Helps maintain a balanced nutrient-limited marine aquarium by enabling the hobbyist to enhance the rate of microbial growth and reproduction, increasing the rate of phosphate-reduction and denitrification; this is of particular benefit in heavily-stocked, well-fed reef aquaria.
Replaces “vodka method” of microbial activity-enhancement with a completely safe and biologically-sound, non-flammable alternative to using vodka or ethanol.
Indirectly benefits corals and other suspension-feeding invertebrates by encouraging reproduction of bacterioplankton (an important food source for suspension-feeding invertebrates).
Encourages polyp-expansion in all corals.
May be used to help expedite biological filtration in new set-ups.
The concept of biological filtration is simply to utilize living organisms to remove substances from aquatic systems as a natural result of their respiration and metabolic processes. This mode of filtration is at work in any aquarium system housing live organisms, though microbes (e.g. various types of bacteria) are arguably responsible for the majority of nutrient-remineralization that takes place; oceanographic studies have shown that up to 90% of the dissolved organic carbon present in seawater may be assimilated by planktonic bacteria (bacterioplankton) into new biomass. This nutrient assimilation simultaneously removes nitrogen (as ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate) and phosphorus (as phosphate) from the water, making bacterioplankton a very effective sink of dissolved organic material that would otherwise fuel the growth of organisms such as cyanobacteria and filamentous algae in aquaria.