Adding bacteria from the sea

[Paul B]

I'm not really saying it's a bad idea, or that it doesn't have any merit to it. Just wanted to present the other side of the argument.

Wow you read that fast.
Beerfish, keeping in mind that I am an electrician and not a researcher these ideas are only mine from my own experience. Some of the people's tanks here far surpass mine in beauty. My tank is and always has been an experiment. I do things that I would not always recommend and I am not recommending my methods, I am just posting my results.
I have plenty of theories and I find plenty of modern practices to be detrimental to the longivity of our inhabitants but I keep quiet for most. I am already in trouble for UGFs, beer cans, bottles, mud, LI Sound water, Plaza Hotel lights etc.

 

[beerfish]

I was actually responding to blange's post with that one... the one after was in response to your post... lol

I actually think you have a great tank and love the alternate methods you've employed over the years. I just don't think that a lot of people are ready to try something that is off the beaten path and not have a full understanding of the possible detrimental effect these methods can have.

If someone told a newbie to get some 2 part and dose it in their tank I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I would ask if they're ready for it... did they test? what's in the tank? etc...

Unfortunately, the methods for determining what your bacterial population stands at are a bit more difficult, and it's a bit of a leap of faith.

 

[Paul B]

Beer, actually I don't spend a lot of time on maintenance at all besides clean the glass. I certainly don't spend time on changing water. Much of my time is on inventing new things or building rock.
I don't think I spend an hour a week on the tank.
I just typed an entire page and lost it so I am paraphrasing now.
There are things I do that I feel are important to keep a tank healthy and disease free.
Keeping in mind that I did not post in the newbe forum for a reason. Noobs, look the other way and talk amongst yourselves
Like I said healthy fish in breeding condition do not get sick, ich or anything else,
Usually. All animals get maladys even heart attacks and cancer but we can severly limit that if we do a few things.
A few years ago on RC I asked if anyone wanted to put an ich infested fish in my reef as an experiment.
No one replied but that is how certain I am that my fish will not be affected.
In the seventees I had 7 blue devils that I fed flakes. Thats all the food we had then and there were no reefs. The fish always had ich and saltwater fish were very hard to keep for that reason. I ran copper in my tank religiousely as we all did.
When live blackworms became available in NY I started feeding those to my fish. With in two weeks one of the blue devils turned all blue, before that their tails were clear. This fish also became larger and started to chase the other fish around. They started spawning and spawned every few weeks for about 7 years. During that time I never had to add copper. All fish in a store had ich, many stores would gop out of business because of the losses.
Since then I have always fed foods rich in oil like live worms (not blood worms) and whole fish.
My fish do not get sick.
Again Noobs, don't listen to this, keep quarantining or you will lose all of your fish, don't say I diden't warn you.
I am not condoning this practice but I want to show that fish in breeding condition have a much better chance of living to 15 or 20 disease free years.
My fish generally live long enough to die from old age or they are involved in an accident or I give them away. My oldest, a cusk eel or brutlyd lived 18 years until I killed it in an accident with my 5 year old moorish Idol and a ten year old hippo and a very old mandarin.
Accidents happen especially while you are away. It's life.
Here is that blue devil in about 75 or so above his nest of eggs in that goosneck barnacle.
Those corals are dead skeletons as all tanks were then.
Again, I am not advocating my methods. I am just reporting on their successes or failures of which I had quite a few also.

 

[Whitebird1]

Keeping in mind that I did not post in the newbe forum for a reason. Noobs, look the other way and talk amongst yourselves

Seeing that I seemed to have sparked this Discussion with a very simple observation and theory on the mortality of Local collected Trops, thank you for the feedback, it was very informative and seems to have confermed what was suspected! I will now go back and sit at the little kids table and be quite as instructed!

 

[Paul B]

I will now go back and sit at the little kids table and be quite as instructed!

No you don't, come back here and get back in this discussion ;D

 

[beerfish]

I will now go back and sit at the little kids table and be quite as instructed!

No you don't, come back here and get back in this discussion ;D

This is why I like this forum... you can have a civil discussion...

 

[Paul B]

My meaning of course was to inform newbees to NOT do some of the things I do.
As I said my tank is an experiment and I have lost plenty of animals in the fifty + years I have been doing this.
You should quarantine and you may not want to put mud in your tank.
These are my ideas and plenty of reefs, just about all of them are healthy and beautiful without using any of my methods.
I started in the hobby when it wasen't a hobby, way before internets or computers and my methods evolved from trial and error, mostly error.
That is why my tank is different from all tanks that were started in the computer age.
I had nothing to go by and no feedback. So take from this what you feel is helpful in your situation with your experience level and keep the rest in the back of your mind for when you are retired with a 40 year old tank and people let you rant without flaming you everytime you come up with something considered wierd.
I rarely get involved in Newbee forums because even I know some of my methods are sort of radical.
My tank is also not perfect and I don't want to give that impression.
There is a lot of experience on these forums and a great way to learn.
Have a great day.
Paul ;D

 

[beerfish]

My meaning of course was to inform newbees to NOT do some of the things I do.
As I said my tank is an experiment and I have lost plenty of animals in the fifty + years I have been doing this.
You should quarantine and you may not want to put mud in your tank.
These are my ideas and plenty of reefs, just about all of them are healthy and beautiful without using any of my methods.
I started in the hobby when it wasen't a hobby, way before internets or computers and my methods evolved from trial and error, mostly error.
That is why my tank is different from all tanks that were started in the computer age.
I had nothing to go by and no feedback. So take from this what you feel is helpful in your situation with your experience level and keep the rest in the back of your mind for when you are retired with a 40 year old tank and people let you rant without flaming you everytime you come up with something considered wierd.
I rarely get involved in Newbee forums because even I know some of my methods are sort of radical.
My tank is also not perfect and I don't want to give that impression.
There is a lot of experience on these forums and a great way to learn.
Have a great day.
Paul ;D

Well said Paul... and let's just say that I hope I make it another 40 years... if the tank outlasts me..... ;D

 

[blange3]

Blange, sorry but if your fish are not even exhibiting spawning behavior, they are not as healthy as you believe.
I have a 16 year old fire clown and for the first 14 years he was the only fire clown in there. For all those years after he became mature, he maintained a nest and would bite the hell out of me whenever I put my hand near it.
I have three mature watchman gobies, two are constantly spawning and the other one is maintaining a nest but the pair keeps chasing him.

I guess I'm defining spawning behavior in too narrow a sense. My flashers flash, the PJ's dance, so do the clowns, and my 11 year old ocellaris male makes a pit bull look tame when I put my hand in the tank.

My 4 year old purple tang didn't get a spot while the new Gold Rim Tang succumbed to ich in 3 weeks. So I think my fish are in pretty good shape, but we are now taking things up a notch with your recommendation about blackworms.

The idea of proper nutrion being key to a healthy reef is getting a lot of traction these days, as is biodiversity. Thankfully we have 40 years of research invested in you tank that gives credibility to what the new kids are starting to realize.

 

[blange3]

Let's also take a look at what we could be potentially adding to our tanks. Let's forget about parasites and run-off, and instead concentrate on bacteria. If you've been reefing long enough, you've probably had at least one bad bacterial bloom in your tank. Think about this... cyano is a bacterial bloom, not actually an algae.

Everything in moderation and be patient is my response.

Add a little of the natural bacteria and wait, just as Paul's method implies. Blooms are temporary situations until a new balance is achieved, just like the cyano blooms we all live through.

Paul also ephasizes doing this in an already healthy environment which he measures by having spawning fish. I may be a bit bold, but since most of my fish are singles and my few pairs aren't spawning that I can see; I am planning on foregoing the spawning requirement based on the fact that they are all survivors of an ich outbreak.

I'm not really saying it's a bad idea, or that it doesn't have any merit to it. Just wanted to present the other side of the argument.

Agreed, I new just what you were driving at, Beerfish. I was just expanding on the fact that it takes sometime to change an artificial system to something more natural and some out of balance conditions will occur while nature takes it's course.

The cyano and diatom blooms are classic examples. I cringe when I see how much money folks will spend to address a cycle that will work itself out in the long run by just maintaining a stable system with a reasonable bioload.

 

[blange3]

My meaning of course was to inform newbees to NOT do some of the things I do.
As I said my tank is an experiment and I have lost plenty of animals in the fifty + years I have been doing this.
You should quarantine and you may not want to put mud in your tank.
These are my ideas and plenty of reefs, just about all of them are healthy and beautiful without using any of my methods.
I started in the hobby when it wasen't a hobby, way before internets or computers and my methods evolved from trial and error, mostly error.
That is why my tank is different from all tanks that were started in the computer age.
I had nothing to go by and no feedback. So take from this what you feel is helpful in your situation with your experience level and keep the rest in the back of your mind for when you are retired with a 40 year old tank and people let you rant without flaming you everytime you come up with something considered wierd.
I rarely get involved in Newbee forums because even I know some of my methods are sort of radical.
My tank is also not perfect and I don't want to give that impression.
There is a lot of experience on these forums and a great way to learn.
Have a great day.
Paul ;D

Great wisdom in there Paul, but please tone down the I'm a weird, radical old man stuff. You are stealing my image! ;D

Of course I'm just kidding about the image stuff, nice to have another old time reef by the seat of your pants guy around!

 

[SurfnTurf]

Or are you saying that the very nature of containing bacteria in a tank (even for a short time) results in a reduced bacteria diversity available to be swapped

That's exactly what I am saying. If you could get live rock form the sea or some that has been in the sea recently, that would be great, but rock that was in someones tank for years would not do anything. I collect from the Sound and the Atlantic because I live here. I am sure the Sound has plenty of bacteria
For those with a DSB you know they work because of the creatures tunneling through the sand allowing the water to enter. A lot of that tunneling is being done by tiny worms. These worms will not keep multiplying. The gene pool runs out and you need to replenish.
Did you ever hear of that Biosphere experiment about 20 years ago where they introduced different insects, animals and plants into a sterile biosphere?
It was a failure because eventually the insect population was mostly ants, and a lot of the plants became weeds, and that was only in operation for a couple of years.
The strongest bacteria (or insect, plant or animal) will eventually prevail.

great point. that youtube lecture I referenced talked about a shallow water squid that hosted bacteria with bioluminance to use as a stealth weapon during night hunting. The light coming from the bacteria on the bottom of the squid was adjusted by the squid to perfectly offset the moon/starlight above while night hunting to erase its shadow on the shallow seafloor below it as it swam - that way a predator could not see the shadow or use the shadows direction and speed to map out a surprise attack. The thing is - the bacteria in that squid multiples and dies so quickly that at the end of each night the squid ejects the majority of the glowing bacteria and goes to sleep in the sand - by the time the squid wakes up again at nightfall - the bacteria have reproduced to a level where their luminance chemical signals reach critical mass and they turn on the glow again - just in time for another night's hunt.

The thing that struck me was that if that squid needs to eject the bacteria to avoid being overloaded in just 24 hours - think of how much bacterial change our closed tanks undergo in a week, month, or year. Now if our tanks follow the biosphere model and only certain bacteria win out - the situation really supports your claim that the bacteria need to be freshened up regularly Paul B. Thanks for your input. Now can I pick your brain on what you meant by fish oils?

 

[Paul B]

Now can I pick your brain on what you meant by fish oils?

