What was the lead in to this start? A big increase in livestock or some other disturbance, or was it a mystery and it just started? How old was the tank at this time?
Even the best bandaid – don't they come with ointment in the little pad now? – is only a bandaid.
Of course you hope your bandaid doesn't make your hair fall out!! Ack!
Vibrant + lack of aeration + huge wad of medication in the tank = unhappy critters
Happy corals are very resilient. I'm betting your established SPS didn't like the vibrant as much as you suspect (did PO4 bottom out as the vibrant went to work?) and the other changes just tilted things against him too much. If he was very mature, is there any change his flow situation had become marginal? That's a typical "cost of success" since they, and all their neighbors, grow to create maximum turbulence.
Those nutrient levels don't seem that high, but what had they been historically, prior to the bloom? Do you run the tank fairly bright on lighting? (do you know some PAR or lux readings?)
Dang-glad you could save a tip!!! I've had no luck in the few cases I've had to attempt a rescue like that.
Rarely a bad move!
Mission accomplished....albeit with casualties.
Yes...
...with the small caveat that you have to manage nutrients both ways....zero'ing out N or P isn't very helpful and can be harmful. (Whether you want to take the blame or consider that the V treatment was the cause...?)
Zero'ing N is arguably tolerated longer, especially depending on what your daily nutrient inputs are.
Zero'ing P can have worse consequences, much more quickly just due to the nature of it's many uses in coral and the rest of the food web.
Many good articles out there, some of which I have linked in the Nutrients section of my blog. Some goodies:
- Putting the N in dinoflagellates
- Impacts of nutrient enrichment on coral reefs: new perspectives and implications for coastal management and reef survival
- Response of heterotrophic bacteria, autotrophic picoplankton and heterotrophic nanoflagellates to re-oligotrophication
- Limited phosphorus availability is the Achilles heel of tropical reef corals in a warming ocean
Lead into all this was Vibrant I guess. I had hope it would remove the bryopsis before it got bad but it didn't touch it. Did do very well on all other algae however even cyano. Removing the remaining cheato was the mistake, I'm sure it would have recovered well before or at the time I dosed 6000mg of Fluz. In fact, I may not have needed to dose at all. My system livestock all seems great after using Vibrant, some where a bit more pale but nothing terrible.
I like my NO3 ~4-8ppm and PO4 <.04.
No tested nutrient where not very high but I am sure there was more than just NO3 and PO4 added to the water column after such a large amount of algae die off.
I prefer to keep my NO3 at or above 4ppm and PO4 less than .05. I actually add potassium nitrate to keep my NO3 where it is, now and before all this. As you can see in my system build I have several methods for control of nutrients. I somehow totally underestimated what cheato dose for me, and of course a large skimmer.
