Amino acids

[Agu]

Dr Ron,

In your article you bring up the amino acids as the building blocks of animal and cell tissue. Coincidently, I had an opportunity to discuss the use of natural seawater vs artificial seawater with one of the lead aquarists at the Mote Aquarium in sarasota, Fl. Their experience is that local seawater carries the risk of cryptocarion and nuisance algae. However he feels that artificial seawater is missing the amino acids necessary for maximum coral growth/health. Comment on that opinion ? If natural seawater has these amino acids is there a way to treat natural seawater that eliminates the risks without destroying the available amino acids?

Agu

[rshimek]

Hi Agu,

The amount of dissolved amino acids in natural sea water is minimal, far too small to make a difference in coral growth. If you are worryed about losing this though, simply filter the NSW through a 1 micrometer or finer filter, or autoclave it. The filtration or autoclaving will remove any pathogens.

Filtering is easy and cheap. Frankly when I have had the possibility of using NSW pumped in from the sea, I have used it just straight (and I have used it for as long as 5 years at a stretch in my research tanks). Worrying about diseases is ridiculous. The diseases become manifest when the conditions are not optimal. So... maybe the guys at Mote need to re-evaluate how they deal with things. :D

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