I did it again, I wrote a page and somehow lost it.
I will try again in a shorter version.
Fish in the sea do not eat flakes, pellets, clams, squid, beef heart, angel formula, mysis, or brine shrimp. Fish in the sea eat fish, and a lot of them.
Fish, unlike us need massive quantities of the substances in fish oil. Substances like vitamin a,d and e all come from fish oil. The liver of a fish such as a shark can take up a quarter of the animals weight. In most other fish the liver is a little smaller but still is a large portion of the fish. The liver is full of oil. Think Cod Liver Oil, which comes from fish livers, usually sharks. The fish uses this oil for a couple of things one being helping with buoyancy the other being keeping the fish healthy.
We as humans can not use all of that vitamin A or D, it becomes toxic to us in even small quantities but when a fish eats another fish, almost a quarter of that fish could contain oil. Fish have no fat due to their being cold blooded. Fats would just sit in their bodies and not be able to circulate like us. We are warm enough to liquify fats so it can circulate in our blood (and clog our arteries)
All of those foods I mentioned do not contain hardly any fish oils. Also if we feed fish fillets like we eat, there is very little oil in that also. It is mostly in the liver.
Luckily for us, worms contain that oil. Worms such as blackworms are cheap and available in most (but not all) areas. I feed a few of these every day after I feed something else. Worms are very rich and other foods should be also offered or else many fish will eat nothing but worms. They like them better than most foods.
I have been trying to get "Ocean Nutrition" to offer tiny baby frozen makeral in stores. They are available in Asian markets dried but the fish are not crazy about the consistancy which is like wood. I soak them in the refrigerator overnight and they plump up. They are about 1/4" long and are very cheap. They would be the overall best foods for many fish. I also feed them to anemones and LPS corals like bubbles.
If you feed these foods every day for a couple of weeks your fish may start spawning.
Mine always do.
I have also experimented with injecting guppies with marine fish oil and feeding them to carnivores like lionfish and moray eels. It seemed to work but those fish are fairly hardy anyway.
Another way to get oil into fish is to put a drop of fish oil like Cod Liver Oil in a container then put some flake food on it. The flakes soak up the oil and it stays on the food as the fish eat it. I do this if I can't get worms. It is messier and makes a small oil slick on the water. Your skimmer will also stop making foam for an hour. I have been doing that for years with no problems. I also soak dry pellets with oil. You can put it on any dry food. Do not put it on wet foods like frozen food or it will just float in your tank.
If you want to use a product like Selcon, that should also go on dry foods. I know what it says on the label but you are wasting it if you put it on wet foods.
Selcon is good but expensive, fish oil is very cheap. I take it myself and for the fish I just stick a pin in a capsule and squeeze it. Do it slowly as it can squirt all over the place, and it stinks.
To me it seems so easy to keep fish in excellent health where they are resistant to diseases but there are so many people who do not feed properly and that is the reason for so many failures, diseases and people leaving the hobby because of ich.
Many of our fish should live for 20 years, but how many of them actually do?

 

[Paul B]

My dive partner recently took this picture in the Caymans. I told him I needed a picture of fry.
See the white dots to the left of the nurse shark? Those are fry and is what fish snack on all day. They are all over the place.

 

[blange3]

I did it again, I wrote a page and somehow lost it.

Get's me everytime on big posts. ;D

Type it in word or notepad first and then copy it to the post.

 

[MadReefer]

Bill, I always do that. Paul, do you add the mud directly to the tank? I may have missed a post. I may consider this at some point but would put the mud in a container with holes on the top and place in the sump. I don't know if I want it blowing around.

 

[Paul B]

How come you guys can get away with just typing one line and I have to go on forever?
Can't you ask me a yes or no question? ;D

SurfnTurf, thanks for that bacterial lecture on U Tube, I really enjoyed it.

Mad Reefer, I do put a little of that mud right in the container where it gets pumped under my gravel but usually I like to put a container of a little mud on my substrait and after a couple of days, remove it.
I use NSW anwyay so anything in the mud is already in the water.
I usually just go to a beach in the Sound and while I am collecting amphipods by swirling rocks in a pail a bunch of mud is also collected accidently.
Those rocks in the Sound are teeming with life especialy smaller rocks. If you lift a rock which is a little too burried, it will have no life, just hydrogen sulfide which is easy to find because it is black and stinks. In some places you just have to dig a half an inch to reach hydrogen sulfide, it's natures DSB
Those amphipods are another great source of food but I believe they are also lacking the oils. Only whole fish and worms supply those. Baby fish also have calcium in their bones. Shrimp, crabs, squid, amphipods and clams have no bones so not as much calcium.

 

[MadReefer]

Paul, that might have been your shortest post on this thread so far and you answered 2 questions. Thanks

 

[beerfish]

How come you guys can get away with just typing one line and I have to go on forever?
Can't you ask me a yes or no question? ;D

Wait... did you say you add mud?

;D

 

[blange3]

How come you guys can get away with just typing one line and I have to go on forever?
Can't you ask me a yes or no question? ;D

Wait... did you say you add mud?

;D

I was also thinking there was more to this nitrogen cycle then we use to think. What do you think Paul?;D