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  #176  
Old 05/29/2006, 01:22 PM
JCDelbeek JCDelbeek is offline
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3-D: That depends on what you are calling "eel grass". Zostera is eel grass, while Thalassia is usually called turtle grass. In my experience, Thalassia usually does better if you transplant it whole if possible. It is also possible that Sarah has a better touch than I.

Aloha!
JCD
  #177  
Old 05/29/2006, 02:09 PM
3D-Reef 3D-Reef is offline
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Your right,I ment turtle grass.
Sarah does have that "touch" alright.
One more question.If Sarah doesn't mind.
In Your book,vol3,You ellude to having sulfer in a DSB may release/assimilate Po4.Could this be useful for our plants?Also could this help with "old tank syndrome"?
Clay
  #178  
Old 05/29/2006, 10:08 PM
Samala Samala is offline
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JC - What a pleasure to have you stop by the forum!

The best side effect of CO2 dosing has been that alkalinity and pH values are much more stabilized throughout the day. I was having to supplement alkalinity, much as you would Ca/Alk in a full blown reef, daily. I no longer need to do this and alkalinity does not erode through the day, more on the timeline of through the week. About 0.5 meq/L difference from water change to water change. Given all the other odds and ends that may or may not be depleted during this time, I go ahead with a water change instead of supplementing alk specifically.

I have not been as good about following Ca. I dont trust my test kits to tell me if there are small ups/downs going on between water changes, but the values always seem steady. I also do not have calcerous macroalgae in the tank at the moment.. and cant seem to maintain them long term. Why that should be, is a mystery.

There are probably a number of WQ values I should be testing for that I'm not.. such as potassium, iodine, copper, etc. Ah, someday.

>Sarah
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  #179  
Old 05/29/2006, 10:17 PM
Samala Samala is offline
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Oh, and to add to JCD's comments on Thalassia: if you have access to plants which are still maintained as rhizome fragments, or a small 'colony' of plants, I would keep them this way when you transplant. All of the seagrasses I've tried so far do best -- recover faster and have better growth -- when they are kept together and not planted individually.

Thalassia in my experience is the only plant which will survive being transplanted as a single plant. The others I've attempted: Syringodium, three Halophila, Halodule, Zostera, will not survive this without a lot of coddling (ie. no competition for light or nutrients, as is the case in tissue culture or 'nursery' aquariums I've setup).

I am however starting to think that Thalassia only seems to survive in many of these cases. The plants will last a tremendous amount of time, seeming to draw upon resources stored up in their relatively large rhizomes and roots, before expiring. I have had plants for over a year now that have diminished slowly in leaf size, width and in overall mass. The others, with perhaps smaller resource pools, do not last longer than a week or so when transplanted singly.

However.. the jury is still out on Thalassia.. as I need to square away the issue of beneficial microbes in the rhizomes. So, the question is, does Thalassia also have a 'critical mass' of plants needed for successful transplant? Or, does it really come down to preserving microbe populations? Perhaps either way works, there are several examples of people growing Thalassia in aquaria successfully long term. If they're out there, I'd love to hear their methods of transplanting this species. Single plants without native bed material (and likely killing any microbes) didnt work for me.

>Sarah
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"Wild means everyone owns it, and no one owns it." ~3rd grader
  #180  
Old 05/29/2006, 11:26 PM
JCDelbeek JCDelbeek is offline
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Adding CO2 gives the plants a means to obtain carbon so that they do not have to go after that contained in carbonates and bicarbonates once they strip out the CO2 in the water naturally ... this is why the pH does not go too high and the alkalinity is better preserved. But I am sure you already know that.

Have you tried iron additions? I once read in a journal that seagrasses are iron limited when growing in calcareous based substrata ... I haven't been able to find that reference for the life of me though!

I have grown both T. testudinum and T. hemprichi as well as Enhalus, Halodule, Halophila and Syringodium and another unidentified species from Tonga. They definitely do better with a high nutrient load and abundant light. Right now I only have Enhalus and T. hemprichi in my display, along with mangroves. I'll have to take some pics again. Here is one from Nov. 2005.

