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Eric & Kim-
I wanted to Congratulate you guys on a job well done.
I thought your presentation was excellent and the qualitative data spoke for itself, it is clear that some salts promote or facilitate nuscience algae blooms, but I wait for your data to support or refute your hypothesis.
Unfortunately exciting partial data like what you presented has already made its way to the webboards and people are telling folks which salt is better or worst based on this incomplete data.
I don't envy you for having to crunch the sheer volume of data you guys have infront of you, but I will offer my assistance and support should you be interested.
Lastly, your photos of the copepod and algae arising from the sterile tanks was amazing and.....shall we say a concern
Frank
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"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities disguised as insolvable problems."- John Gardner
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Is there a place to get a copy of the slides you presented at macna? I found near the end it was a bit rushed, was hoping to look a bit closer at the data.
Thank you, and very excellent study, the results were quite amazing I thought.
-Garrett
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| Until Eric can return and answer some of these questions (if he chooses to or is able to take the time), can someone maybe take a moment and give a high-level overview of the findings? I wasn't able to attend, and I'd prefer the 'straight dope' rather than getting caught up reading questionable posts on other sites. Thanks!
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wpecoul (9/25/2006)
Until Eric can return and answer some of these questions (if he chooses to or is able to take the time), can someone maybe take a moment and give a high-level overview of the findings?
I don't remember the particular results of each of the dozen or so salts they tested, but I can tell you *very* basically what they did...
One 10g tank per salt over 10 months with monthly 100% water changes. Tanks each had one powerhead on one side and were covered with acrylic lids. Each tank had (among other things); a couple inches of substrate, small pieces of coral places on plateforms, macro algae and one pecula clown (all from the same brood).
Some of the things they looked at:
-nuisance (cyano, hair, etc.) algae growth
-coralline algae growth
-gross growth of coral frags (in terms of size and/or numbers of polyps)
-type of growth of coral (i.e. new branch growth on branching corals)
-fish growth/mortality
Borneman noted that his personal initial qualitative observation was that Red Sea and Reef Crystals had results most similar to natural sea water. The tank with Instant Ocean didn't seem to ever "catch up" with the rest of the tanks in terms of coraline growth and disappearance of nuisance algae. But both he and Kim reminded the crowd several times that they have a lot of work to do before the "official" quantitative results will be ready.
All in all, I'd say the study raised more questions than it answered (as novel studies almost always do). It will be interesting to see the final article and results.
Hope that helps... 
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I have a feeling that this study is going to be a topic of conversation for years to come.
FWIW, right when Ron's salt study come out a few years back, some local stores brought in Crystal Seas. When I switched from IO to CS, I had excellent results. I had more "bugs", less nuisance algae, and the tank looked better. But ... I was also a better aquarist at that point, and had added in some better systems for nutrient export. I was never really sure what role the salt played in all of this. Unfortunately, all the stores near me stopped stocking CS, as did the mail order places.
After switching back to IO, I started having problems with valonia ...
I have a bunch of IO on hand now, but I've always had this nagging suspcion that IO is not as good as CS.
Jason
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If I remember correctly, Crystal Seas was "tank D" which was the one that was a "surprise" because it looked bad for much of the study but then got a lot better towards the end. Knowing that the company recently totally changed their formula, I can't help but wonder if that's not what the "surprise" was. But I don't remember exactly when they changed their formula. So maybe that had nothing to do with it.
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Yes, I am very sorry for the rush at the end, and I really would have liked some more time for both of us to describe what we observed.
Long and short of it is that at this point we have data but we have not done any analyses to see if there is any significant differences in the growth, reproduction or mortality of the corals, fish, echinoderms, gastropods, sponges, octocorals, zoanthids, corallimorphs, algae or other species compared to the control.
What we presented were some interesting things - such as what Frank mentioned... finding various micro and turf-algae, copepods, and other microbes in tanks triple washed with autoclaved substrate, purified water and salt. We saw clear trends in some of the salt brands in terms of turf and cyanobacteria continuing to thrive in some salts and not in others. We saw very clear differences in coralline coverage and foraminiferan growth and variations in successional species. I mistakenly kept saying bryozoan rather than foraminiferan in the talk...my bad. We also saw, in some cases, very heavy undeisrable algal growth month after month even after removing it after each water change despite very low measurable inorganic nutrients, and very little undesirable algae growth in some cases where inorganic nutrients were quite measurable. The difference, as Habib Sekha rightfully pointed out, is probably the unmeasurable organic components, but then the question is why the difference in the dynamics of nutrients varied given the same treatments.
Because the study literally ended the day before the conference, there was no way to analyze the results. I will say that, at least from being familiar with the data and the appearance of the tanks and the survival and appearance of the species that there are certainly some salts I would prefer to use in my tank and some that I probably wouldn't use again, even though I have used them for many years without any obvious negative effects. I have a feeling that the reason these differences are not observed by those using these salts, myself included, is that the complexity of the reef tank community is able to mitigate the good and bad aspects of the salts that became apparent in a more controlled environment.
