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Originally posted by aquaticsdeptleader
i was wondering if anybody knew of some good lititerture in regards to recreating diffrent biotypes in a reef tank.
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Drs. Adey and Loveland deal in depth with recreating different biotopes (ecological systems) in microcosms, mesocosms, and aquaria in general in their book
Dynamic Aquaria--Building Living Ecosystems . Part IV of this tome deals specifically with the mesocosms and methods and materials needed to emulate them. Chapters 13 and 14 in Part III deal with the biological structure as the framework of biodiversity in model ecosystems. This section describes the community and it's interactions with and relationships to the biome. Biotopes are those communities, and their description is
traditionally named for a dominant element or specie type within that community. For example, an
Acropora palmeta reef community would be conspicuously dominated by that single coral specie as a major element of biomass or structure, affecting and controlling many other species of organisms by its presence. Aquatic synthetic ecosystems as biotopes can be defined rather arbitrarily, as it depends of the developer's point of view, and may be as wide or as narrow as need be to support the scope of such a model. Currently, there are 4 primary biotopes associated with natural Indonesian Ocean coral reef biotopes. They are the deep fore-reef, shallow fore-reef, reef top, and the lagoonal ecosystems. There are several specialized subtypes of these as well, but almost all of them depend on the energy of the water and the amount of solar energy necessary to support organisms associated with each biotope. Dr. Adey likes to narrow his discussions to the flow of nutrients (especially carbon) throughout these systems, the interaction of food webs within such systems, and their relation to nearby interactive biotopes (i.e., mangrove or grassy estuary areas in relation to lagoonal systems, etc.)
If you are interested in the science of such systems in addition to approaches to creating these systems, Dr. Adey's book would be the place to start, as each chapter is well-referenced with footnotes and bibliographies for each chapter.
Hope this helps.