P.S. Did you get my PM?

Aloha!
JCD[
  #181  
Old 05/29/2006, 11:35 PM
JCDelbeek JCDelbeek is offline
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Okay ... how do I insert a pic without having to use the photo gallery option so the image appears in the message??

Aloha!
JCD
  #182  
Old 05/29/2006, 11:48 PM
cb9tunerguy cb9tunerguy is offline
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i kept diy co2 set up on my live planted fw tank and i had tremendous results with it.
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  #183  
Old 05/30/2006, 12:12 AM
Samala Samala is offline
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The images need to be hosted elsewhere on the web and then linked here using IMG tags. Photobucket.com is a nice service, and free. See this thread for instructions: Photobucket quick faq.

I'll have to look to see if I can find a reference for iron limitation. That's news to me. I am dosing iron, but am not sold as to how beneficial it is. It does disappear in a planted tank, but whether thats actually the plants is up to debate. We had a long discussion on ups/downs/sideways of iron dosing and how and when it might be safe to experiment with in this thread.

Have you tried CO2 dosing yourself on any of the seagrass setups? Are you also experiencing carbonate/alkalinity loss in these aquariums, or is there a system setup to automatically provide C in some form? It would be great to get confirmation (if you will) that other people see these same effects in their marine planted tanks.

PS: I got your PM and responded, check your inbox.

>Sarah
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"Seaweed is cool, seaweed is fun, it makes its food from the rays of the sun!"
"Wild means everyone owns it, and no one owns it." ~3rd grader
  #184  
Old 05/30/2006, 01:18 AM
El-ahrairah El-ahrairah is offline
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In my experience, I have not had a problem getting single plants of shoal, manatee, and turtle grass to survive and thrive. But groups of plants do seem to recover faster than single plants.

However, I always plant the seagrasses during the initial setup of the tank and give them a good 4-6 weeks to settle in. During this time I dose with CO2 to give the plants easier access to carbon. The only other main tank inhabitants at this time are snails and amphipods to keep the microalgae from growing on the leaves.

In my experience CO2 leads to faster new growth of the plants. But I stop dosing CO2 once I start adding fish and some of the other bigger fauna to the tanks, so I don't have any longterm experience with CO2. Because I like high bioloads (which also helps the plants... no need to dose extra nutrients), I have had bad experiences with keeping the CO2 going... the fish don't seem to like it. I'm sure the seagrasses would prefer the extra CO2, but they don't seem to need it.

-Michael
  #185  
Old 05/30/2006, 10:58 PM
Samala Samala is offline
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Michael, where have you been hiding the last few months? I'm thrilled to see another seagrass person posting to the board! If you have any photos of the tank setup(s) with seagrass/high bioload and CO2 dosed (or not dosed) tanks I would love for you to start a thread and post any particulars you want to share and how you acheived the setup. We definitely need more input than I could ever provide and I like having lots of thoughts and ideas churning about. Do you do any dosing now -- carbon source, calcium, iron, etc? Anything you want to share we'd be very happy to add to the collective wisdom. Algaeguy would probably be interested to talk 'grass with you.. he's out your way and mulling over seagrass aquariums.

>Sarah
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"Seaweed is cool, seaweed is fun, it makes its food from the rays of the sun!"
"Wild means everyone owns it, and no one owns it." ~3rd grader
  #186  
Old 05/31/2006, 05:24 PM
3D-Reef 3D-Reef is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Samala
Oh, and to add to JCD's comments on Thalassia: if you have access to plants which are still maintained as rhizome fragments, or a small 'colony' of plants, I would keep them this way when you transplant. All of the seagrasses I've tried so far do best -- recover faster and have better growth -- when they are kept together and not planted individually.

Thalassia in my experience is the only plant which will survive being transplanted as a single plant. The others I've attempted: Syringodium, three Halophila, Halodule, Zostera, will not survive this without a lot of coddling (ie. no competition for light or nutrients, as is the case in tissue culture or 'nursery' aquariums I've setup).