BUT, and I STRESS BUT, the results once analyzed might very well show there are no significant differences between the salts and the control. It appears from a cursory look at the data that at least for some species there will be a significant difference. If there is, then I think it will be interesting to go back and run replicates of those tanks and species and look more carefully at what factors might be at work to cause the differences, either better or worse.
Anecdotally from our observations and the overall appearance and experience with the nine salts tested - in other words, if the average person came into the lab and had to pick a tank they would want to take home - they would probably throw Tank J (Instant Ocean) away because of the continuous heavy cyanobacterial growth with every batch, and would probably choose Tank F (Red Sea) because of the heavy coralline growth, booming amphipod population (I still have to count all of them!!!), tight ball of Chaetomorpha, and overall apparent health of the species. Yet, some of the other tanks had reproduction that exceeded Tank F in some species, and concurrently had less that other salts, too. The control was not without mortality, either, and had relatively low algal growth (corallines and turfs/cyano) but was the first to show strong foram growth.
Basically, there are a lot of things that happened, lots of data, pluses and minuses in each tank, and until we do the analyses, there really can't be an informed answer as to what salts are great or not so great.
Frank, I appreciate your offer. Rob Toonen and I spoke quite a bit last night as to how to approch the statstics, and I would like to talk with you about it as well. There are likely limitations to how much we can actually say and I need to think about how best to approach and get as much information out of what we did as possible. Some things are straightforward, others not so easy, and some may indicate something significant that will require more testing and replication.
The good thing is we have samples for further analyses and I would finally end this post by saying this is far from the definitive study. I hope it will be a platform that can be used for further work, comparison and discussion.
_____________________
Eric Borneman
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Yes, I am very sorry for the rush at the end, and I really would have liked some more time for both of us to describe what we observed.
Long and short of it is that at this point we have data but we have not done any analyses to see if there is any significant differences in the growth, reproduction or mortality of the corals, fish, echinoderms, gastropods, sponges, octocorals, zoanthids, corallimorphs, algae or other species compared to the control.
What we presented were some interesting things - such as what Frank mentioned... finding various micro and turf-algae, copepods, and other microbes in tanks triple washed with autoclaved substrate, purified water and salt. We saw clear trends in some of the salt brands in terms of turf and cyanobacteria continuing to thrive in some salts and not in others. We saw very clear differences in coralline coverage and foraminiferan growth and variations in successional species. I mistakenly kept saying bryozoan rather than foraminiferan in the talk...my bad. We also saw, in some cases, very heavy undeisrable algal growth month after month even after removing it after each water change despite very low measurable inorganic nutrients, and very little undesirable algae growth in some cases where inorganic nutrients were quite measurable. The difference, as Habib Sekha rightfully pointed out, is probably the unmeasurable organic components, but then the question is why the difference in the dynamics of nutrients varied given the same treatments.
Because the study literally ended the day before the conference, there was no way to analyze the results. I will say that, at least from being familiar with the data and the appearance of the tanks and the survival and appearance of the species that there are certainly some salts I would prefer to use in my tank and some that I probably wouldn't use again, even though I have used them for many years without any obvious negative effects. I have a feeling that the reason these differences are not observed by those using these salts, myself included, is that the complexity of the reef tank community is able to mitigate the good and bad aspects of the salts that became apparent in a more controlled environment.
BUT, and I STRESS BUT, the results once analyzed might very well show there are no significant differences between the salts and the control. It appears from a cursory look at the data that at least for some species there will be a significant difference. If there is, then I think it will be interesting to go back and run replicates of those tanks and species and look more carefully at what factors might be at work to cause the differences, either better or worse.
Anecdotally from our observations and the overall appearance and experience with the nine salts tested - in other words, if the average person came into the lab and had to pick a tank they would want to take home - they would probably throw Tank J (Instant Ocean) away because of the continuous heavy cyanobacterial growth with every batch, and would probably choose Tank F (Red Sea) because of the heavy coralline growth, booming amphipod population (I still have to count all of them!!!), tight ball of Chaetomorpha, and overall apparent health of the species. Yet, some of the other tanks had reproduction that exceeded Tank F in some species, and concurrently had less that other salts, too. The control was not without mortality, either, and had relatively low algal growth (corallines and turfs/cyano) but was the first to show strong foram growth.
Basically, there are a lot of things that happened, lots of data, pluses and minuses in each tank, and until we do the analyses, there really can't be an informed answer as to what salts are great or not so great.
Frank, I appreciate your offer. Rob Toonen and I spoke quite a bit last night as to how to approch the statstics, and I would like to talk with you about it as well. There are likely limitations to how much we can actually say and I need to think about how best to approach and get as much information out of what we did as possible. Some things are straightforward, others not so easy, and some may indicate something significant that will require more testing and replication.
The good thing is we have samples for further analyses and I would finally end this post by saying this is far from the definitive study. I hope it will be a platform that can be used for further work, comparison and discussion.
_____________________
Eric Borneman
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eric could you contact me as i had some questions about the study and permission to use pics of the slides shown.
is there any chance the slide show would be reproduced in a digital format? my club would like to see it for them selves.
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Yes, I can post it on a website for download...give me through this weekend. I need to change my server anyway.
So, email me at eborneman@uh.edu for questions.
_____________________
Eric Borneman
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