Will aminos make my bacteria bloom worse?

[Robert Binz]

I’ve been having an annoying heterotrophic bacterial bloom in my tank for a few weeks. There’s a lot of new dry rock in the tank so it’s just trying to find equilibrium.

I’d like to dose brightwell aminos for my LPS. Will the aminos make the bacteria bloom worse? Should I hold off?

 

[AC1211]

I’ve been having an annoying heterotrophic bacterial bloom in my tank for a few weeks. There’s a lot of new dry rock in the tank so it’s just trying to find equilibrium.

I’d like to dose brightwell aminos for my LPS. Will the aminos make the bacteria bloom worse? Should I hold off?

I think so when ai target fed reef roids to my corals everything got worse: bacteria, vermetid snails, aiptasia, and hair algae. I am still fighting aiptasia and hair algae.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Only way to know is to try, but it might.

 

[najer]

I would say yes but every tank is different.

 

[Dan_P]

I’ve been having an annoying heterotrophic bacterial bloom in my tank for a few weeks. There’s a lot of new dry rock in the tank so it’s just trying to find equilibrium.

I’d like to dose brightwell aminos for my LPS. Will the aminos make the bacteria bloom worse? Should I hold off?

Bacteria will consume amino acid no question about that. Will make the bloom worse depends on how much you plan to add, how many ppm in a dose of amino acids? I never compared cloudiness of water from bacteria for carbon dosing versus amino acids, but as a first approximation, it will at least give you a ball park idea.

We know that around 1-2 vinegar per gallon of tank water can produce cloudiness. The idea is to figure out how many ppm of carbon you are adding to the system by dosing the amino acids and compare that to the ppm carbon in 1-2 mL vinegar.

Does the bottle of amino acids give any indication of what’s in the bottle?