Electric grid and 9 volt battery......

[coralsandbar]

Hello Everyone,

I remember reading an article (maybe through reefs.org, reefcentral.com, or reefland.com library articles) that studied sps growth in the caribbean somewhere where they hooked up a 9 volt power source to an electric wire grid where they had attached sps frag to and studied their growth rates.

They had concluded that sps growth speeded up like crazy (I don't remember the exact rates of the top of my head).

The overall conclusion was that the growth was tremendous but the actual growth was brittle and more fragile than regular growth.

Has anyone ever studied this themselves? I would be afraid that I'd forget to turn off the 9 volt power source before sticking my hands in the tank, Lol!

Rob

www.coralsandbar.com
[email protected]

 

[monkeyboy]

I always just dropped in a plugged in hair dryer.

Sounds interesting, but i'm not familliar with the study. I wonder if the electrically induced low density of the skeleton is comparable to the density of coral grown in captive conditions...

 

[Anonymous]

Well, this idea has been put to use in reef restoration efforts. Tom Goreau (one of the active coral skeletogenesis researchers) and an architect (don't remember the name) have been making grids ("Biorock" grid) charged with low voltage electricity and placing them on physically damaged reef areas. They're usually affixed with frags from local, same-biotope corals. The hypothesis is that with the electric current, a higher pH in the extracytoplasmic calcifying fluid results, allowing skeletogenesis to occur with a lower expenditure of energy. The growth rates are supposedly phenomenal. The kicker that may be the big sell point is that with supposedly more energy free to devote to other processes, environmental stresses become more tolerable.

 

[coralsandbar]

Very interesting monkeyboy and galleon,

thanks for the info and replies. It's a very interesting topic indeed.

If I find any more info I'll post it.

Thx.

Rob

 

[suckair]

One danger is ionizing saltware in a close environment " a aquarium" is going to totaly screw up your water to the point you will not be able to handle it! It works in the ocea dillution is the solution.

It won't work in a closed environment IMO

good luck