A couple of weeks ago, I attended a talk on flow cytometry and the big wide ocean given by Michael Sieracki, a marine biologist from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine. Now, flow cytometry is a technique used for counting, examining, and sorting microscopic particles suspended in a stream of fluid (from wikipedia).
The marine ecosystem is fundamentally microscopic. The activity of marine microbes control the different biological cycles involved in a marine ecosystem. In the 1970s, the cyanobacterium, Synechococcus, was mapped across all the oceans of the world using flow cytometry, and at that time, it was thought that this was the most abundant species known on earth. In 1988, with better flow cytometers, the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus was discovered. Prochlorococcus was found out to be more abundant than Synecchococcus in the open ocean at aorund 100,000 cells per milliliter of sea water.
Now, you ask, why the hell is he writing all these things?
Well, I am in the midst of establishing my home aquarium (a 75G FOWLR). To make the mini-ecosystem in the aquarium work, the parameters and composition of the waters (among others) has to approximate very closely ocean waters.
Working in a flow cytometry facility, I have a few questions that I want to answer.
1) Do home aquariums have the same microbial composition as ocean water?
2) Is there a difference in microbial composition between ocean water, water from an aquarium that used freshwater supplemented with salt, and water from an aquarium that used natural sea water (whether bottled or not)?
3) Is there a correlation between livestock health and microbial composition in a home aquarium?
The first two questions can be easily answered, as all it involves is taking samples and running them and comparing. The third one might be a little difficult, because livestock health is arbitrary and can't be judged by just one parameter (dead or alive, or something).
I'm trying to see if anyone else has studied this, or if anyone here has encountered studies that looked at this. And, if there haven't been any studies on this, if the good people on MR would like to help answer these questions by giving water samples and answering a small questionairre.
Right now, I am just looking at the feasibility of doing this... uhmm.... experiment.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
The marine ecosystem is fundamentally microscopic. The activity of marine microbes control the different biological cycles involved in a marine ecosystem. In the 1970s, the cyanobacterium, Synechococcus, was mapped across all the oceans of the world using flow cytometry, and at that time, it was thought that this was the most abundant species known on earth. In 1988, with better flow cytometers, the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus was discovered. Prochlorococcus was found out to be more abundant than Synecchococcus in the open ocean at aorund 100,000 cells per milliliter of sea water.
Now, you ask, why the hell is he writing all these things?
Well, I am in the midst of establishing my home aquarium (a 75G FOWLR). To make the mini-ecosystem in the aquarium work, the parameters and composition of the waters (among others) has to approximate very closely ocean waters.
Working in a flow cytometry facility, I have a few questions that I want to answer.
1) Do home aquariums have the same microbial composition as ocean water?
2) Is there a difference in microbial composition between ocean water, water from an aquarium that used freshwater supplemented with salt, and water from an aquarium that used natural sea water (whether bottled or not)?
3) Is there a correlation between livestock health and microbial composition in a home aquarium?
The first two questions can be easily answered, as all it involves is taking samples and running them and comparing. The third one might be a little difficult, because livestock health is arbitrary and can't be judged by just one parameter (dead or alive, or something).
I'm trying to see if anyone else has studied this, or if anyone here has encountered studies that looked at this. And, if there haven't been any studies on this, if the good people on MR would like to help answer these questions by giving water samples and answering a small questionairre.
Right now, I am just looking at the feasibility of doing this... uhmm.... experiment.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
