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Unread 01/30/2016, 09:51 AM   #2882
karimwassef
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Dallas, TX
Posts: 11,033
that's bleak, DNA

Nature has dinos too. It also has ebola.

There are pathogens - we are never "free" of them. But that doesn't mean that life is doom and gloom. Let's inject some hope.

I recently had a small resurgence of a patch of dinos coincident with a coral death. The coral was encrusting but had thick porous tissue (monti spongodes) and had been growing on the rock until another parasite (monti nudi) killed it. I couldn't remove it, so it was decaying in place.

I noticed the dinos growing over it, but didn't do anything about it to see what would happen. I noticed pods coming out and feeding in the area in the dark, BUT the dinos were mostly GONE by then...

This was frustrating. As soon as the predators would come out to eat them, they'd disappear into the water column. By day, the fish were awake and the pods were hiding. So the dinos rematerialized in the same area. My enemy's enemy, I guess.

I let this go on for a month. They were contained on that space and didn't spread, but they weren't wiped out, either. I expected that they'd eat the dead coral tissue and then starve...

I used some superglue to cover up the area, but they found enough little gaps to continue to feed on the rock infused coral carcass.

THEN - I noticed a little patch on another rock in my low flow area where I had accidentally bumped my polyp rock against it - leaving some dead coral residue.

Same activity - pods at night = dino disappear. pods hiding by day = dino reappear to feed on dead coral region.

The area was difficult to access, so I couldn't clean up the residue.

So - I turned up my UV from 6 hours at night to 24/7! A week later, both regions are clear.

I can't be sure of all my cause-effect conclusions, but the facts are the facts. You can draw your own conclusions.


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