Randy Holmes-Farley
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You are not alone.
The problem with these one off reports that land on our door step is that we have virtually no way to evaluate their relevance. For example, we have blooms of benthic organisms in our aquaria, but most studies are done with pelagic organisms and under pelagic conditions. The biology of the microorganisms might not even be the same, one being free floating with easy access to nutrients and the other bound in a biofilm with nutrients slowly diffusing to them. Different enzyme systems might be involved in free floating vs biofilm environments. And what does it mean to the aquarium nuisance organism growth that pelagic dinoflagellates kick butt of pelagic diatoms? Is this information even relevant to life in or on a biofilm?
I am not in any way discounting the value of the information and thank the contributor, but I am certainly not caught in the enthusiasm about its potential relevance.
That brings up an even simpler point that is another type of example of misapplication of personal experience: species identification. I'm really not sure how good we are at identifying the species of pests we have, at least when not using a microscope to look closely.
If you have a pest mass of brown stuff, and you do something to get rid of it, it probably matters what that stuff is.
If you assumed it was dinos and it was really cyano, and you then told someone else how to get rid of dinos, the advice may not be appropriate.