Best amino acid supplement (zeovit, redsea, two little fishes)

[Relativity]

The zeovit AA's use so much less then the other brands. What do you think is better dumping in tens of millitres of redsea or power or the drop in five bucket zeovit method?

How long do AA's stay availble in the water after dosed?
What is the concentration of AA's on a typical reef?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've never seen any data on how long amino acids remain in the water before being taken up by something, but I'd expect that if you dose regularly, there will at least be bacteria present that will rapidly consume them even if nothing else does.

Individual amino acids in the ocean would be fairly low, just a few percent of the total dissolved organic matter (1-3% being the sum of all of them). So that puts the sum total for all amino acids at about 0.01 to 0.1 ppm. Proteins and peptides (many amino acids connected together) may be the more predominate form than individual amino acids. I do not believe that anyone justifies amino acid dosing by trying to match the ocean (and, in fact, I've never seen any measured levels in reef tanks to know if we might already have natural levels or even higher), but rather empirically improve the nutrition of organisms since we often cannot easily feed the normal foods that corals and such usually consume.

This has more:

Organic Compounds in the Reef Aquarium
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/rhf/index.htm