Husbandry
Amino acids and reef aquarium: Glycine
Representatives of 10 phyla removed significant quantities of glycine from solution during an observation period of 16 to 24 hrs (Stephens and Schinske 1961) Glycine is not essential nutritional amino acid for prawns (Cowey and Forster 1971) Most abundant DFAA in southern California coastal waters (Clark et al 1972, Carlucci et a 1984) Bivalve Mytilus... »
Amino acids and reef aquarium: Glutamic acid
Glutamic acid was very successful feeding activator for stony coral Montastrea cavernosa, causing full envelopment on every trial (Lehman and Porter 1973) One of the predominant amino acids in costal surface water and has high heterotrophic turnover rate (Williams et al 1976) Main contributor to the bacterial intracellular amino acid pool, may compete with... »
Back to spirits (Updated)
My experiment with Tropic Marin Reef Actif took a huge hit today as I measured some water parameters this morning. As I started using Reef Actif a few weeks ago I also stopped the Vodka + sugar dosing because I read some very promising comments about the Reef Actif’s ability to lower nutrient levels... »
Tank update, June 2009 (Updated)
Note! I now work mostly with my laptop and although it’s a fantastic (Unibody Macbook), I don’t trust it’s display enough to make any kind of color correction. So I’m shooting in JPEG (I usually shoot RAW) and just resize the images. Took 60% of my large Stylophora and exchanged the frags (plus Echinophyllia... »
Trapped in house and changing gears
I have not been feeling so great lately so I have not been able to make grumpy postings in a few weeks. What I have been doing is I have watched every House M.D. episode aired, that’s 100+ TV shows… Waving There have been a few changes to the aquarium during this time, the... »
Amino acids and reef aquarium: Cysteine
Cysteine seems to be less interesting amino acid as it is found in only 11 abstracts out of 4300 scientific papers I have in my collection. There are some papers that discuss Cysteine as a part of special proteins in marine invertebrates but these are much too advanced (for me) or theoretical to apply... »
Water au naturel
In the last few years there has been an unfortunate trend to introduce so called “reef” salt mixes to the market. It seems like most manufacturers have these available. Most of these have elevated calcium and magnesium concentrations, added trace elements, vitamins and other organics. Once again we do not learn from history but... »
Amino acids and reef aquarium: Aspartic acid
Important carbon source for some bacteria strains (Macleod et al. 1954, Berland et al. 1970) Aspartic acid is not an essential amino acid for crustaceans (Cowey and Forster 1971) As a DFAA reduced in surface water but found in much more larger amount in bottom and interstitial water (Clark et al. 1972) Causes a... »
New ideas for reef aquarium filtration
Recently I have been experimenting with some new ways to filter reef aquarium water. Here are some notes about the current situation. I will provide more thorough documentation at later time. CaCO3 Enhanced mechanical filtration Due to heavy feeding, DSB and good amount of live rock the detritus/plankton production in my tank is high.... »
Amino acids and reef aquarium: Arginine
Arginine is essential amino acid for crustaceans, it cannot be synthesized by themselves (Cowey and Forster 1971). Arginine causes feeding response (including digestion) in stony coral but has a significantly delayed response (1-2 minutes). Activity is confined to the mouth region (Lehman and Porter 1973) Arginine is a major contributor to copepod and mysid... »