Reverse Respiration Discussion

[TwoTankAmin]

You all left me no option. There is a bit more than just a little science on Reverse Resperation in plants. This search only turned up 339,000 results. Most are research papers or books.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=reverse+respiration+in+plants&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33

 

[Uberhoust]

I appreciate your input and thoughts. I'm not championing this method is the be all end all method of plant sterilization. However it is a chemical free alternative to bleach, alum, etc. Personally I want to mess with as few caustic chemicals as I can and certainly prevent any of those chemicals from entering my tanks.

If you use the RR method, I would be curious to hear about your observations. I agree with your desire to reduce your use of caustic chemicals. If I find a snail egg cluster I might put half of them in a container with soda water and the other half in aquarium water then see which, if any, hatches. I don't get a lot of snail eggs in easy to find locations because those are also found by my fish, so don't hold your breath.

For me the real reason to look for research on the subject is associated with the patent. We use a number of techniques in our fish keeping that are anecdotally determined. The other issue is the term Reverse Respiration which seems not quite right, it is a treatment that makes the water incapable of supporting respiration in an aerobic organism, how is that reverse respiration?

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Rusty- I did not suggest using the same tank. What I said was to bleach all the plants in that 50 I would beed to fill a 50 1/2 full to be able to submerged them all. I also said thay just removing the plants would not eliminate any algae spores still left in the tank. To eliminate these one would have to take more drastic steps. if this is not done the cleaned plants would soon have algae on them again.

And You are not the aribitor of what is or is not science. Unless maybe you are a PhD scientist? Do you understand what per review is?

And how do you know that it wasn't the CO2 which caused the deaths but rather the extremely low pH that the CO2 created. Please tell me where they took steps to rule out this possibility? This is how science works.

But then why should we bother to have people earn degrees and have years of experience in science what according to youi thois is not necessary.

This Form is called the scientific section/ This thread is clearly not science. So I will leave it to others to continue posting in the thread. However, I see no reason for me do so.

p.s. Tom Barr is a degreed scientist with many years more experience in the field than any of the folks doing tths club soda stuff. I will trust his opinion on this over the folks who did he RR work. Here is his credentials posted in 2005, I took it from a quick grab and I am sure more recent info is available but I don't have time now to dig it out.



Here is info from 2021:



I am not sure but I might attempt to contact him for an opinion of the RR and club soda. If i do I would also ask if I could post his reply here. That would be the only reason for my posting in this thread again. If he endorses the methodolgy, I would be much more likely to accept it as a viable method for dealing with planted tanks problems. I would also admit I am off the mark in my opinom of its effectiveness biut not in its practical application when bigger tanks and with tons of plants are involved.

Also, I got the feeling that the RR method was not for use in cleaning an established tanks with pkants but rather for use with new plants about to go into a tank. Possibly a new tank just being started and planted?

Sure, get Tom's opinion. As for him inventing RR, legally he didn't because he doesn't hold the patent. Much the same way Tesla didn't invent the light bulb. I thought for years I invented the breakfast burrito. Doesn't make it true.

If you use the RR method, I would be curious to hear about your observations. I agree with your desire to reduce your use of caustic chemicals. If I find a snail egg cluster I might put half of them in a container with soda water and the other half in aquarium water then see which, if any, hatches. I don't get a lot of snail eggs in easy to find locations because those are also found by my fish, so don't hold your breath.

For me the real reason to look for research on the subject is associated with the patent. We use a number of techniques in our fish keeping that are anecdotally determined. The other issue is the term Reverse Respiration which seems not quite right, it is a treatment that makes the water incapable of supporting respiration in an aerobic organism, how is that reverse respiration?

I've had great success using RR. I stumbled across it by accident. I wish I had discovered it earlier as I had just killed a $120 plant order by using H2O2 and bleach dips.
I've used the long 12 hour soak as well as the shorter soak. In the original article it states that to kill the algae you need the full 12 hour soak. If you just want to kill pests as little as a 1 or 2 hour soak will kill hydra, planaria, snails and eggs and other pests. I've used the method on Vals, swords, Java moss, Java Fern, Cryptocoryne, Hygrophilia, weeping Moss. I did get some melt or pH pruning as it's termed. I don't know if I got the growth spurt that was mentioned. That's hard to quantify with new plants just going into a new aquarium.

As for why the authors chose to call it RR vs Lots O Bubbles, I'll never know. I believe it's called Reverse Respiration is because we usually flood plants with CO2 in light, then oxygen at night. Here you are flooding the plants with CO2 in the dark. So reverse of normal. That's my best guess on the name. It probably could have been named better.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

Personally I'm a skeptic. I don't believe everything I read, or hear, or see on YouTube or a fish forum. I think in the age of social media there is way too much "instant credibility".
I'm just the guy that mentioned the method I found on a different forum. I didn't write the original dissertation. I didn't do the original trials. I didn't file for the patent. I'm not making any money or receiving anything in return for sharing this method. But I have used this method with success. I don't see the downside when it's a cheap method with no harsh chemicals involved.

