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Old 02-16-2013, 01:54 PM
CAPT38 CAPT38 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 51
Exclamation You should test your theory.

Quote:
There is no such thing as too many beneficial microbes. Your thinking of algae (micro flora). Typically we think of algae as green, but it comes in many colors (brown, red, yellow etc.). And yes algae will consume dissolved oxygen from the water, but you need a massive amount to do any harm by depleting oxygen. However on the other hand algae can wind up being a food source for pathogens, especially dying algae.
Ok so lets test your theory:

You told me you are using a product that adds Trich. H to your system and I am sure there is a recomended ammount that is to be used per gallon..... forget about the recomended amount and use 50 times that amount... let me explain to you what will happen.....
Your system will incubate 50 times the ammount of the fungus, plus the bacteria thats in your system will all need oxygen including the plants. Now this doesnt seem like its going to be alot but as the temperature of the root system warms, the rate of respiration of the root tissue also increases and more oxygen is required by the plant. This means that the dissolved oxygen in solution will be much more rapidly depleted and the plants can suffer from oxygen starvation for a period of time.
When this happens under continuing anaerobic conditions, plants produce a stress hormone - ethylene which accumulates in the roots and causes collapse of the root cells. Once root deterioration caused by anaerobic conditions has begun, opportunist pathogens will attack your plants.
Now let me key in on how a bacteria becomes a pathogen. Bacteria reproduce and its called bacteria conjugation, and this is basicly a transfer of of genetic material between bacteria and what happens is the donor bacteria transfers plasmids to the recieving bacteria, now most conjugtive plasmids cannot be transfered to a bacteria that has the same plasmids. Oh yeah let me mention that a plasmid is a double strand of DNA ( its not something thats not living) but it can replicate like a virus ( in a host ) but this doesnt mean that the bacteria is going to become a pathogen there are several other factors that will need to come into play such as, other bacterial secretions that can act as virulence factors, as well as bacterial numbers (via quorum sensing or the two component signal transduction pathway), toxins, change in environment, temperature, mutation ect..


See the biological definition of Biota.

Last edited by CAPT38; 03-13-2013 at 02:59 AM.
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