Dosing mb7 adding nutrients

p1u5h13r4m24

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When battling algaes in a reef tank many suggest to use a bacteria product such as MB7 to out compete the algae. Another form of action would be to rebalance the nutrients to the red field ratio and allow bacteria a chance to feed and grow to out compete the algae.
I may be wrong on this, but this is how I’m understanding it. I have used bacteria before to successfully out compete cyano/dinos, however my nutrient levels dropped very low. A month after stopping the bacteria the algae came right back and I believe it was from nutrients being low and out of balance.

Scenario 1: so is the idea to keep dosing nutrients to keep nutrients balanced while dosing bacteria? I am assuming in this scenario the bacteria levels will eventually grow higher than the algae levels and they can out compete the algae regardless of there being enough nutrients for both.

scenerio 2: dose the bacteria and not any nutrients so that the bacterias starve out the algaes of nutrients? The problem would then be unbalanced nutrients at the end and a possible relapse?

I can’t seem to find a clear answer and in short what I’m asking is. Do you dose nutrients while dosing mb7, because dosing mb7 is essentially carbon dosing and will lower nutrient levels.

thanks in advance!
 
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p1u5h13r4m24

p1u5h13r4m24

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Bacteria that consume detritus will be a source of nitrate and phosphate to the aquarium water column, just like fish eating fish food.

All heterotrophic organisms (from bacteria to people to whales) take in organics and excrete excess N and P and CO2.
Yes that makes sense. Also maybe in my case detritus is being consumed by cyano and dinoflagellates when they pass through the sponge filter. That could explain why I am almost 0 N and P, but have cyano and dinos.
 
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p1u5h13r4m24

p1u5h13r4m24

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Just wanted to post an update. I continued to dose phos and nitrates just enough to keep nitrate around 4ppm and phos around .04-.06. After cleaning my sponge filter, the sand bed and running activated carbon I was able to dose 5ml of mb7 twice a day with no negative affects(previously 3ml a day would strip acros) after doing these things I made tremendous progress on my cyano, Dino’s and gha. I decided to grab a uv sterilizer because I noticed In The mornings the tank would be spotless and as the day went on the Dino’s would start making a come back. After adding the uv sterilizer things really started getting better fast.
This is my 3rd time beating Dino’s and I believe I caused it this time because I was overfeeding, using reefroid, and dosing phyto so I could increase nutrients( so I wouldn’t bottom out and get Dinos). I wasn’t running a protein skimmer or cleaning my sponge filter. While my tests read low nutrients there were still plenty of N P C in my sand bed and sponge filter and that could have been fueling these algaes or bacterias. I’m still having trouble keeping N and P up however I will be taking some of my sand bed out as some areas are over 2”. Also I am sure the mb7 is consuming a lot of these as well.
I really appreciate all the help, hopefully this thread will help someone in the future!
 

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Gatorpa

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Bacteria that consume detritus will be a source of nitrate and phosphate to the aquarium water column, just like fish eating fish food.

All heterotrophic organisms (from bacteria to people to whales) take in organics and excrete excess N and P and CO2.
So do you think removing all detritus would lower CO2 and thus raise pH?

Or would you have to have a massive amount of detritus to effect that much change?
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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So do you think removing all detritus would lower CO2 and thus raise pH?

Or would you have to have a massive amount of detritus to effect that much change?

I do not know how much CO2 gets produced by degradation of detritus each day, but I expect it is quite small compared to other sources in the CO2 cycle, including room air CO2, alkalinity additives, and respiration of nearly all living organisms in the tank.
 
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Gatorpa

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I do not know how much CO2 gets produced by degradation of detritus each day, but I expect it is quite small compared to other sources in the CO2 cycle, including room air CO2, alkalinity additives, and respiration of nearly all living organisms in the tank.
Thanks for the quick reply, that’s what I was thinking as well but was looking for a more experience opinion…
 
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