Fascinating! Just ordered 3 tests. My newest tank had a brief bout of dinos while the other two are stable although some corals never seem to do well in one of them. It will be very interesting comparing the results.
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Hi everyone,
As the owner of the company I'd be happy to answer any questions. There have been a lot asked already in the thread so forgive me if I miss some. I'd like to start with a few of the more important points.
1. I promise: no snake oil. I'm selling a testing service; whoever compared it to ICP is exactly right.
You will notice my site is conspicuously absent of promises that "this bacterium is bad" or "this bacterium is good". We simply don't know enough yet to make those claims.
2. By building a large database of samples from hobbyist and aquaculture tanks, we will learn a lot. I already have some data in hand and am gathering more.
3. There is some skepticism about what this means. Skepticism is a wise default position, but please do note what my service claims or does not claim. I claim to be able to identify the microbes in your tank, and provide information about what those microbes do. I will stand by those claims, since they are the basis for most modern microbial ecology.
I do NOT claim that I can sell you a magic bottle that will make everything happy. Or even that we understand everything about the microbes we find. In the reports, I try hard to not overstate the conclusions.
I've spent the last 20 years in Academia, so I'm comfortable with disagreement and discussion. Don't be shy about disagreeing - my service is simply DNA sequencing, I'm not selling bacteria. So I won't be offended if someone has an argument why bacterial type X is unimportant. (If there is someone who thinks it doesn't matter what kind of microbes are in your tank, I would disagree, but I'm not sure anyone in the reefing world holds that opinion anyway! And it would be an interesting discussion in any case)
4. Finally (for this post), some have raised the question of planktonic versus surface associated bacteria. Its an important distinction. But please recognize that water is constantly circulating past the surfaces in our tanks -- the biofilm microbes show up in the water column too. Lots of evidence in hand now to show this.
With that said, our first round did show that for a more sensitive analysis of biofilm microbes, we should include a direct sample of the biofilm. This contains important ammonia-oxidizing and nitrate-oxidizing microbes. So current sampling kits include a biofilm sample too.
I'm gonna stop there for now, but I'll come back and answer questions. There is a link on the main page of the company website that describes a basic overview of the microbes that live in reef tanks. Soon I'll be adding my analysis of differences between tanks, and my cycling experiment studying the succession of microbes in new aquariums started various ways.
We have a lot to learn - but the way we learn is by collecting data. Thats what my service is for.
-Eli
Hi everyone,
As the owner of the company I'd be happy to answer any questions. There have been a lot asked already in the thread so forgive me if I miss some. I'd like to start with a few of the more important points.
1. I promise: no snake oil. I'm selling a testing service; whoever compared it to ICP is exactly right.
You will notice my site is conspicuously absent of promises that "this bacterium is bad" or "this bacterium is good". We simply don't know enough yet to make those claims.
2. By building a large database of samples from hobbyist and aquaculture tanks, we will learn a lot. I already have some data in hand and am gathering more.
3. There is some skepticism about what this means. Skepticism is a wise default position, but please do note what my service claims or does not claim. I claim to be able to identify the microbes in your tank, and provide information about what those microbes do. I will stand by those claims, since they are the basis for most modern microbial ecology.
I do NOT claim that I can sell you a magic bottle that will make everything happy. Or even that we understand everything about the microbes we find. In the reports, I try hard to not overstate the conclusions.
I've spent the last 20 years in Academia, so I'm comfortable with disagreement and discussion. Don't be shy about disagreeing - my service is simply DNA sequencing, I'm not selling bacteria. So I won't be offended if someone has an argument why bacterial type X is unimportant. (If there is someone who thinks it doesn't matter what kind of microbes are in your tank, I would disagree, but I'm not sure anyone in the reefing world holds that opinion anyway! And it would be an interesting discussion in any case)
4. Finally (for this post), some have raised the question of planktonic versus surface associated bacteria. Its an important distinction. But please recognize that water is constantly circulating past the surfaces in our tanks -- the biofilm microbes show up in the water column too. Lots of evidence in hand now to show this.
With that said, our first round did show that for a more sensitive analysis of biofilm microbes, we should include a direct sample of the biofilm. This contains important ammonia-oxidizing and nitrate-oxidizing microbes. So current sampling kits include a biofilm sample too.
I'm gonna stop there for now, but I'll come back and answer questions. There is a link on the main page of the company website that describes a basic overview of the microbes that live in reef tanks. Soon I'll be adding my analysis of differences between tanks, and my cycling experiment studying the succession of microbes in new aquariums started various ways.
We have a lot to learn - but the way we learn is by collecting data. Thats what my service is for.
-Eli
I think the obvious huge limitation is that even if one could somehow get a numerical analysis of all planktonic species, it is believed that the majority of bacteria are attached to surfaces of various types.
Not true. There is also a sample swabbed from the output pipe of sampled tanks. He added this for the latest sampling method.
It should also be noted that in re-circulating saltwater systems, pretty much all bacteria can be sampled from the water column, not just planktonic bacteria.
He is confirming this with swab tests.
EDIT: I see Eli just posted something similar as I was typing.
I participated in his early rounds of testing, as he's a member of my local aquarium club. Very nice guy, and I don't think he's into offering any "snake oil" remedies, and he's definitely scientific in his approach on testing and comparing tanks. Here are some snippets from the report on my tank, just to give you an idea of what to expect:
Dude.. you know you are going to seed my rock for the new tank right
Rumor is that I have the most biodiverse rock in the Pacific Northwest!
So are we saying that we should all share little vials of tank water with each other, to share microbes and have maximum variation?
I could see a little "Vial swap" stand setup at frag swaps lol
That’s a fine assertion.
How do you know it is true?
Different environments will also have different species. The surface of a pipe will be very different than down in sand, on an organism like macroalgae, in light vs dark, etc.
What about DNA from the bacteria on the surfaces getting into the water column? Does the analysis somehow only pickup DNA from suspended organisms?
Agreed, I was interested (and only a little afraid) to look at these groups too.One thing that will be interesting is to see the relative abundance of vibrio and mycobacterial DNA in the samples; two groups that can potentially infect the aquarist.
Hi Randy,I have no idea what levels they can detect and what exactly that translates to. I can’t see how one could quantify the number of benthic bacteria from bits of dna that might be in the water.
I have no idea what levels they can detect and what exactly that translates to. I can’t see how one could quantify the number of benthic bacteria from bits of dna that might be in the water.