Ok, so I thought it was time to bring up this topic... The term nutrients often gets brought up in our hobby yet this term had various meanings.
Organic nutrients are the long chained molecules containing carbon atoms (such as amino & fatty acids) that we often dose to feed our reefs. It is my understanding (and I must give Zayn credit for this after long discussions with him) that stony corals often feed on this directly out of the water column to acquire energy, along with the energy in the form of glucose, glycerol and amino acids that the photosynthetic zooxanthellae algae within the coral provides it. I have heard that stony corals absorb very little inorganic nutrients such as ammonia, nitrate or phosphate and that excessive amounts of these elements can inhibit stony coral growth (that we all know).
On the other hand, to my knowledge, soft corals can only feed on inorganic nutrients as they have no means of absorbing organics from the water column, combined with nutrients produced by their zooxanthellae. This also includes all types of algae, which are only capable of feeding of inorganic compounds such as nitrate and phosphate.
Therefor, in sps reef tanks, should we not try to keep organic nutrients relatively high yet low inorganic nutrients? To achieve this it is counter intuitive to use a protein skimmer as they only remove the organic nutrients which we want, yet are afraid to see break down into inorganic nutrients. So why then do we use skimmers? For all of the other benefits of impurities that they remove from our water & to prevent the organic nutrients from converting into inorganic nutrients by removing it before it can? Why not ONLY use macroalge filters and algae turf scrubbers which absorb inorganic nutrients once it has formed? (they can be messy, unsightly and time consuming to maintain and are often not setup on a big enough scale with proper lighting?)
In a softy/mixed reef it is desirable to have slightly higher amounts of inorganic nutrients for the non stony corals to feed on, yet when these compounds become too concentrated in our tanks they fuel algae blooms.
Sorry for the poor structure, just wanted to throw out some ideas and see what you guys think...
Organic nutrients are the long chained molecules containing carbon atoms (such as amino & fatty acids) that we often dose to feed our reefs. It is my understanding (and I must give Zayn credit for this after long discussions with him) that stony corals often feed on this directly out of the water column to acquire energy, along with the energy in the form of glucose, glycerol and amino acids that the photosynthetic zooxanthellae algae within the coral provides it. I have heard that stony corals absorb very little inorganic nutrients such as ammonia, nitrate or phosphate and that excessive amounts of these elements can inhibit stony coral growth (that we all know).
On the other hand, to my knowledge, soft corals can only feed on inorganic nutrients as they have no means of absorbing organics from the water column, combined with nutrients produced by their zooxanthellae. This also includes all types of algae, which are only capable of feeding of inorganic compounds such as nitrate and phosphate.
Therefor, in sps reef tanks, should we not try to keep organic nutrients relatively high yet low inorganic nutrients? To achieve this it is counter intuitive to use a protein skimmer as they only remove the organic nutrients which we want, yet are afraid to see break down into inorganic nutrients. So why then do we use skimmers? For all of the other benefits of impurities that they remove from our water & to prevent the organic nutrients from converting into inorganic nutrients by removing it before it can? Why not ONLY use macroalge filters and algae turf scrubbers which absorb inorganic nutrients once it has formed? (they can be messy, unsightly and time consuming to maintain and are often not setup on a big enough scale with proper lighting?)
In a softy/mixed reef it is desirable to have slightly higher amounts of inorganic nutrients for the non stony corals to feed on, yet when these compounds become too concentrated in our tanks they fuel algae blooms.
Sorry for the poor structure, just wanted to throw out some ideas and see what you guys think...
