Competing for real estate

[invincible569]

I was wondering.. sometimes I get a nice film of bacteria on my back black wall.. but then other times after I clean it off, I get algae growth. Usually algae that loves to grow on high flow. On the days I have the bacteria film, the water looks very nice and clear.. but when its algae.. its just average. Am I eliminating beneficial bacteria and letting the algae take over the real estate instead? Or am I just seeing things.

[Aged Salt]

Hi Edward, I noticed this brownish-green, dark, thick biofilm on the panes when I used higher doses of Food7 & AAHC. I've since reduced both with just a thin transparent film which is perfect dosing. Bob

[invincible569]

Exactly.. is it a race for real estate then?

[Aged Salt]

Or Edward, a matter of not enough nutrients left in your reef to fully utilize Food7. Nutrients or no, slight excess AAHC results in the dark film, while larger excesses result in slimey deposits w/wo air-bubbles on one's rocks. Bob

[mesocosm]

Greetings All !

Exactly.. is it a race for real estate then?

If we are talking about a algae vs. bacteria race with no other variables , then it would be no contest. The bacteria would win ... by Secretariat-like margins.

On the days I have the bacteria film, the water looks very nice and clear.. but when its algae.. its just average.

While this may be "just" a correlation, in principle it makes sense. The biofilm would be much more "sticky" towards DOC, as opposed to a similar mass of filamentous microalgae (even with the algae's larger surface area).

Am I eliminating beneficial bacteria and letting the algae take over the real estate instead?

I don't know about "eliminating" the bacteria ... "redistributing" for sure. No question that by removing the biofilm you have created a habitat more favorable for algae growth ... for a short time. But I'm not so sure about the dynamics of this kind of succession.

... I noticed this brownish-green, dark, thick biofilm on the panes when I used higher doses of Food7 & AAHC.

I've noticed the same thing ... makes me wonder what a complete roster of the players in the bacterioplankton guild of zeosystems might actually look like. It has always seemed to me that "excess" ZeoFood7 and/or AAHC are acting as both nutrients and food for a whole range of microfauna and microflora who have never been to Germany ... dieses ist zutreffend, ja? Little wonder that we see the regular, scattered reports of the emergence of diatom, dinoflagellate, and microalgae populations in a variety of zeosystems. Hardly surprising that when we "dial in the dosage", these emergent populations recede without further problems.

... a matter of not enough nutrients left in your reef to fully utilize Food7.

This is something we've all alluded to for a while, but have never really gotten into ... although we have skimmed it ocassionally. It typically gets discussed within the topics of "dosing", "ZEOvit media", and "phases".

Absent definitive data, it seems to me that we're dealing with at least one ZeoBak strain which requires a nutrient which is typically "limited" in our systems ... a nutrient like iron or sulfur immediately leaps to mind. As soon as the "limiting nutrient" of the ZeoBak strain(s) is fully consumed, excess "food" ... which would otherwise be consumed by ZeoBak strains ... is utilized by non-zeo organisms, resulting in the relatively rapid growth of their populations. It seems to me that this dynamic might underly our observations about the relative sizes of bacteria vs. algae populations ... particularly if one concedes that the ZEOvit methodology effectively sequesters and exports phosphorous (IME ... THE limiting nutrient of microalgae).

As long as I'm in free-fall here ... the absence of definitive data IS a female dog in heat, after all ... let me suggest a perhaps radical notion: The ZEOvit methodology, over time, de-emphasizes (... NOT replaces ...) carbon as THE "limiting nutrient" in our systems, and introduces another "limiting nutrient", in addition to carbon.

Just trying to fill in the data set ...


JMO ... HTH

[coralite]

If we're talking autotrophic/photosynthetic bacteria, they are more stimulated by nitrogen (N) and algae is more stimulated by phosphorous (P) and iron. No matter how undetectable your levels are they are always present in some ratio. every time you clear habitat for colonization you are leveling the playing field and if your NP ratio is greater than one you are likely to get bacteria. if it is less than one you are likely to get algae.
The NP ratio matters less to heterotrophic bacteria and as mentioned, they can actually absorb DOM from the water. I dose with alcohol and I find a definite shift towards bacterial film over algae cover when I keep up with my dosing.