pappone.my quest for the magic bullet continues

[slayer]

well... it is said that a magic bullet does not exist. But i will have to say otherwise... After deciding to give up on my tank after a series of unfortunate events i decided to say what the f and went a little crazy with things on the tank. Jesse had told me he was mixing pappone and using it on his tank, well i finally made it over to his place after he'd been using a month, and holly cow, the sps growth and coloration was incredible.. now granted most of the stuff in his tank was also in mine but the difference in colors and growth was incredible..(he has a post on this).. sooo i decided to follow suit...

I've been using it for a month now, and i wish i had taken pics before and after. I can honestly say that the italians have got it right. The pappone works period. I have to admit instead of using commercial "amino acids" i decided to use amino acid supplements from gnc. And coupled with dosing heavy amounts of ca chloride (swimming pool hardner) things took a turn. I've been doing this a while now and nothing has ever made my corals look so good or grow so quick.

The colors have really begun to come out and there are multiple growth tips on all my corals that rarely grew one or 2 growth tips at a time. Now in no way am i saying go out there and do this, but i will say the pappone works. Even the sugar supplement has my water crystal clear, my phosphates read zero, and my gorgonians- well i cant even see the stalk of my purple ribbon anymore because of all the polyp extension.

Theres only one more thing i can add to the pappone....stay posted..

 

[darren24]

What is "pappone" and does it only / mainly benefit sps? Thanks.

 

[victor626nj]

it is a bunch of live food that is put in the blender alive and is blinded into a white mush i think

 

[linda lee]

Darren24;103840 wrote: What is "pappone" and does it only / mainly benefit sps? Thanks.

Darren, check

 

[darren24]

Thanks Linda. Someone make it and sell it!

 

[lorenk]

Jamie...do you think you and Jesse could put together an article so the rest of us can learn from your genius?

I can wiki-fy it if you write it up.

 

[cameron]

I would consider the long term effects of OD'ing the tank with nutrients before going down this road. I ran a method similar to this and had great early results, but my water quality suffered greatly and by the third month started having issues with algae, nitrates, etc. I finally had to up my water changes considerably as well as do a host of other fixes to revert my water quality. I also believe when I removed the protien and amino acid boosts of my corals they had to re-adapt to a nutrient poor water column which caused some issues as well. The last 3 months I have been trying the less is more approach and have seen a rebound in my corals and a shrinking of algae problems.

Keep us posted as you go along. For others trying this method, I would certainly recommend some very good skimming, probably running some phosphate control and/or uping the temp of the tank when I dosed this stuff which I likely would only do at night or when the lights are low as well.

 

[slayer]

pappone is basically a recipe that the italians came up with..actually a guy that ran a reef store in italy called coral blu. hence its name the "coral blu" method to induce the growth and coloration of his corals. the recipe basically is the following to thrown into a blender

5 Oysters
5 Mussels
5 Clams
5 Shrimp
1 Tablespoon of Sugar (not corn syrup, etc.)
200 mL of RO/DI water


you blend the mixture into a pulp, making sure you dont cook the product by the blades overheating. you cant use frozen products only fresh. You have to run your tank at high (>500) calcium levels , high (>1500) mag levels and high alk levels (>12) and zero phos. you dose your tank with amino acids an hour before lights out and then dose the papone after lights are out..

Its complicated to explain the biosynthetic pathway but basically the amino acids train the polyps to come out at night and induce feeding of the pappone. the corals use the amino acids to build as well the protein source in the pappone. the sugar is a carbon energy source (also for the bacteria to break down the leftovers)the original pappone also adds hgh to the mix to accelarate growth. heres some pics of the italian tanks i got from reef central...
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[slayer]

yes there have been tanks that have crashed on this method. and yes the long term effects are not known,,,but these tanks seem to run great on this method. my tank also saw some stress during the initial period but has recovered nicely. your right cameron going from a super clean environment to a dirty one is going to stress some corals out, but once they do and your able to maintain water quality with some crazy skimming (and sugar) i think it will level out. softies seem to benifit from this also..I could never figure out why jesse's gsp was so incredibly bright and polyps are 1 inch long..now i do, cause now mine are the same..Im sure jessee can chime in as hes my guru on this... once again im not endorsing this, i'm just disscussing the benefits of this stuff i've seen on my tank...

with the hgh they claim to induce growth up to 40 cm a year on most sps... how'd you like that purple monster or sunset monti to grow out like that? lol...

 

[cameron]

I buy the added protiens in the water column as well as amino acids as this gives coral more energy to grow and such. I buy the sugar as it will cause a bacterial bloom and likely keep the algae down (although bacterial blooms also cause oxygen crashes if not careful).

However HGH which is synthetic human growth hormone seems very unlikely to me to do anything at all. It is controversial that it does anything useful in adult humans much less a hormone in another species that is plant based.

In my own limited experiments, I find that dirtying the water column long term isn't very helpful and creates more problems than it solves. The ocean isn't very nutrient rich in ppm most of the time and corals have evolved especially SPS to live in a clean low nitrate environment. Just my opinion obviously and I could certainly be wrong, but I would keep up the water changes religiously and make sure my skimmer was way up to the task for cleaning the water column quickly. Oh and minced muscles such as clams also have a possibility of introducing phosphates so careful there as well.

The best tanks I have seen pretty much all run fairly hands off. Maintaining water quality and consistency seems of paramount importance in the most successful tanks I have witnessed. However this is far from an exact science and it is good that people are working outside the box to further the hobby.

 

[cameron]

A great growth test is for those that are running a stabilized calcium reactor starting this plan is to measure effleunt before and after. If you have to up the effleunt going into the tank over a significant period of time, it would give you an idea of what percentage calcium thus growth is being removed from the water using this method.

