Zeo / ultralith similarities/ differences to normal carbon dosing

[UK_Pete]

Hi Randy,

I've been reading about the zeovit and ultralith methods recently and wondered if you might have any opinions on them. Like, do you believe that these methods have something other methods don't, when it comes to SPS coloration and health. They do seem to have great coloration in zeo tanks I see pictures of but I wonder if its something to do with more careful husbandry that goes with being a zeo follower.

To me they seem similar to the concept of carbon dosing, but with a few differences. The main one obviously being the zeolite. But regarding the other similarities / differences, they seem to strive to maintain ULN conditions, and as far as I know this is fully achievable with 'normal' carbon dosing. They add the concept of feeding corals with their magic potions, which seem to be aminos, vitamins, apparently 'carbohydrates' (although I don't quite understand this as surely thats just carbon dosing), and 'protein flocks' which sounds like liquidised food, unless they are precipitating protein or something.

Is this just carbon dosing with a few different foods added like liquid aminos and vitamins? What about their continual bacteria dosing, do you think it might have any value?

And as for the zeolite, the ultralith docs suggest that ammonia is directly removed through ion exchange, while also having bacteria hosted on the media, allowing the bacteria to then utilise a more concentrated source of nutrients. Do you think there might be something to this at all?

Do you think identical results can be achieved with normal carbon dosing, without the zeolite, and feeding their foods? What about just feeding normal foods but keeping the nutrient levels to the zeo recommended values? Are there any aspects of these systems that you do feel are good?

Not sure how interested in these systems you are since I haven't read much from you on the topic but any opinions you have would be very interesting to me and probably quite a few people.

Thanks, Pete

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The zeolite may bind some ammonia, but they misunderstand that process when claiming that makes it available for bacteria. It does not. If anything, it make ammonia less available to nearby bacteria.

The idea of shaking off the bacteria may have some merit, at least in some situations. Ive been dosing organic carbon for a few years now, and I have never seen any bacteria except on my GAC in the canister I used to use. So where it is going? I contend it must be getting released to the water somehow, and so may not be different than shaking a zeolite, except perhaps the chunks are bigger when shaking a zeolite. But I do not know if that is better or worse for any particular thing those bacteria might then do, such as feeding filter feeders or being skimmed.

As to other aspects of zeovit, they are too secretive about their products to really know what they are all doing.

 

[UK_Pete]

Yea I wondered about the ammonia bit. If the ionic attraction is strong enough to attract the ammonia in the first place, considering its low concentration compared to the sodium and potassium they claim it displaces, then bacteria would have to overcome that attraction to free it again wouldent they. So do you think the zeolite is essentially just being used to soak up the ammonia - or even has little or no effect relating to ammonia? Would the capacity of typical zeolites be enough to do this for several weeks (for instance, ultralith says about 1 litre of zeolite per 400 litres for 8 weeks).

When you say you see bacteria in your GAC, what does it look like? Have you ever done anything interesting with it like looked under a microscope? Or is it just a slime?

What about the zeo results - do you think they look better than the best SPS normal carbon dosers tanks look? For instance, I wonder if the zeolite is not significant, and its just the careful carbon dosing with a well designed food range (with the aminos, vitamins etc) that are responsible for the results. Something other non zeo users might still achieve with DIY foods for instance.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, and bacteria cannot "remove" ions that are bound to surface, or in the case of a zeolite, inside of it.

The bacteria on the GAC that I used to get was a greyish material that I could rinse off.

Zeovit generally produces a certain look if you drive the tank to ULNS conditions, reducing the number of zoox in the corals and giving them brighter, but somewhat unnatural colors. I prefer more natural looking organisms, but others like the zeovit look.

 

[UK_Pete]

I'm not sure I would like the zeo look either, although I may (never seen in person), but I would like to understand it. I'm getting the impression that its fairly well accepted that much of it is just down to the ULN aspect, which makes sense to me, but something that would give more confidence in that hypothesis is if its replicated in other tanks which are ULN. If not, I wonder if its something to do with for instance changing the balance of nitrogen sources - maybe less ammonia by percent total inorganic nitrogen for instance (not that I do think that, just an example of a difference that zeo might create). Looking at color on computer screens is tricky because I assume many people play with things like saturation which can make photos look very different. Do people in your experience attribute that zeo look specifically down to zeo, or to ULN managed in a certain way?

The other aspect is their magic potions. They talk about aminos, vitamins, carbohydrates etc, do you think there might be something to all that? It seems to me that most organics will rapidly be broken down in a tank by bacteria, essentially being just carbon dosing, and that its unlikely that much would be absorbed through the coral tissue in the short time that the substance is in the water in its original form. But I don't know much about biology so your opinion on that would be very interesting. Would you expect much of such compounds to be in the water of a natural reef, with the enormous amount of water flowing from non reef areas through the reef continually?

 

[hart24601]

I don't really think you need zeo products to get that look if you are after it. Just carbon dose until the corals get very light and then experiment with additives to modify the colors. There are threads out there about what supplement to use for tweaking colors, I don't remember them off the top of my head. If I drive nutrients too low I can easily see the difference with adding amino acids. I have not played with additional supplements to tweak colors though, I generally dose nitrate as I am not after those pastels.

IMO the benefit of zeo products is that they have had the experimenting done on them already. Get to the ULNS point and you can use their guide and products to bring out colors rather than experiment on your own or try forum members advise.

