To investigate the potential nutrient enrichment of corals by fish wastes, Acropora kenti, Pocillopora verrucosa, Poritesa lutea and Platygyra daedalea colonies were collected from the GBR in Feb 2022, then returned to AIMS's National Sea Simulator. Coral were sampled for protein/symbiont density, then fragmented into smaller (~10g) pieces and aloowed to recover and acclimate to the captive conditions for 1.5 months. Corals were then randomally allocated to treatments where they were either 1) kept with a school of 10 juvenile Chromis viridis fed a pelleted diet, 2) supplied filtered water from a tank housing C. viridis, 3) fed live feeds (enriched Artemia/rotifers and microalgae mix) whilst maintained with C. viridis, 4) supplied only with the live feeds, 5) supplied with a pelleted fish diet without C. viridis, and 6) not supplied feeds and without C. viridis, with four replicate tanks per treatment. During the experiment survival of corals was monitored, growth was measured using bouyant weight and photosynthetic efficiency tracked using dark adapated maximum quantum yield (Fv/Fm). At the end of the experiment, a subset of the samples were frozen and tissue stripped using high-pressure air and filtered seawater. The resulting tissue slurry was homogenised, then used to measure protein contect via a BCA assay and symbiont density using a BD Acurri C6 Flow Cytometer.
Water quailty samples were taken weekly throughout the experiment, and analysed for NH4, NO2, NO3, PO4, DOC, PN and PC. Fish were anaethatised using Aqui-S at the end of the experiment and weighed.
