Vibrant question- increases phos and nitrates?

[LesPoissons]

Hi guys, battling turf algae. Trying vibrant on it. Added a dose to my 220 gallon yesterday. Two days ago I had zero phos (Hanna) and 2.5 nitrates. Today I am at .1 Phos and 10 nitrate. Is this expected with using vibrant? I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure how it works.

(And don’t worry- Im working on all the factors to manage the tank better long term, but in the meantime I’m going to lose my corals to turf algae so need the quick fix. Hope it doesn’t start a whole new issue.)

 

[CuzzA]

Yes. To be expected. As the algae dies the nutrients will be released back in the system. I would try to manually remove as much algae as possible. And by remove, I mean completely out of the tank. If not and all of the algae dies, spiking nutrients, you'll likely have a cyano bloom.

 

[LesPoissons]

Argh. there is already cyano- I treated with chemiclean a week ago and then did a 25% change but it came right back today. Is this going to keep it going then? I take it the vibrant won’t kill the cyano. It’s a 220g so I don’t have the water volume to do back to back water changes. I put on filter socks today that I can change out daily.

 

[ScottR]

Vibrant contains a heterotrophic bacteria that actually eats algae. As stated, as algae dies, nutrients will be released back into the system. It’s my thinking that, as something like algae dies back, another thing is given the green light to take over. So not uncommon to see a cyano or dino bloom after successfully killing off algae. I’ve been there too many times before.

 

[LesPoissons]

Man. I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard to keep a tank clean and under control. I ran low nutrient for the last year to try to starve out gha, tried everything else you do for gha, finally vibrant got rid of it, kept the low nutrient going for a couple months- and then cyano showed up and now turf algae. I do biweekly water changes and my parameters are all kept in the good range- corals are growing, fish are happy- nutrients are still low. I don’t get it.
thanks for the info though

 

[ScottR]

Man. I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard to keep a tank clean and under control. I ran low nutrient for the last year to try to starve out gha, tried everything else you do for gha, finally vibrant got rid of it, kept the low nutrient going for a couple months- and then cyano showed up and now turf algae. I do biweekly water changes and my parameters are all kept in the good range- corals are growing, fish are happy- nutrients are still low. I don’t get it.
thanks for the info though

I think we’ve all been there. Nutrients or not, you’ll have some type of problem.

 

[CuzzA]

Man. I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard to keep a tank clean and under control. I ran low nutrient for the last year to try to starve out gha, tried everything else you do for gha, finally vibrant got rid of it, kept the low nutrient going for a couple months- and then cyano showed up and now turf algae. I do biweekly water changes and my parameters are all kept in the good range- corals are growing, fish are happy- nutrients are still low. I don’t get it.
thanks for the info though

I dive a lot and I can tell you nothing is constant on the reefs. Some weeks there's bacteria and algae/phyto blooms. Jelly fish blooms. Cyano blooms. Diatom blooms. And some weeks it's crystal clear. In our closed systems we do what we can to roll with the changes and have more clear days than cloudy.

Peroxide is another good tool to utilize and it's okay to turn the lights down/off for a couple days. This is natural. Nevertheless, you just need to be more persistent than the nuisance. Vacuum sand bed, scrub rocks, more frequent water changes. Vacuum algae with a filter bag in between water changes. Test your water more often. Spot treat with peroxide. Look into an oxydator. If you're not using kalk it has been reported a higher pH has a negative effect on dinos and algae with the benefit of increased Coraline algae. Basically, attack on multiple fronts and never let anything get out of hand. That's my advice.