible feeding?
Acropora do have mouths, just like LPS, just on a much smaller scale. It is totally possible that you're seeing a feeding response in your stylo.
IMHO Reef Energy A&B is largely part of the magic liquid potions I talked about in my post. Could it be beneficial? Sure..... Is it necessary? Absolutely not...... Are there other ways to obtain similar results? Most likely..... Is it safe in moderation? Probably.....
I have a 12" vlamingii tang that carpet bombs my reef every day. He looks like one of those huge airplanes dumping water to put out a forest fire. LOL Not long after that, my milli's will be super hairy. Recycled nori and mysis shrimp to feed my corals. Could this be similar to the "flock" Red Sea says is in part A???? Who knows? They won't tell us exactly what's in it. They say part B has the exact vitamins and MAA that are produced by zooxanthellae. Why would we need to spend money on this and dose it to our tanks when we have zooxanthellae living inside our corals that produce it for free??? Where's the data showing that elevating these nutrients over and above what the zooxanthellae produce is beneficial???
Acropora feed on tiny particles of organic matter. There are many different ways to provide that to our corals. Many people with lots of fish, simply feed the fish well and the enviable tiny particles of fish poo feed their Acropora. Others, with few fish my feed one of the manufactured dry coral foods, or supply frozen foods like rotifers. Bottom line is, if the coral is fed well, we don't need to maintain or dose things like PO4, NO3, or AA.
HTH
Peace
EC
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966842X1500075X
Above is a link you may find interesting. Here's a quote from the link.
"Tropical reef-building corals commonly flourish in nutrient-poor environments. The contradiction of high coral productivity on the one hand and limited nutrient availability on the other hand has been coined the ‘Darwin Paradox’"
If these corals did "eat plenty of dissolved nutrients in the wild", we would not have the "Darwin Paradox".
The highly efficient uptake and recycling of nutrients by coral reef organisms can help to explain this paradox [3, 4].
Nitrogen uptake and symbiont control in the coral holobiont
The coral holobiont is highly efficient in the assimilation of nitrogen. Heterotrophic feeding by the coral can meet a large part of its nitrogen requirements if sufficient food is available [24. In addition, corals acquire nutrients from their symbiotic algae from the genus Symbiodinium. This symbiotic relationship forms the foundation of coral holobionts and shallow-water coral reefs. In this association, the phototrophic dinoflagellates provide photosynthates to the coral host. However, the translocated photosynthates have been referred to as ‘junk food’ because they show a high C:N ratio and therefore require additional nitrogen supplementation to sustain coral growth [25. The symbiotic algae benefit from inorganic nutrients which are released as metabolic waste products by the host [5, 26] Their capacity for efficient uptake and utilization of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) facilitates the acquisition of nitrogen from the surrounding seawater. Although both the coral host and associated Symbiodinium have the enzymatic machinery to incorporate ammonium, the algae account for most of the uptake of dissolved inorganic nitrogen from the environment, mainly in the form of ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3−) [27.
Nitrogen fixation
Coral reefs are net sources of fixed nitrogen [42. Nitrogen fixation, in other words the conversion of elemental dinitrogen (N2) into ammonium, is associated with many substrates (e.g., sand, coral rock, and rubble) and benthic organisms (e.g., corals, macroalgae, and sponges) [21, 43]. This input of new fixed nitrogen into the reef ecosystem helps to sustain net productivity under oligotrophic conditions and to compensate for net nitrogen export from the system, for instance by currents [44. Nitrogen fixation in hermatypic corals has been reported for several different species [45, 46, 47, 48], suggesting a high relevance of this process for the coral holobiont. However, reported nitrogen fixation rates in corals are about a magnitude lower than those found in reef sediments and bare rock [43. Hence, corals appear to be minor contributors to the overall nitrogen budget of coral reefs.
There's a lot of misinformation that you need to have 1ppm and untraceable amounts of PO4 in order to keep sps.
SPS corals do not have mouths
Internal and external feeding on zooplankton may provide scleractinian corals with important nutrients. […] To quantify the dynamics of zooplankton capture, digestion and release for a scleractinian coral, we performed detailed video analyses… On average, 98.6% of prey captured was not ingested. Instead, prey items were clustered into aggregates that were digested externally by mesenterial filaments.
(Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding you here.....let me know!!)
Feeding is good, but Darwin was not privy to the last 135 years worth of research.
The very next line of the article:
The highly efficient uptake and recycling of nutrients by coral reef organisms can help to explain this paradox [3, 4].
In other words, no paradox – not with the corals anyway.
Corals ancestral state is what you're describing where feeding is the main and only concern. They were bottom-of-the-sea dwelling micropredators – more or less plain and simple. They didn't exist outside of a consistent stream of particulate foods.
Lose their ability to use dissolved nutrients with such amazing efficiency and they would lose the ability to exist in most places that reefs exist – there is not a sufficient food supply, so it would be back to the deep where marine snow is plentiful.
If you look at lots of coral reefs they are not homogenous in their habitat. Plenty are in high nutrient areas. If this was a problem, they would not be there.
Check out the rest of that article as it goes into lots of detail on why Darwin's Paradox doesn't really exist.
Dissolved nutrient utilization to supplement feeding is part and parcel to being a coral "these days".
The trouble comes with human disturbance most of the time...when the natural nutrient patterns are disturbed by excessive inputs...often of nitrogenous and carbonaceous compounds.
The most common side-effect of that for reefs seems to be severe PO4 limitation. When real PO4 limitation happens that's when the excrement hits the fan. Eutrophication.
If you're doing anything OTHER than water changes to limit nutrients then stop.
Otherwise, yes I'd hold off on water changes until your nutrient levels dictate that you do one. Let PO4 come up to ≥0.03 ppm at least.
The paradox is still there. The fundamental principles of the paradox haven't changed.
In the statement you quoted above, they just use the word "uptake".
I think here is where we're not communicating well.
I'm not talking about azooxanthellate corals.
The dual character of corals, that they are both auto- and heterotrophs, was recognized early in the twentieth Century. It is generally accepted that the symbiotic association between corals and their endosymbiotic algae (called zooxanthellae) is fundamental to the development of coral reefs in oligotrophic tropical oceans because zooxanthellae transfer the major part of their photosynthates to the coral host (autotrophic nutrition). However, numerous studies have confirmed that many species of corals are also active heterotrophs, ingesting organisms ranging from bacteria to mesozooplankton. Heterotrophy accounts for between 0 and 66% of the fixed carbon incorporated into coral skeletons and can meet from 15 to 35% of daily metabolic requirements in healthy corals and up to 100% in bleached corals. Apart from this carbon input, feeding is likely to be important to most scleractinian corals, since nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients that cannot be supplied from photosynthesis by the coral’s symbiotic algae must come from zooplankton capture, particulate matter or dissolved compounds. A recent study showed that during bleaching events some coral species, by increasing their feeding rates, are able to maintain and restore energy reserves.
They're simply making the point that the corals ability to obtain/uptake/acquire and recycle nutrients is how we can explain the paradox. They are not suggesting that the coral is dependent on dissolved nutrients.
When I talk about their dependence on food, I'm not suggesting that it even comes close to the food requirements of azooxanthellate corals. SPS/reef building stony corals have, in comparison, very little demand for nutrition from outside sources. Solid or dissolved nutrients.
There is very little in the way of nutrition dissolved in the water around healthy growing coral reefs. Hence the paradox. There is also very little in the way of zooplankton or solid organic particles to feed on.
While reef building stony corals and their zooxanthellae have very little demand for nutritional input from outside sources, when compared to most other life on this planet, they do require some. The bulk of which is provided by feeding on solid organic particles. Not through the uptake/absorption/concentration of dissolved inorganics (Po4, NO3.....) in the water.
What we do not have, is healthy growing SPS coral reefs in high nutrient waters, or reefs covered in sponges, algae, and gargonians in very nutrient poor waters.
Exactly..... When dissolved nutrient utilization does occur, it is simply a supplement to feeding. Not the other way around.
(doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2008.09.015)...the relative importance of both autotrophic and heterotrophic carbon to a coral's energetic needs should be considered as a continuum, from 100% photoautotrophy to 100% heterotrophy.
Now lets tackle the myth of "burnt tips". Are you carbon dosing?