Alleleochemicals and Algae suppression.

I found that having Ceratophyllum demersum growing in my Tanks seems to suppress the growth of Algae to the point of having Crystal clear Water. While I'd love anyone's ideas on this I'd love some input re the possibilities of how you would go about extraction of the agent responsible.

Here's a link to an interesting article.

en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-HJWR200801010.htm

Kev.

I tried to download the full PDF article, but got a Rubics cube and loads of chinese writing.

Most of the chemicals are unknown, but a few are well known such as okadaic acid.

To extract the pure chemicals would need some lab equipment, but there's no reason why a home-lab couldn't be made to do some crude extractions.

I know that there is evidence that the chemicals could be increased by certain algae if the pH is increased somewhat (maybe pH 9) or if the Nitrogen levels are increased massively or the phosphate levels increased massively (ie to force an inbalance).

So...you could set-up an eutrophication tank and use extracts from that as a source.

getting crude purer extracts?....that would be guess work and test runs, but here's something that could be tried using stuff got from at home:

get some cornflour, add it to a longish see-through tube. Drain some acetone (or nailvarnish remover or experiment with other solvents) into the cornflour tube.
Add some extract of an minced algae (or knapweed) to the top of the cornflour column and run the solvent through it....collect samples and see if any batch has a better effect than others.

It's crude, but it's a start.

Ian

Thanks Ian.

Do you think it's an avenue a professional Company could be looking at?

Kev.

Certainly substances like these would be of great value in many types of biochemical/medical research.....and companies that supply such chemicals don't exactly give them away. Anything that is a potential for medical use is likely to be a target for chemical companies to get into.

But that is all about the pure chemicals.

the other side is where we have crude mixes (a bit like blackwater tonic and that sort of stuff).
If the level of toxicity is known and can be controlled in a crude mixture then there is always a potential for use in aquariums...but holding in mind that some of the chemicals could be pretty potent poisons in humans and fish.

The initial extraction that a chemical company would do is roughly the same as I had described could be done with a kitchen lab: they may use a rough idea from (maybe) an undergraduate students lab project to see if there is any potential in focusing in on isolating the compounds by hi-tech lab equipment.
That initial testing would be pretty labour intensive and most of the result would be expected to be false-leads. There is a bit of pot-luck with it all.

If we take what are possibly alleleochemicals from dinoflagellates then we could be looking at things such as okadaic acid.....not something we want to concentrate up and put in a tank of fish.!!
But there are a whole range of other chemicals involved.....many could be very selectively toxic to algae but not to animals. That is the bit that is tricky.

Observation is key to this....and it doesn't need a big chemical company to observe the effects of algae on other algae or the stimulating effects of nitrogen/phosphate or pH on those effects.

Lupins, knapweed, and daisies (and many other 'invasive' land plants) seem to show the tendency for stripping the land for their own use (I believe that Lupins even got the name after a wolf for 'prowling the land and destroying all in its path').

Something a horticulturalist would probably notice before any scientist in a chemical lab would even dream of. There you go.....are you looking to venture into a project Stretnik?

ian