Grass v. Tree

I was thinking about the dry wieght vs. N/P concentrations issue. Thought it'd be fun to bounce some ideas off of the many experienced algae culturists on the board. Seems to me that these algae are all basically plants right. So they're all likely to be mostly made (structurally at least) of cellulose (a polysaccaride.) Some species have multi-nucleated cells (big ol' long tubes of goo) and others have 'true' cells like land loving plants. Can we hypothesize that species with multi-nucleated cells will have relatively less cellulose and more cytoplam? That's the stuff with all the proteins (N and P) and nucleotides (P) after all. No space in between plant cells except for more cellulose. Could we test by growing algae in the presence of a known concentration of phosphate and/or nitrate fertilizers and measuring the reduction of this concentratoin over time? Then we measure the change in wet-weight and the final dry weight and concentration of N and P of the plant matter. We could calculate the ratio nutrient uptake to biomass growth and compare these (linnear?) curves between species. My hypothesis predicts that multinucleated species will have slightly less linnear curves, that is, they'll take up nutrients faster as they gain biomass because their cytoplasm to cellulose ratio inceases faster. A built in controll is that reduction in nitrate and phosphate concentration in the water should be the same as the increase in the plant.

Up waaay too late working. Using this board as a brief diversion. Got very carried away just now. The experiment would take learning quantitative chemistry techniques (which are no fun) and having a bunch of tanks with lights set up (ten maybe). The tanks will probably have to be heated and will definately need to be isolated from each other. Seemslike an ovwervwelmingly crapload of work now that I think of it. Plus, I live in a two betwoom apartment and wouldn't want to be up to the eyeballs in algae. Maybe I just better begin sleeing now.

g'night y'all

Edited by deedo

Isn't this variation between individuals within a species the very thing that Darwin and subsequent researchers started to discover and then postulate that there were other factors determining the outcome of offspring characteristics which led to the discovery of DNA, etc. and the current field of Genetics? Wow, what a run on sentence!

Anyway, we are always saying that each fish or coral behaves differently in each tank. All Yellow Tangs are not alike, that they have individual personality... Wow. This sure makes life fascinating...

I would suggest having say 4 5gal tanks 1 would be a control and the other four would be filled with equal weights of growing tips of various algea.

then the tanks would be filled with water known to contain a certain amount of both phos and nitrates iron and whatever else to be tested.

All tanks would be lit, heated  and areated equally.

concentrations of the nutrients would be measured daily, and the winner determined not by mere dry weight but by the amount of nutrients removed from the water itself.

After all  the point is water quality not plant weight.

well some of the nutrients are used by the algea right? not just stored in the tissue, also it just seems more realistic to test the affect on the water quality itself.