I had a disaster with Vibrant yesterday.
I dosed this to my 400l fish only (and 1 anenome) marine tank, the fish were good and healthy which I've had for about 7 years - but nearly all were dead only few hrs after (so far a powder brown tang, a toby, a cleaner wrasse, a bicolor angel, a blennie, a blue cheek trigger, a red tooth trigger and a large banner fish, only 2 clownfish the anenome remain the next day.
Here is my experience and conclusion:
I had some light rust colored powder to slimey growth on the glass and substrate which appeared some weeks after using Monster 460 to get rid of some green algae and a bit of red slime. Nutrients were practically zero after using that but I read that is when dinoflagellates - these rust brown creatures thrive. They have been in the tank about 4 months and could grow back on the glass in hrs, there was no green algae or red slime just this, so I was looking for a solution and Vibrant was apparently one to try.
After dosing the tank the fish seemed lethargic an hr in, I went out for lunch and on return saw the cleaner wrasse with new black marks on it's facial skin gasping on the bottom, the bicolor on its side with what looked like bruises under each eye and the dead blennie which had also gone black. The tang was breathing rapidly but still swimming, the triggers and toby had locked themselves into gaps in the rock. I pumped up the surface flow and aeration to the point there was no doubt water was getting oxygenated rapidly. I moved the cleaner wrasse, bicolor and tang into clean mix sea water buckets and tested the tank for ammonia (I had read the above thread in a panic search where they thought it was an ammonia spike or dead bacteria in the bottle) my ammonia test showed zero. The affected fish both in the tank and in the clean mix seemed to develop thrusting jerky body movements and spasms, slamming into rocks or the bucket wall but gradually their bodies went rigid while still alive, seemingly unable to move certain muscles. It seemed to start at the tail then freeze up the body until only pectoral fins could move, then various spasms in those and the whole body would look stiff as a board except the gills, which would finally stop suddenly. Each fish had the same thing and those in the new water were not any better than those in the tank.
To me it looked like some sort of neuro toxin was paralysing these fish and wondered what on earth it could be and what was in the bottle of Vibrant or reacting with it. I added carbon to the sump just in case.
Now I remember from studing oceanography at uni long ago dinoflagellates are behind mass fish deaths in red tides and eating red tide fish can mess with humans' nerve systems. A quick search more into 'dinotoxins' and yes they produce paralysis toxins. I believe there are about 2000 species of dinos and many produce these various neuro toxins that cause paralysis. The tank, apart from all the dead fish was looking more 'vibrant' the dinos were not growing. So did Vibrant kill my expensive beloved fish? Vibrant evidently attacked the dinos and I'm concluding by closely watching the fish and ruling out ammonia that they died from a paralysing neuro toxin. This toxin must have been in my species of dino and Vibrant released it from them rapidly which in turn paralysed and killed my fish extremely quickly. My clown fish pair both are doing fine but they have toxin resilience to things like paralysing anenome stings so that probably explains why they are the only survivors.
Please be careful with this product if you have dinos I have lost a lot of emotional attachment and money today and wished I had never tried it. But it was a secondary toxin release that killed my fish not Vibrant itself.
Dinotoxins are extremely dangerous, one type saxitoxins for example are Schedule 1 prohibited chemical weapons, good summary of dinotoxins here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2525493/ It was evident that whatever species of dino I had that the toxin was inteferring with the sodium pathways in the dying fish causing their jerky behaviour and
paralysis, a very sad day but hope others find this useful.
Hope someone can help you understand this. Vibrant is a hit and miss, Sometimes it works and others it doesnt
