Augusta97
Arachnopeon
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2020
- Messages
- 21
The title more or less says it all. It seems like anytime coconut fiber is mentioned, someone will chime in with "it has no nutritional value and can cause impaction." This seems to be especially common in Facebook groups. I have seen no compelling evidence of this. The closest I've seen to that are the numerous anecdotal accounts of dead millis that get linked to coco fiber substrates, often regardless of other possible factors.
Before we really get into it I think it's important to note that I am by no means a chemist or biologist. The method I used to come to my conclusions was to compare the constituent parts of the two materials in question. This is a broad strokes comparison.
With all of that in mind, I set out to do some research on the chemical properties of coco fiber and our beloved rotting wood. What I found gave me no obvious reason to avoid coco fiber. Both materials are generally made of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Coconut fiber and wood contain near equal proportions of cellulose in their overall composition. Both are around 40%. The paper I read regarding coconut fiber also mentions a percent of it is made of pectin. This would be a red flag to me, but pectin is common in many plant cells. Notably carrots seem to be high in pectin amongst other fruits and vegetables at least. Of course both also include a wide variety of other less prevalent components, but I have neither the time nor the expertise I would need to figure out how important these are to the question (broad strokes comparison).
At the end of all of this, I the best answer I can come up with is that I think the coconut fiber-impaction correlation is an urban legend amongst milli keepers! All of the main components in wood are shared by coco fiber, so I don't see an obvious reason it would not be digestible by the millis. If anyone knows of any information I missed, please share it below. I'll include links to my reading.
A lot of this is very dense, and most of the info in the papers is not relevant to the discussion.
Chemical composition of coconut fiber (third heading, beginning of paragraph):
Chemical composition of wood (table at the top of the page): PDF one
Pectin in carrots and other fruits (table a couple pages in): PDF two
Before we really get into it I think it's important to note that I am by no means a chemist or biologist. The method I used to come to my conclusions was to compare the constituent parts of the two materials in question. This is a broad strokes comparison.
With all of that in mind, I set out to do some research on the chemical properties of coco fiber and our beloved rotting wood. What I found gave me no obvious reason to avoid coco fiber. Both materials are generally made of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Coconut fiber and wood contain near equal proportions of cellulose in their overall composition. Both are around 40%. The paper I read regarding coconut fiber also mentions a percent of it is made of pectin. This would be a red flag to me, but pectin is common in many plant cells. Notably carrots seem to be high in pectin amongst other fruits and vegetables at least. Of course both also include a wide variety of other less prevalent components, but I have neither the time nor the expertise I would need to figure out how important these are to the question (broad strokes comparison).
At the end of all of this, I the best answer I can come up with is that I think the coconut fiber-impaction correlation is an urban legend amongst milli keepers! All of the main components in wood are shared by coco fiber, so I don't see an obvious reason it would not be digestible by the millis. If anyone knows of any information I missed, please share it below. I'll include links to my reading.
A lot of this is very dense, and most of the info in the papers is not relevant to the discussion.
Chemical composition of coconut fiber (third heading, beginning of paragraph):
Coir - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
www.sciencedirect.com
Chemical composition of wood (table at the top of the page): PDF one
Pectin in carrots and other fruits (table a couple pages in): PDF two
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