Using live phytoplankton to beat ugly phase

[tgrab]

I would take what they say with a grain of salt. I started my tank with about $400 worth of magic in a bottle including all the stuff from algaebarn that was supposed to make me skip the ugly stage. In actually I had almost every dreadful ugly phase issue you can imagine. Save your money and get yourself a nice established piece of live rock from a thriving reef.

I also added wondermud, plankton, and the live sand activator from IPSF which also help and I have plans to add a small amount of live rock soon.

nice that's awesome to hear! hopefully when more is added things continue going well. I didn't experience any negative affects after adding the fish and coral. the fish load is pretty light in terms of waste and the corals I get are always from the same few vendors and they always come in super clean and covered in coralline algae so I'm sure that's the reason I'm seeing so much of that showing up on my rock work. keep me posted I'm interested in hearing how thing go once more gets added into your system. sounds like your off to a great start. on the bright side none of what you are doing can hurt the system so in my eyes its definitely worth it. its a great natural way to start things off. especially with real live rock being so limited these days. i feel these new methods can really benefit the the tanks since so much if it is sterile anymore. good luck dude!

Thanks! I'm curious to see what impact adding fish and corals will have. Either way, I'm telling myself I'm going to lean into the ugly phase and see what boosting biodiversity can do to help.

 

[Jekyl]

You have a 120 right, how much phyto do you put in daily?

90g. Followed the directions from the algae barn bottle. Think it was 15ml a day

 

[CK00020]

Wow I am dosing 50ml