 

[UK_Pete]

Thats what interests me - with zeo, is there anything at all unique about their system and also about using zeolites in reef aquaria. Does the zeolite serve any unique function at all or is it just a substrate like say GAC. And then also, does their system of magic potions add anything unique other than what we already know corals benefit from. I've always been wary of the theories that certain supplements tweak colors, which seems to be almost a central basis of the zeo system, but for instance when people say that adding potassium tweaks colors, even though they are probably only tweaking its concentration from 390 ppm to 395 ppm, I find it hard to believe.

And then, regarding dosing the complicated mix of aminos and other organics they claim to be putting in their bottles, is there a real difference between this and dosing a nitrogen phosphorus mix. Do corals really take these organics directly from the water?

 

[hart24601]

From what I know only 1 of those items has really been studied in any meaningful manner and that's the amino acids. There is at least on study that shows coral have the ability to directly uptake them from the water.

Amino acids

I don't think you will find definitive answers to the other questions. Maybe Randy can shed light on specific zeolite interactions, but I always thought that while they could do something, they were really just surface area like carbon with maybe a bit of metal binding potential also similar to carbon, perhaps slightly different set of organic binding but Randy is the expert in that. Since they are tight lipped about what is in them it's going to be hard to find definitive answers about how well any of the supplements work aside from just trying it out then trying alternatives but with all the variables it's hard to get much info from that as I am sure you know.

While something like 5ppm potassium change sounds silly, I personally think there is something there to the idea of starving the coral and adding nutrients to bring out different, or least highlight different colors. By the time corals really fade like that there is some severe nutrient depletion. Via trial and error I don't think it's that crazy that by experimenting with various additives they found it would bring out different colors in that severe state, now why some additives bring colors out, from what I know, isn't known. I doubt the zeo products have anything that special in them, but with no specific ingredients no one can really say one way or the other imo. Keep in mind coral studies are not done with them in ULNS conditions where they are pastel (that I know of), so it's hard to make direct inferences from what we know coral can utilize under normal conditions under to ULNS.

 

[UK_Pete]

Interesting article although unfortunately I coulden't find a copy of the cited study anywhere, it would be good to read it in full. Certainly does answer my question re aminos in NSW reefs and corals taking the aminos up, although I was unable to work out if the corals only take it up since its there, and actually 'need' it over other sources of N. Still, one can probably say that it gives the chance for dosing N in a form unavailable to algae but still available to corals. I've heard reef-lore that corals 'need' aminos for tissue building, and I would love to find an authoritative reference for that assumption.

A bit more reading turned up this one http://aem.asm.org/content/50/6/1556.full.pdf which dosent deal with corals but was interesting in its observation that liquidised fish guts autolyze to a liquid rich in amino acids. That was interesting to me for 2 reasons. Firstly if the guts already contain enzymes or bacteria which turn fish meat into amino acids, then perhaps when we feed food in the form of fish and other protein products some of the food is autolyzed in our tanks to amino acids. And the other reason was that they had a very simple process to create a mixed amino acid liquid containing a high quantity of amino acids - I'm not certain exactly but I think they mean it contains some peptides, and about 20% or so of the dry mass is free amino acids. All they did was mince the guts, add a little hydrochloric acid, and leave it to ferment for a week. It separated into 2 layers, a top oily layer and a bottom water layer containing the aminos, which they filtered and used as is. It contained a mix of at least 19 amino acids (thats how many they list). I wonder if this might be a good diy amino acid manufacture method.

Back to zeo, I wonder if anyone, including the makers, really know why its helpful, if it really is. I know that some zeo users say they can tell when the zeo is 'spend' but perhaps that might be because its clogged, going along Randys thinking above. If its just getting clogged rather than spent in some other way, it suggests that the zeo really is just media rather than taking part in some kind of chemical exchange or such.

 

[hart24601]

Here is the study:

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/211/6/860.full

It was in the photo captions. That would very interesting if one wanted to DIY amino acids. A bit bottle of acropower lasts me a long time though.


I doubt even the makers really know why it's really helpful, not from a mechanism point of view. But heck, that is science now too, screen for phenotypic performance and then later try and figure the mechanism. Ok you might start a screen with an idea in mind, but phenotypic performance is where it's at!

 

[cwk84]

Yes, and bacteria cannot "remove" ions that are bound to surface, or in the case of a zeolite, inside of it.

The bacteria on the GAC that I used to get was a greyish material that I could rinse off.

Zeovit generally produces a certain look if you drive the tank to ULNS conditions, reducing the number of zoox in the corals and giving them brighter, but somewhat unnatural colors. I prefer more natural looking organisms, but others like the zeovit look.

I wonder what those Zeolites really do. Zeovit recommends a certain flow rate going through the Zeolites. If the flow is too high you'll experience STN/RTN. This has been reported by numerous people. I wonder what they really do.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I wonder what those Zeolites really do. Zeovit recommends a certain flow rate going through the Zeolites. If the flow is too high you'll experience STN/RTN. This has been reported by numerous people. I wonder what they really do.

IMO, they do nothing more than provide a space for bacteria to grow.

If you beat them to death with too much flow, maybe chips and chunks break off that are physically irritating.

 

[Martin Kuhn]

Zeolites simply are an artificial and commercially available material providing „as many surface“ as nearly no other material and are „inert“

This makes them an optimal material for assembly of bacteria. Bacteria are the key to ULNS systems. Combining this with steadily adding new bacteria, feeding bacteria and cleaning the zeolite is a guaranteeing ULNS conditions in nearlY every tank


Combine this with a some other stuff like coral food (needed because of ULNS conditions) and some more stuff like carbon filtering unwanted stuff



You have a perfect method for reefers who accept paying a lot for achieving safely what others get with more knowledge but less effort