Vibrant dosing observation

tpack17 · Feb 6, 2018

So I started vibrant roughly 7 weeks ago since I had bubble algae come with a frag.My tank runs pretty clean nitrate and phosphate wise already but tried to starve it out with gfo. So the corals started suffering do to prolonged 0 phos and near 0 nitrate. I decided to shutoff the gfo since the bubble algae was not going away. Was not spreading but not dying either. Emeralds were lazy and didn’t eat any.
So to my surprise I noticed the last two days since gfo is offline that the vibrant is now working on the BA. I am not sure why but the gfo somehow was hindering the vibrant. Not sure why since I thought vibrant was just basically bacteria.
Any thought?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Feb 7, 2018

tpack17 said:
So I started vibrant roughly 7 weeks ago since I had bubble algae come with a frag.My tank runs pretty clean nitrate and phosphate wise already but tried to starve it out with gfo. So the corals started suffering do to prolonged 0 phos and near 0 nitrate. I decided to shutoff the gfo since the bubble algae was not going away. Was not spreading but not dying either. Emeralds were lazy and didn’t eat any.
So to my surprise I noticed the last two days since gfo is offline that the vibrant is now working on the BA. I am not sure why but the gfo somehow was hindering the vibrant. Not sure why since I thought vibrant was just basically bacteria.
Any thought?

I don't think we have a good understanding of what Vibrant actually does, but bacteria need phosphate and it is possible to drive it too low for some species to thrive. Bubble algae (valonia) seems to do fairly well at low phosphate levels (low enough to stress corals), so low phosphate isn't generally the best option for it.

tpack17 · Feb 7, 2018

Thanks for the knowledge Randy. Lots of misinformation out there that you can starve it out. Also that it only hits a dirty tank. I can confirm my tank was not dirty when I got it. Then I tried to starve it hence the post. Just trying to help myself understand why and others that try to get rid of BA. Thanks again.

AdamNC · Feb 7, 2018

Kinda makes me think the same thing. I’m into week 6, 12 doses so far and not much really. Been debating on pulling my Purigen and PhosNet. Currently I’m at near 0 on No3 and Po4. Still being plagued by bubble algae and gha. And I have notice a few Cali Tort frags starting to pale out some.

250mixreef · Feb 7, 2018

Is it possible the iron from gfo is fueling ba

Brew12 · Feb 7, 2018

AdamNC said:
Kinda makes me think the same thing. I’m into week 6, 12 dosers so far and not much really. Been debating on pulling my Purigen and PhosNet. Currently I’m at near 0 on No3 and Po4. Still being plagued by bubble algae and gha. And I have notice a few Cali Tort frags starting to pale out some.

I'm shocked you don't have cyano or dino issues doing that.

I struggled to keep my nutrients up when I was using Vibrant 2x per week.

AdamNC · Feb 7, 2018

Nope, no dinos or cyano, just Bubble and GHA. I can't really believe my levels are truly as low as my kits claim to be as I have an algae issue. So I'm stopping Red Sea Coral Colors Part C (Fe), removed the Purigen, PhosNet and the de*Nitrate. We'll see what happens when I raise my No3 and Po4 a bit. I'm still going to continue dosing NoPox as UC stated the two are fine to use together.