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