Quote:
Originally Posted by PowermanKW
One thing I am most concerned with is if pellets leach carbon... not bad necessarily, but keeping the carbon source isolated in a reactor is one of the big advantages over dosing the whole tank. So if that is not a benefit... that sort of sucks. I do believe there is some indirect loss of carbon to the water column by the bacteria breaking it down, but would imagine it is small and there is really nothing that can be done about that. Something like "messy eaters".
The other thing brought up that is a big question mark..... just what type of bacteria colonize the pellets. I have read other articles about the well known uptake ratio of NO3 and PO4 of bacteria.... and that while different carbon sources may vary well benefit different strains of bacteria.... the NO3 PO4 uptake is not going to be significatly different. Please, somebody correct me if that is wrong.
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I don't know how the actual polymers interact with the different chemicals found in a reef aquarium. Perhaps some of it is acted on by certain chemicals found in a tank's water and brake the molecule down into smaller chemical compo nets and it slowly dissolves into the water column. As the bacteria feed on the polymer, the same can happen (brake the molecule into smaller compo nets). Some may sluff off as molecules of the actual polymer. I suspect that the answer is all of the above, but what degree I have no idea and how long components of the polymer which have been broken down last before they are reduced to smaller components may come into play.
There can be different bacteria which feed on and reduce the different parts of the molecule as it brakes down. So there may be a variety of species involved in the total process of braking down the polymers to the final products. Usually the bacteria that are most efficient at braking down the components are the dominate ones. The chemicals produced by the bacteria in the process, can act as a chemical warfare agent to kill off other bacteria also. So these chemical warfare agents come into play in the total process also. Kind of complicated.