I'm just a simple fish keepers trying to help other fish keepers and advance the hobby. I'm here because I want to connect with other fish keepers and talk fish and stuff. Some of the best times of my life have been hanging out and talking fish, wether in a someone's basement full of tanks or at 2 am in a hotel room at the ACA or Cichlid Classic.

So try it for your self or don't, I could care less.
Believe it's science or not, I could care less.
But always keep an open mind for the good of the hobby, otherwise it stagnates and dies.
I'm going to leave at this. I can tell you how good this Wagyu fillet tastes, but you won't ever really know till you take a bite yourself.
If anyone wants the link to the original write up so you can read and decide for yourself, feel free to DM me.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am stupid I do not understand this. If you have an established tank and it has some algae and maybe some of the other things the soda water treament is supposed to kill and you then get some new plants. Then you do the soda soak one th e new plants. Does this mean putting these new soaked plants intot eh tank will kill all the algae and microorganisms and smaller critters already in there? If so how exactly does that work?

I do not understand if you are setting up a newarger planted tank- at least 50 or 75 gals or more- and you order all the plants, How do you do the soak on them all? Do you use a 10 gal tank and do a number of loads each containing some of the plants. Cab you use the same soda water or do you have to change ot fpor each load and clean out the container as well for the next load? Or do you use a much bigger container which can hold a lot more soda water and thus allow for more plants to fit?

And then my next question here becomes what happens over time? Algal spores are likely airborn, so how are the prevented from entering the tank? And many of the other thins the soda treat,emt should kill may also end up back in a tank for a variety of reasons. And when this happens how can pulling out the plants and retreating them deal with the bad "stuff" still in the tank but not one the plants?

My issue with the RR soda process is not so much a question of if it works at all but if it is practical in the long run. Is it practical when larger volumes of plants need to be pre-treated which means buying a lot of soda water? It would be like my doing the water changes on my bigger tanks using buckets rather than with hoses and pumps. This works but is not a practical methodology.

Btw- I never ever said two things I was accused of saying. The first was that Tom Barr invented or disccovered reverse respiration. What he did do was suggest that because of how RR works one could use a blackout period which trigger RR period as a way to eliminate algae by blacking out the tank which would do the opposite of the RR soda treatment. But what Barr was doing was using a lack of CO2 normally in the RR period to deprive the algae of it which would kill it. During RR the tank uses oxygen not CO2. So Dr. Barr wants one to inure the is adequate oxygen for the plants/fish while minimizing CO2.

My anecdotal evidence from my experience which is not science, was I could use Tom's blackout method to reduce or close to eliminate algae from an established tank.An I have done this. I also developed a method for defeating blue green algae (cyanobacteria) which I called my triple threat. It involve a few day blackpout as one of the 3 parts of the triple threat. The other two are an initial manual removal of as much of the BGA as was reasonable, the next part is a single dose of an antibiotic (I use Erythromycin for this). The final step is to blackput the tank for a few days making sure that oxygen levels are maintained properly during the blackout.

Second I never suggested pouring soda water into a tank. In the past though I have read that some folks do thish in a limited fashion to add CO2 to a tank. I do not do this.

And I am always amazed at some of things i see posted on fish site that are clearly incorrect and would indicate the poster did not do their homework. The is an old saying that can be a bit modified to apply to posting rather than speaking:

"Engage brain before putting mouth in gear."

Here it would be "before putting a post in gear." So lets talk off topic for just a bit about bumble bee flight and it supposedly being impossible according to science. Sorry Rusty-

The idea that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly, according to the laws of physics, is a myth, though it's often attributed to French entomologist Auguste Magnan in the 1930s.

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

• The Misconception:
  The myth stems from the idea that bumblebees' wings are too small and their bodies too large for them to generate enough lift to fly, based on fixed-wing aircraft aerodynamics.
• The Reality:
  Bumblebees don't fly like airplanes; they flap their wings in a more complex, twisting motion, generating lift in both the forward and backward strokes.
• Magnan's Role:
  While Auguste Magnan is often cited, it's more accurate to say he noted the seemingly impossible nature of bee flight based on the limited understanding of insect aerodynamics at the time.
• The "Bumblebee Paradox":
  The idea that bumblebees shouldn't fly, according to the laws of physics, is sometimes referred to as the "bumblebee paradox".