Amino acids and reef aquariums
In this my first post about amino acids and reef aquariums I take a look at what products are available to hobbyists and what amino acids and vitamins they contain. Unfortunately there are still several manufacturers who do not have enough respect for amateur aquarists to include the list of ingredients for their products. In most cases these brands are among the most hyped ones having the most vocal and dedicated followers. More serious aquarists will choose their products from the manufacturer who believes in their products enough to give the consumer possibility to make an informed choice, based on their aquarium’s needs.
Please do not buy a product that doesn’t list the ingredients unless you have a strong reason to believe that the company really cares about their customers and are not only good at marketing. Your vote will help all reef aquarists in the long term. These are the only manufacturers and products currently available that tell you what you are getting: hw bio tip, ReefStar Aminos, Fauna Marin UltraAMIN S, Fauna Marin ULTRAMIN, Seachem Reef Plus and Mrutzek hausmarke amino+.
Amino acids in different products. Note that more is not necessary better and that concentrations of amino acids can vary between products
Amino acid supplements have become more and more popular in recent years, mostly because of the so called Ultra low nutrient systems (ULNS) that recommend using these supplements. Like systems now called “ULNS”, amino acid cocktails are not new to the reef aquarium keeping as several products have been available to hobbyists for at least ten years. Creating a “good” amino acid supplement is extremely complicated task and involves many compromises if it is to be performed based on science. One of the more complex issues is that in marine organisms some amino acids reduce the uptake of the others but do so only in some cases. On the other hand, in general amino acid uptake is enhanced by the presence of mixture of different amino acids compared to single dissolved free amino acid (DFAA). The uptake can also be relatively slow. There are also amino acids that are very insoluble in pure water and need for example ethanol or acid to dissolve. For these reasons, it is likely that the most effective supplementation would be a two (or more!) part product where both parts would contain amino acids that do not inhibit the uptake of others. Dosing of the different parts would then be separated by some days. Unfortunately some products are likely to be just a random selection of amino acids commonly used for human food supplementation but, truth to be told, it would be extremely difficult to tell if they actually were any worse or better than the supplements based more on science. Combine all of the above with the fact that all reef aquariums are different and all of them already contain at least some DFAA in the water column and it is easy to see why there can never be a perfect mix. The only way an amateur aquarist can make an educated guess what product she or he should use is if the list of ingredients are available for both planktonic foods and amino acid supplements.
Vitamins listed as ingredients
I hope to write more about amino acids and reef aquariums in future but there are two points I would like to make at this time: it is very unlikely that you need to dose additional amino acids if you feed any planktonic foods. And: amino acids are a source of nitrogen so if you are dealing with elevated (i.e., measurable) nitrate it might be a good idea to either choose amino acid supplement that contains additional organic carbon or stop the use of supplement altogether.