It sounds like you're talking about the life around hydrothermal vents[0], which ultimately depends on chemosynthesis[1]rather than photosynthesis. This has been known since the late 70s, and actually fuels significant macroscopic life[2], not just microorganisms.
There's also deepwater life surviving off of things like marine snow[3], which is nutrient carrying detrius from the surface, or whale falls. But both of those ultimately depend on photosynthesis that happens near the surface.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Biology_of_h...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis
[2]See giant tube worm, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riftia_pachyptila
This bothered me, since "acidophile" is transparently a hybrid compound with one Latin and one Greek root. So I looked up what the Greek root for acid would be.
Turns out it's oxy-, and oxygen was erroneously named for its essential (and completely fictional) role in the formation of acids. Acidophiles should properly be termed oxyphiles... except that everyone would get the wrong idea.
This fails to explain how acidophilus bacteria got their name, though.