Reef Discussion

IJG3145

Member
Oct 27, 2015
442
162
South Gippsland
Dosing Bakers Yeast To Combat Diatoms
Let me start by saying I have no opinion at all on this, just an open mind. There is a war of words going on in in various US forums. Those that have tried it swear it works. Chemists swear it cannot & have already debunked it using known scientific theorem.

I would only remind readers that aeronautical engineers have also mathematically proven that bees should not be able to fly. Yet bees continue to go about their business, oblivious to anyone's opinion.

DOSING BAKERS YEAST TO COMBAT DIATOMS

 
E

ezza

Guest
I know professional meteorologists who dispute the existence of climate change and the fact that it is caused by human activity, predominantly post-industrial revolution.... and Galileo said (according to google).

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.


I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

So in a nutshell, until there's blinding proof... you can't discount anything really and you might as well bugger around with shit to see what it does- otherwise, what's the bloody point of living life??
 

Sam Parker

Moderator
May 6, 2013
4,802
2,397
Geelong
Thankfully as a race, we continue to evolve and learn new things. Most of the time we learn through failure. Whether this is a failure or a learning, who knows. But I'm glad others are trying it out for us to get a better idea on moving forward.
 

ReeferRob

Solidarité
Oct 22, 2014
2,661
931
Bel Air
Unfortunately, it's too late for the planet. We humans are on a VERY slow learning curve. Even if 75% of the population was wiped out right now, the planet would still continue on its path to a crash. We're doing the same thing the dinosaurs did, deforest the Earth and emit greenhouse gasses. A couple billion years from now something will be using us as a fuel source and heading down the same path.
 

Coralfarmer

Member
Jul 20, 2015
48
27
As little as 30 years ago science told us acropora was impossible to keep in aquariums, ive always said the aquarist will teach a scientist far more than a scientist will teach sn aquarist. The use of bakers yeast is not new either daniel knop wrote about it as a food source for juv clams back in the early 2000
 
As for dosing, diatoms are the easiest to remove when you just export nutrients. This might help:

Nutrient Export

What do all algae (and cyano too) need to survive? Nutrients. What are nutrients? Ammonia/ammonium, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate and urea are the major ones. Which ones cause most of the algae in your tank? These same ones. Why can't you just remove these nutrients and eliminate all the algae in your tank? Because these nutrients are the result of the animals you keep.

So how do your animals "make" these nutrients? Well a large part the nutrients comes from pee (urea). Pee is very high in urea and ammonia, and these are a favorite food of algae and some bacteria. This is why your glass will always need cleaning; because the pee hits the glass before anything else, and algae on the glass consume the ammonia and urea immediately (using photosynthesis) and grow more. In the ocean and lakes, phytoplankton consume the ammonia and urea in open water, and seaweed consume it in shallow areas, but in a tank you don't have enough space or water volume for this, and, your other filters or animals often remove or kill the phytoplankton or seaweed anyway. So, the nutrients stay in your tank.

Then, the ammonia/ammonium hits your rocks, and the periphyton on the rocks consumes more ammonia and urea. Periphyton is both algae and animals, and is the reason your rocks change color after a few weeks from when they were new. Then the ammonia goes inside the rock, or hits your sand, and bacteria there convert it into nitrite and nitrate. However, the nutrients are still in your tank.

Also let's not forget phosphate, which comes from solid organic food particles. When these particles are eaten by microbes and clean up crews, the organic phosphorus in them is converted into phosphate. However, the nutrients are still in your tank.

So whenever you have algae or cyano "problems", you simply have not exported enough nutrients out of your tank compared to how much you have been feeding (note: live rock can absorb phosphate for up to a year, making it seem like there was never a problem. Then after a year, there is a problem).

So just increase your nutrient exports. You could also reduce feeding, and this has the same effect, but it's certainly not fun when you want to feed your animals :)