I am however starting to think that Thalassia only seems to survive in many of these cases. The plants will last a tremendous amount of time, seeming to draw upon resources stored up in their relatively large rhizomes and roots, before expiring. I have had plants for over a year now that have diminished slowly in leaf size, width and in overall mass. The others, with perhaps smaller resource pools, do not last longer than a week or so when transplanted singly.

However.. the jury is still out on Thalassia.. as I need to square away the issue of beneficial microbes in the rhizomes. So, the question is, does Thalassia also have a 'critical mass' of plants needed for successful transplant? Or, does it really come down to preserving microbe populations? Perhaps either way works, there are several examples of people growing Thalassia in aquaria successfully long term. If they're out there, I'd love to hear their methods of transplanting this species. Single plants without native bed material (and likely killing any microbes) didnt work for me.

>Sarah
Hmmmmmm,I guess I miss read this;
Plants for the Marine Aquarist
"Care must be taken when transplanting seagrasses......In addition,all but turtle grass does best when transplanted as a colony with several plants intact on a shared rhizome."
  #187  
Old 05/31/2006, 07:56 PM
Samala Samala is offline
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Clay, I suppose that line is a bit mangled. But essentially what I said above: IME only Thalassia will survive being transplanted as a single plant with no rhizome attachment. The others do best when transplanted as 'colonies' or fragments of rhizomes with sister plantlets altogether. Apparently some people have had luck with single plants, but that hasnt been the case for me, perhaps due to differences between initial transplant material condition (newly collected, collected days ago, exposed to air or water, collected from surf, any fungus or pests, etc).

At the time I wrote Plants for Marine Aquarist my Thalassia was still doing just fine. The leaves had not started to decline in size and length and it looked like my attempts to transplant were successful. I wouldnt say that now, months later, as the condition of my turtle grass has changed over the full year in captivity. There are too many variables to say it was just the effect of being planted singly, but thats an option in the mix of potential explanations.

>Sarah
__________________
"Seaweed is cool, seaweed is fun, it makes its food from the rays of the sun!"
"Wild means everyone owns it, and no one owns it." ~3rd grader
  #188  
Old 06/01/2006, 12:57 AM
El-ahrairah El-ahrairah is offline
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Sarah,

Well for the last few months I have been busy with finishing up the dissertation. I got interested in seagrasses while setting up seahorse tanks a few years ago. I seemed to have pretty good luck with turtle grass back then, so I quickly started to expand on the number of seagrass species kept. Macroalgae can be nice a addition to any tank, but they aren't quite the same as having true seagrasses (IMO). For the most part I have only played around with CO2 dosing extensively. I have tried dosing N and Fe but never long enough to actually draw any definitive conclusions on whether or not the dosing had a significant effect.

Currently, I am in the middle of setting (my tanks tend be in 'setup' mode for many months before the focal point of the tank is added, it allows for stable populations of the lower trophic levles and pretty much eliminates any cycling or 'new tank syndrome'... also you can miss out on a lot of fascinating biology if you go through the tank setup quickly, for example I just had a caprellid amphipod give birth in the tank to over 15 juveniles, very cool to observe and interesting behaviour... but I am getting carried away now I suppose I should save all of this for the thread on the tank... but yes I am a marine biology geek) up a planted dwarf seahorse tank, I'll see about taking pictures and starting a thread on its development. I've had shoal, manatee, and turtle grass in the tank for 7 weeks now.

-Michael
  #189  
Old 06/03/2006, 09:22 PM
3D-Reef 3D-Reef is offline
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Sarah,I did think it sounded a little strange when I read it,but,I thought Who am I? My question was born out of pure curiosity.Which is why I love this hobby,Sooo many things to learn. Not to mention the coolness factor of having two scientist/authors,of two different articals,in the same thread.
I just couldn't resist asking.
Clay
  #190  
Old 06/06/2006, 07:56 PM
3D-Reef 3D-Reef is offline
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Any ideas on a good place to start,with a bubble count for about 200gals?
Clay
  #191  
Old 06/09/2006, 06:31 PM
CamBarr CamBarr is offline
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cool thread
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