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Re: Flourish Excel
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, James Purchase wrote:
Quoting Greg Morin:
> > The carbon is derived from polycycloglutaracetal. Yes, the name is a
> > mouthful ;-) but what it does is (as the description says above) act
> > as a structurally simple organic carbon source for the plants by
> > providing a carbon skeleton that is structurally equivalent to common
> > photosynthetic intermediates (i.e. the stuff the plant makes from the
> > CO2 it uses).
James continued:
> I had seen the listing for this new product on the Pet Warehouse web site,
> and was intrigued. Now that it is available, and Greg has provided more
> information about it, I'm doubly so...
>
> Would any of the plant chemists / botanists on the list care to comment on a
> plant's abilities to obtain all or part of their Carbon needs from an avenue
> such as this?
Hmmm. I think I'll just call it "pcga".
A few months back I was wondering if a nutrient deficient plant might leak
some of it's photosynthetic intermediates and if algae might then be able
to use the photosynthetic intermediate as a medium for growth. I posed
that question to Jeffrey Dahm, a biology professor at the University of
New Mexico. His answer was (among other things) that bacteria would be
likely to outcompete algae for a free metabolite.
My guess is that both plants and algae can use the pcga - that's no
different from CO2, as both plants and algae can use that, too - but that
both the plants and algae may get some pretty stiff competition from
bacteria. Just how much competition probably will depend a lot on the
amount and kind of filtration used.
To the extent that the pcga is used by bacteria it will probably also pose
an oxygen burden on the tank.
Any more comments, Greg?
Roger Miller
no expert, but pretty mouthy anyway