My experience... I have no vested interests in any company... I love acros but also love fish. I feed the fish three times a day and they poop a lot. I still rely on the Berlin Method. My NO3 and PO4 were always on the high side.
Years ago and to fight my problem with nutrients I bought a Sulfur reactor and it slowly worked great until the day something I did killed the bacteria and my nitrates went up, my corals browned up and I waited a few more months until the sulfur reactor started to work again, then I did another tank treatment or something and had to reset the reactor again... to me that was just too much!
Decided to go the biopellets route, tried two main brands, my tank initially went through little bacteria blooms, slime inside pipes and so, it worked to some extent but never took my NO3 and PO4 to the levels I was trying to achieve.
Have tried the vinegar route it worked to some extent but I was pouring too much vinegar and I have to confess I was afraid of later ill effects of too much vinegar and decided to try vodka as many reefers were observing good results.
Slowly I started dosing vodka according to some online dosing instructions in other forums, again it worked to some extent but comparing to said online instructions I was dosing too much of it and again I was very afraid something would go wrong.
Haven´t tried the combo´s like VSV. I just wanted something to work and to give me some peace of mind. I am just a regular guy, despite spending few years treating water in a wastewater treatment plant of a Japanese company that was based in the UK, I am not educated enough to debate chemistry, I do still can think out of the box, though!
Now that I write this I recall a time I used some MB7 and I liked the product but I couldn´t find it in Thailand and it was too expensive to keep always buying it on Ebay.
Then I read some posts about peoples experiences with Nopox, and it was a mixed bag of results, some said it was working, some said not. Anyway, I decided to give it a go. It took me a few weeks to find out that with a 20ml dose/day My NO3 were reading 0ppm and PO4 very close to 0ppm.
During one and a half years of dosing Nopox my acros developed nice colors, growth was amazing, but rocks and coarse sand were ugly. A very thick coat of mulm and cyano developed competing for space with encrusting corals, sometimes invading the base of the corals. I confess I had a relationship of love and hate with Nopox!
Last year, while I was on a holiday, my chiller stopped working and when I came home just four days later all my corals were STN, when attempted to remove them from the rocks, they (the rocks) collapsed and I almost called it quits!
October 2015 and I decided to frag everything, and saved all the corals but one. Removed everything from the tank, replaced the chiller with an A/C compressor and drop-in-coil, new sand, new rocks, my frags and some surviving colonies in and started cycling the tank.
At that time I made a big mistake I started dosing the same 20ml of Nopox since day one of starting over and I ended with an epic bacteria bloom! The skimmer was pulling nothing during the first few days, corals started to STN again. I couldn´t see a thing in the tank, only when fish would come close to the glass. Stopped dosing Nopox!
First 24hours after the start over and I woke up to notice my tangs grasping for air laying down at the bottom near the glass. Bacteria was consuming most of the oxygen so I added extra pumps to create surface agitation and all fish recovered.
Reconnected a 55w UV sterilizer and 10 minutes later my skimmer was pulling dead bacteria, and that was how things cleared.
About two months later and again dosing Nopox and that brown thick mulm covering the rocks came back, I was removing as much as possible, sometimes peeling some large patches off the rocks. I was happy with No3 and Po4 levels but not with how the rocks were looking.
I wanted to replace Nopox with something else but at the same time I didn´t want to add reactors or expensive stuff as I am on a budget and to be honest I like to enjoy the hobby but not the hard work that comes with it!
I was talking to a friend and LFS owner with a spectacular sps tank based on Fauna Marin products and he told me to try some of the Fauna Marin products.
I e-mailed Claude from Fauna Marin seeking advice on how to replace Nopox with his products and I tried what was suggested but my NO3 and Po4 levels started to increase to the point that I decided to start dosing Nopox again.
Meanwhile I was getting some Cyano, a normal thing in a cycling tank and I decided to use Chemiclean as I never had any negative impact on my corals using it and it does a very decent job getting rid of Cyano bacteria. Well, Chemiclean eliminated the Cyano and to my surprise also removed the ugly mulm from the rocks.
Nowadays I have a very clean reef tank, undetectable NO3, undetectable PO4, clean rocks, clean sand, healthy fish and healthy corals and no hard work.
Nopox keeps my No3 and PO4 down, Reef Vitality and Coral Balance (also helps reducing Po4) and a treatment of chemiclean has worked very well for me. I just want to keep things simple My sump is only a tank, with a drop-in coil, a skimmer, a filter sock, UV sterilizer, dosing pump for the nopox and a return pump.
I like things simple and that work for me! The proof is in the pudding! My tank can be seen in my signature!
P.S. - Hope you are able to understand my broken English...
