WaterNotes

20: Seven months

December 20, 2005 on 1:57 am | In aquaria |

The nicest change to the tank has been the addition of a really beautiful specimen of Halymenia floresii, sometimes referred to as ‘dragon’s tongue macroalgae’. This was an LFS rescue, it was growing at the top of one of their stand pipes in a hypnotic undulating flow. I talked them out of the hitchhiker. In my tank, and under considerable more light than the LFS, it suddenly fluoresced to a bright amazing orange color at the ends of the fronds. Oooh.

Unfortunately this state did not last and by the next morning the gorgeous orange had faded to the normal red coloration and some patterns of clear areas where the thallus and fronds had apparently bleached under the light load. Interesting notes for future use at least. I tied the algae peices to rocks with cotton thread and am hoping for attachment and proliferation with this species. It really is gorgeous, I’m quite happy.

Thanks to Nick, a local reefer, I also have a start of what is mostly likely Ochtodes secundirema! Its not much to look at at the moment without actinics supplements and being a very recent addition to the tank (tonight in fact).

The shoal grass in front of the turtle grass has started to pick up some speed. In addition to the rhizomes that are producing new plantlets I also added another thirty plants to this front section to speed up density in the area. If you recall the ten gallon tank I started out with a pretty heavy planting density and found this to be the best situation for the tank. Lots of plants, means they can uptake all the provided nutrients out of the way of nuisance microalgaes. I’d love to see the same growth rates as I did with the ten gallon but I dont think the substrate is thick enough with nutrients to do it.

Mud Enrichments.. mmmm Mud

Which brings me to substrate enrichment. How do you enrich an established grass bed without ripping up the whole setup? Further.. how do you keep jawfish in a tank where you have soil or other stratified muds in use? Well.. you dont. Seriously, this tank does have stratified layers or wild collected mud (now nearly a year old) along with a bit of Schultz Aquatic Plant Soil at the very bottom. The jawfish didnt seem bothered by digging through this.. however, neither are really thick with nutrients. So now what to do to get better nutrients into the beds for the plants?

Well… the jawfish doesnt move his burrow very often. I had an incident a few weeks back with the little guy suddenly deciding to plow three satellite burrows but this behavior literally stopped overnight. Its hard to say when and where he will strike again but I did notice the second time he shoveled a bit in the back of the tank this past weekend that these behavioral quirks coincide with the need for a weekly waterchange. Is he being quirky due to some sort of buildup? Or.. ?

At any rate, there are certainly sections of the tank he has left alone because of the thick growth of roots and grasses making burrowing rather bothersome. Into these sections is where I most need to add additional nutrients. Two options really. I can further supplement the substrate with chemically based fertilizers, or I can try to inject muddy water into the substrate. I favor the muddy water approach honestly. In theory I will be replacing the current pore water (water inbetween the substrate grains) from relatively clean water to muddy, silt laden water. All you need is a mud source and a syringe barrel (or even a pipet) without the needle.

I know, this sounds truly whacky, but what have you read on this site that ever seemed to follow convention?

To experiment a bit with the idea I tried injecting mud into plain aragonite in small cups in a shallow container of water without pumps. Pretty simple matter to mix up heavily sedimented mud and then inject it. No puffs of water over the surface, no cloudy water. Wonderful. Then I took this to the dynamic environment of my aquarium with all the water movement. Very very little in the way of mud disruption in the water column. And it was very obvious by inspecting underneath my open frame tank stand that the mud ‘injections’ were working their way through the substrate. In fact, I have quite a few spot still to cover judging by the color of the substrate. Time will tell whether or not this seems to help out grass growth in these spots.

Oh.. what did I use? Walt Smith’s relatively new product called Fiji Gold refugium mud. This is a pretty inexpensive product and I can tell you from first hand intimate knowledge that the mud they pack and ship is nearly the exact same quality and consistency of richly sedimented mud flows in mangrove swamp areas. This is the soil that produces phenomenal seagrass beds in the wild. I think a single 12oz container of this stuff, added to the bottom layers of a seagrass aquarium to bare aragonite, would really jumpstart a system. I myself did not start up the original 10gallon with much more than a few pounds of this same type of marine mud. Weiss’s F.O.R.M might also be a good choice, as well as Sy’s Miracle Mud. Another substrate, that is not a candidate for injections but should be wonderful for growth, is CaribSea’s Mineral Mud. I am currently running trials on various substrates and will keep you all updated with results.

Hormone Injections.. we have officially gone overboard

Soon you will all know me for the crazy aquarist I am apparently becoming.

I read a wonderful article by actual seagrass biologists stating that an even ratio mix of gibberellic acid and a cytokinin (both of these plant hormones needed for growth regulation) injected into the substrates of scarred seagrass beds encouraged the regeneration and regrowth of turtle grass into these disturbed areas. Interesting news.

I have not done enough work with these hormone injections in the display tank or even the experimental tanks to know whether or not anything is really happening. However, I did notice a big pick up in shoal grass leaf development, new plant development and stargrass plantlet development. Everything seems to have picked up speed. Hard to know whether that is attributable to mud enrichment, hormones or other, so I have started an isolated tank to try to reduce the number of variables and see how this goes.

Now, trust me, I’m not going to start advocating everyone add hormones to their topoff water. Its been hard enough suggesting people to add chelated iron and nitrates. Hehehe.

Halophila Developments

Other developments to report are the stargrass flowers that are popping up all over the tank suddenly. I’m really not sure why. Temperature has cooled off a few degrees in the tank, but photoperiod, intensity, nutrients and other factors havent changed at all. Seagrasses do reproduce in seasonal cycles in the wild, but I’m not sold that temperature was a trigger for my captive colonies.

I am also dying to get ahold of Halophila decipiens. Keep your fingers crossed. By the time you read this I will be cruising the IRL again in Florida looking for a stranded colony or two to coax into existence for aquaria keeping. It would make for the fifth species of seagrass in our hobby if it works. I can only hope it does as well as stargrass has in captive situations.