 

[mojo]

To play devil's advocate for a second... Could this growth rate be attributed rather to increase of nitrogen to the corals (in the form of those blended, decaying clams and oysters), rather than some hub-ub about amino acids and HGH?

The use of sugar, vodka, and other accellerants has been well documented - it's simply a form of engery made directly availalbe to water-bourne organisims.

While I don't doubt the success of the reef tanks shown above (or even slayer's success so far), I do wonder if the results are from something simpler. It's also possible that these Italians would have had phenomenal tanks without</em> the blend in the water, and could be fighting it with huge skimmers. It's already known that corals thrive on a little nitrate in the water - maybe this is just supplying what they need.

Correlation does not imply causality...

 

[stroid]

Im pretty sure none of those are jamies tanks...those are the Italians tanks. Jaimie has an inwall tank.

 

[jmaneyapanda]

Being the devil's advocate that am, I have to agree with Cameron (amongst others). Jaime, there is no magic bullet. There will always be a tradeoff.

The quest to get our corals to grower quicker, faster, stronger, and more colorful than in nature, while appealing on the surface, is a dangerous path to try when investing in your tank. I am a bit of naturalist at heart, and think that the long term effects can be seen in an aspect. There are areas of the worlds ocean where there will be a lot of nutrient and organic in the watre columns- why are there not magnificent coral erefs there? Why do the worlds coral reefs predominate in relatively nutirent poor areas? Mother nature has answered that question for us- evolution has done the long term study. Sorry for getting on the Jurassic Park kick, but there is a lot of truth in that matter. Humans are fools to think they can do it better than nature.

Just my opinion.

 

[eddie b_]

how old do you think the the tanks are in the picture??? I must say they are quite impressive!!!!!

 

[slayer]

i understand where you guys are coming from, granted these italian tanks are mature, very mature and maybe there is something else driving the growth. These are guys that are very dedicated to their tanks and have been doing this for years..seldom do we see tanks that have been running 10 plus years on this side of the pond... but im always on the advance to try new things and i will keep you guys posted..... kinda weired no one has dosed the hgh in thier tanks over across this side of the ocean?? wonder what would happen if someone made that first step??

 

[mojo]

One of the things I want to try when my tank gets stable for a while is to try to start dosing nitrates and monitor the changes with the corals. It's not HGH, but it's something that I'm really curious about....

 

[crab0000]

slayer77;103959 wrote: kinda weired no one has dosed the hgh in thier tanks over across this side of the ocean?? wonder what would happen if someone made that first step??

Could be the whole perscription thing or the incredibly high cost?

 

[jessezm]

jmaneyapanda;103932 wrote: There are areas of the worlds ocean where there will be a lot of nutrient and organic in the water columns- why are there not magnificent coral erefs there? Why do the worlds coral reefs predominate in relatively nutirent poor areas?

One of the differences between the world's reefs and our tanks to consider, though, is that despite the lack of nutrients in the ocean water near reefs, there is still a constant supply of food available to corals on the there, especially considering all those moonlit planktonic blooms. In the ocean, however, between the tides, wave action, beaches, and myriad micro organisms, and sheer volume, nutrients stay low despite the constant influx of food.

This is something we cannot replicate very well in our tanks due to the amount of food and filtration it would take. Instead, it seems we recreate one condition (either a lack of nutrients or a bunch of food) at the expense of the other. Either we have well fed corals whose growth/health is limited by poor water conditions, or potentially happy, but N-limited corals living in very "clean" conditions.

The pappone method tries to address this--I think--by making more food available to corals, as well as nutrients in the form of amino acids and immediately available levels of Ca, Mg, and Alk, while at the same time trying to mitigate the effects of such supplementation by encouraging the growth of bacteria to consume the extra nitrates/phosphates introduced by the heavy feeding. Heavy protein skimming then aids in removing these nutrient-fattened bacteria.

As with anything else we put in our tanks, constant vigilance is key to assessing the effects. I don't believe that the pappone feedings are creating a ticking time bomb, personally, but I base that on what I see happening in my tank. There are pretty basic indicators like algae growth which can tell you a lot about what's going on well in advance of the need to make major changes.

As far as the HGH is concerned, it doesn't seem like a very cost effective approach to reefing (not like anything is cost effective in this hobby...), and it's not something I feel the need to try either. To me, the pappone method makes sense on its own, and really there are a lot of analogues out there anyways. Cameron, I'd be interested to hear exactly what measures you were taking, for instance, and what your observations were.

 

[jessezm]

mojo;103892 wrote: To play devil's advocate for a second... Could this growth rate be attributed rather to increase of nitrogen to the corals (in the form of those blended, decaying clams and oysters), rather than some hub-ub about amino acids and HGH?

The use of sugar, vodka, and other accellerants has been well documented - it's simply a form of engery made directly availalbe to water-bourne organisims.

While I don't doubt the success of the reef tanks shown above (or even slayer's success so far), I do wonder if the results are from something simpler. It's also possible that these Italians would have had phenomenal tanks without</em> the blend in the water, and could be fighting it with huge skimmers. It's already known that corals thrive on a little nitrate in the water - maybe this is just supplying what they need.

Correlation does not imply causality...

Chris, I think what you said is exactly on the money, actually, and really explains the beauty and simplicity of this method--the blend of food provides the needed nutrients, while the bacteria which thrive on the carbon source (sugar) help keep nitrates low. The amino acids are really just an insurance policy to make sure the corals have available what nutrients they may need.

I have heard tell that the HGH, while unusable to corals in the way that humans use it, helps to break down chains of amino acids or proteins or something like that so that they are more readily available for uptake by the corals. I will not claim there is any scientific basis to that assertion, though--just something I read along the way but forgot where I saw it, so take it with a bucket of salt...