Quote:
Originally Posted by laverda
I agree. I had a fair bit of green hair algae in my display and my large Refugium full of cheeto was not doing the job. I added the ATS and the algae in the display started to go away within a month.
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This is how people become "believers".
We need to understand what's taking place here. In the beginning, you had X amount of nutrients fueling X amount of algae growth. All you did was provide an environment that was more conducive to turf algae growth than your display was. Which was the introduction of the ATS. This didn't clean up the system or make any major changes to the amount of algae it can support. It simply gave the algae a better place to live. A place where it's ability to grow and reproduce is accelerated, and without grazers to consume it. The algae in the ATS prospered as the algae in the display suffered.
So what happens from here??? Turf algae doesn't magically make nutrients disappear. It simply takes inorganic nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, and binds them into organic form where they're no longer detectable with your test kits. This makes people think that their ATS is preforming some kind of miracle. It isn't.
The "believers" say that they harvest a portion of the algae periodically, and with it, the nutrients it bound into organic form. This is said to reduce the overall nutrient level of the system. It doesn't quite work that way with turf algae.
As I said in my previous post, turf algae is constantly shedding fragments and spores. The supporters of ATS's say this simply provides food for "beneficial" creatures like worms and pods. They don't want to get into what happens to the fragments and spores that aren't eaten, or what happens to them after they are eaten.
This organic matter ends up in various places throughout the system. It accumulates in the sand and pores of the rocks where it slowly decomposes. This is the process by which nature increases the nutrient content of environments. This is not a means to reduce nutrients.
Either eaten or not by worms and pods, microbes go to work breaking down this organic matter to fuel their own growth and reproduction. Other organisms feed on these microbes, and still larger organisms feed on them. All of these creatures, typically short lived, die and decompose. This only fuels more growth, and the nutrients that were originally delivered with the fragments and spores of turf algae are simply recycled over and over, countless times within the system. Over time, the areas where this takes place become more and more nutrient rich.
If this takes place in an area that is exposed to light, or the original area grows to the point that it becomes exposed to light, and a turf algae spore lands there, it can utilize the nutrients available to sprout into a new colony of turf algae. The strands of algae trap more organic particles, increasing the local nutrient level even more, and fueling even more growth. In time, the ability of turf algae within the system, to spread and conquer new territory grows stronger and stronger.
This is the process that makes places like the Brazilian rain forest possible. The rain is basically distilled water with a little dust in it. Not enough nutrients to fuel the explosion of plant life found there. The forest sits on a limestone bed, just like our reef tanks do. So...... The forest has clean water delivered all the time, and it covers what we would call live rock. How is the explosion of plant life we see in the forest possible??????? It is through the processes I've been describing here. It is through mother natures ability to bind inorganic nutrients into organic form, and recycle those same nutrients over and over and over, countless times, holding them in one area. Until the plant life in that area grows and spreads to cover more that two million square miles. You would be hard pressed to find any plant life that is more efficient at this than turf algae.
The vast majority of the nutrients entering our systems should be through the food we feed. The more efficient we are at delivering those nutrients to the target organism, fish and coral, and then REMOVING those nutrients, the more nutrient poor our systems will be. In other words, the cleaner and healthier our systems will be for critters like fish and coral. When we start deliberately culturing an organism like turf algae, we are being counter productive to the idea of creating a more nutrient poor environment. The more hair algae we allow to grow anywhere in our systems, the greater its ability to spread. It's whole life strategy is to enrich new territory so that it can spread and grow.
So yes...... When an ATS is originally introduced into a system, we can see a shift in where the algae grows. This doesn't reduce the amount of algae the system grows. In fact, most people report an increase in algae growth. They even brag about it and post pic's of their algae covered screens. All the time having no idea what that algae growth is doing to their system.
Peace
EC