Great article!

[sfsuphysics]

Man that was one fantastic article, my experience with seagrass was limiited, to the point where I basically did all the things that end up killing sea grass in the wild, suffocate via nuisance algae & having herbivores (DOH! Rabbit fish)...

But that article really makes me want to start up a sea grass lagoon refugium.

Only issue I have is how much water is going to heat up via using natural sunlight (as natural as it gets here in San Francisco) as a primary light source, I've seen a small tank (38G) get up to 90F just from being next to a window, and I'm worried that I'll over heat (fluctuate) a maintank that's hooked to it (115G). But these are all things worth trying to enjoy the hobby.

[Gary Majchrzak]

Great piece. :thumbsup:

[Samala]

Thanks Mike and Gary! You have got a beautiful tank btw. :D

Mike - if the high temperature spikes are intermittent and only occur on a few days a year the seagrasses wont mind. The inline tank with more sensitive things will probably not be quite as forgiving. Same for invertebrates, corals and fish you might have in with the seagrasses on those high temperature days. Anywho, thought I would toss that out there. They do not do well at these temps long term, of course, but a few days of high temp wont kill them. In the shallow areas all of the seagrasses would experience extremely high temperatures.. as much as 92F recorded in some areas in my notebooks (with Halophila and Halodule occurring).

Last summer several of my tanks hit 88F and I didnt lose any animals or plants - though I restrict stocking to pretty minimal/hardy selections.

Perhaps you could use T5/PC/MH to supplement natural light, especially during the summer when temps might encourage the tank to overload for heat.

>Sarah

[sfsuphysics]

Hey Sarah:

Yeah I wasn't so concerned with days when the temperature would be high since those 3 days of the year when it might be over 80F here in SF can be handled I think, my concern was actual solar radiation heating up the water as was the case with my sunlit frag tank, the ambient air temp wasn't any higher than 75F but the tank got up to 90F from all the light shining on it, luckily my soft corals while pretty P.O. did survive. So I would suspect a a similar swing (although my idea isn't a full sun tank, you mentioned 10-30% irradiance... really need that par meter, so figured a partially shaded area might suffice).

Just wondered if there was some ratio of sun'd to "unsun'd" water that might provide a happy medium for stable temperature around the clock. Oh well I could always think smaller and get away with a large "unsun'd" volume that is the main tank (T5 lights only) and be ok with stability :)

[jmanrow]

Hi Sarah!

I just read your excellent article in Reefkeeing Magazine "Beyond The Refugium: Seagrass Aquaria" last night. It looks like you have covered just about everything!

I had quite a setback in the growth of my seagrasses - Stargrass (Halophila engelmannii) and Shoal grass (Halodule wrightii) after I had to move my tanks due to remodeling at our apartment complex. I just started CO2 injection the other day using a DIY sugar/yeast reactor. It looks like the plants are slowly recovering from the move. Do you think having to put the sand from the DSB into buckets the last move back had something to do with the growth stopping and diatom bloom?

After I get these plants re-established, I'm definately going to keep them in more than one aquarium in case of a crash.

Nice to see you have your own forum now. This is great!

[Samala]

those 3 days of the year when it might be over 80F here in SF can be handled I think, my concern was actual solar radiation heating up the water... although my idea isn't a full sun tank, you mentioned 10-30% irradiance... so figured a partially shaded area might suffice.

Right, solar load heating up the water. Honestly with a tank nearing 40gallons I'm surprised to see so much temp increase. I think my old planted 30gallon would swing about 5degF after a full day of sunlight. Like you said, shading the tank should help immensely. ;)

I'm not sure about a ratio of sun/no sun. But shading with some of the cloths that greenhouses use to cut down on irradiance levels might work beautifully. I wonder what the coral greenhouse guys use in these situations?

>Sarah

[Samala]

I had quite a setback in the growth of my seagrasses - Stargrass (Halophila engelmannii) and Shoal grass (Halodule wrightii) after I had to move my tanks.. I just started CO2 injection the other day using a DIY sugar/yeast reactor. It looks like the plants are slowly recovering from the move. Do you think having to put the sand from the DSB into buckets the last move back had something to do with the growth stopping and diatom bloom?

Hey John! So nice to see you here. :)

Did you see the quick part on microbial associations in the article? It was something Eric Borneman brought to my attention a little less than a month ago, before then I had no idea microbe/rhizophere associations existed for seagrasses. I really should have suspected it though, these kind of things are fairly prevalent among land plants. I've been reading a lot on the subject ever since.

Anywho, moving the DSB into buckets and keeping the plants separate for a part of the move may have disturbed these microbe populations. In fact it may have killed some of the microbes in the substrate. Since Halophila/Halodule/Syringodium all do well without transplanting soil (like when I initially sent you Halophila) I've been thinking that the plants have enough of these essential bacteria in their roots/rhizomes to repopulate their new substrate and new tanks.

But, if you were to transplant them again into substrate without much of the bacteria intact, you might get a transplant shock response once again. Which.. sounds like what happened here. If the plants are recovering then I would guess those bacteria are doing their job and are 'rebuilding' their populations.

Oh, I should say that it looks like Halophila and Halodule can live without those bacteria at all. A few researchers have taken plants, sterilized them of everything, and still had the plants do well. SO, these little microbes seem to have a supporting role for these two genuses and arent an absolute necessity (unlike Thalassia.. which is why I believe I have had such rotten luck with them). It also brings up some interesting questions for us as far as using Thalassia seedlings/seeds/fruits. Will they have the bacteria? Or do they have to go into substrate that has it?

What does this mean for your tank.. Sounds like things are recovering, which is of course great news. In the future it might be a good idea to try to scoop the plants out of the substrate and keep them as plugs. Stick that whole plug into a holding tank environment and then transplant the entire thing (which will likely be a bit of a mess).

Having a backup population sounds like a good idea to me too! I keep backups of all the plants now, and of course there is no better backup than having other aquarists keep the population alive in other parts of the country. ;)

I'm very excited about the CO2 - definitely keep me posted on that!

>Sarah

[rmerrill]

Enjoyed your article.

I have a 90 gal. seahorse tank and would like to include sea grasses. Where could I get some?:)

[Samala]

Hi Merrill! Thank you, glad you found it useful. :) If you go to the marine plants board there is a stickie at the top for vendors who carry marine plants.. but as a quick top two links floridapets (dotcom) and billsreef (dotcom) both carry plants.

>Sarah

[Brad A.]

Excellent article! Great job.

[L and L]

Excellent article. Thanks.

It's very refreshing to see a different "green" plant that can help our aquarium and also provide some beauty.



good job,

layne

[MCsaxmaster]

Nice to see folks beginning to branch out a little bit. :thumbsup: