lack of NH4 causing lightening in corals

[Mike O'Brien]

Can this be a problem in BB tank's. It seem's that when adding more fish to the system to get the coral's to darken it's the liquid addition of ammonia and urea that is important rather then the solid waste of the fish.

A friend of mine recently switched his established reef to BB, now his coral's are brown. He didn't cook the rock's so this lead's me to believe it may be an increase in ammonia that is causing it. But that got me to reading and I found this interesting article.

We mostly hear how bad ammonia is, but it seem's coral's have a wide tolerance for it and may be limited by it on the reef.

http://www.fisherycrisis.com/coral3.html

[Spanky]

yes

[Mike O'Brien]

And it's the bacteria that are using the available liquid waste before the coral's can get it, and with an efficient system running these bacteria are being removed before they have a chance to change form's back to ammonia like would happen with a DSB. I'd also include phyto with the bacteria.

[Spanky]

You're over thinking it Mike.

Here's the problem with closed systems. You have to feed most things you have in there. The problem with feeding, is introducing phosphorus compounds.
Obviously, nitrogenous compounds are cycled. You couldn't do it if they weren't.

Phosphorus compounds - and all the different forms they take, think shape shifters - just tend to hang around and build up.

In the process of removing P, you will remove things associated with it, charged like it, etc etc

But in some cases, you have to get the P out to keep the system healthy.

So you are fighting a battle, put stuff in, but get it out and some of the things get out a lot easier than P.

[Mike O'Brien]

So in the battle to remove the P we may be limiting the N ?

[Spanky]

Can't take one out without the other and the N/c's are easier to take out.

[Wiskey]

But wait, can't bacteria create N compounds strait from the air (nitrogen)? With bacteria able to "fix" N how can it be limiting?

Also FWIR corals are coated in bacteria, inside and out, it would seem that the bacteria would have plenty of time to make that NH4 into NO3 long before that coral had a whack at it.

Is there something I am missing?


Thanks,
Whiskey

[Mike O'Brien]

AFAIK it the cyanobacterias that can do that. They probably play a role too, I know they do play a huge role in nutrifying certain areas. But I don't know much. LOL

One thing I got out of that article was the grand design of life. It really is amazing that everything from large to small has it's place and it's specific purpose.

[Spanky]

and things happen that make other living things possible

mostly just by accident

reverse engineer this

Do we really need corals and coral reefs?

Or are they just taking advantage of something that happened?

Figure that out and it will answer your question.

[Mike O'Brien]

I have no idea what would happen if the reef's were gone. Could be like breaking a link on a chain. Or other reef's could be popping up in areas that are more suatable. Seem's like they have taken advantage of a particular environment. Warm shallow water's that have low nutrient water's. Why would a coral choose to live in this environment when there are other areas of ocean where food is rich. On the reef the coral's have adapted to aquire food in as many way's as they can from aquiring symbiot's to capturing plankton to absorbing nutrient's directly.

[Mike O'Brien]

Ok here is another thought I'm having. Has to do with the quote too and this article.

Take a stable system that is very efficient at export. It may be like the overfishing in the article. We feed x ammount of food per day, the fish are going to use 10% of that food and excrete the rest as waste. So now we really only need to export x-10%. Now with the skimmer's being used maybe it's pretty easy to export more then we are putting in. Like taking away what should be being tightly cycled in our reef's. Slowly the system is depleted of the tightly cycled N and C and the coral's begin to suffer. So I think the moral is to just feed what may seem like huge ammount's of food, because we have the ability to easily get it out before it can cause problem's . Wich I'm guessing would be the liquid waste that intolerable to a reef system.