Plankton in our Reef Tanks?

[Anonymous]

How much plankton does one find occuring naturally in a healthy reef tank? How can we encourage the growth of a natural population of plankton?

I understand that an abundant and varied presence of plankton is essential for raising many currently un-breedable fish species...

How about setting up one of those phytoplankton "culturing stations" next to the tank, then using a dosing meter have overflow from the station trickle into the tank.

Anybody have any thoughts re this?

(As SPC pointed out, plankton is most effective in our reef tanks!

)

[ September 16, 2001: Message edited by: Cheese Sandwich ]

 

[tomocean]

I've wondered if this is something I could and should measure. I was thinking of taking a microscope and doing measurements to see how much plankton is in my system. Of course, you'd need to have baseline measurements from natural plankton levels on reefs in the wild.

 

[SPC]

Cheese, are you referring to whats actually in the water, your post says ON our reef tanks

.
Seriously though, this is a good question and one that has been addressed to some extent by others (Dr Ron, Eric Borneman etc..). Their contention, as I remember it is that there is no way to have as high or as diverse as what is found on the reefs. I do however think this is an important factor to try and replicate in our tanks, and would like to see further study done by all of us. I also find your idea of setting up a seperate culture to have merit. My opinion has been that many of us try to keep to diverse a group of animals in one system and if we would stick with one particular group (as far as food requirements) we would be much more successful.
Steve

 

[DKKA]

Power outages can be fun. I had one last week that extended on into the night. About midnight I found myself poking around the tanks with a flashlight. I was amazed at the amount of plankton in the water column in my 150gal prop system. I was reminded of a mudpuddle loaded with mosquito larvae. Except everything was much smaller. If not for complete darkness and stillness of the water none of this plankton would have been visible to the eye.

There are no fish in my prop system. But FWIW, in my main reef tank I found a lot of mysis scurrying about, but didn't see the same amount of small zooplankton in the water column.

I'd wager a refugium that is larger than your main tank would be the better than a dosing system for maintaining plankton levels. (If only our spouses would allow us to park 300gal stock tanks next to all our reefs)
Dan

[ September 16, 2001: Message edited by: DKKA ]

 

[2poor2reef]

My thoughts run along the lines of DKKA. If you reversed the relative sizes of our typical main tank vs dsb refugium ratio you might begin to generate the plankton available on a reef.