OP
OP
I am using red sea and salifert, I find it's very hard to tell between 50 and 25. I will dilute later today and test again; I ordered nyos nitrate and red sea PRO which will be here Wednesday.
Extremely frustrated, can't lower nitrates on established reef. Massive water changes, bacteria supplement, carbon dosing, chaeto...NOTHING WORKS!
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I am using red sea and salifert, I find it's very hard to tell between 50 and 25. I will dilute later today and test again; I ordered nyos nitrate and red sea PRO which will be here Wednesday.
Scrubber_steve
2500 Club Member
As one other participant who has had a bad experience with Vibrant stated: " underwater creations(creator of vibrant) don’t have any literature on there site of independent scientific studies of the product. They only have end user reviews. They don’t even have any independent guarantee of analysis of what you’re getting in the bottle. You’re just taking their word for it on the breakdown."
I'm pretty convinced that they're just trying to make it a "secret blend" so other manufacturers can't copy them - but it's silly because it's not hard to guess what it is. It's likely a bacteria in the genus Shewanella. There are so many research papers about the algicidal bacteria Shewanella - I don't understand why this company has to be so fishy and not transparent. They didn't really do any research themselves to invent this concept - but they act like they did. Give credit where credit is due.
RedSea500MaxS
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I lost corals immediately after starting Vibrant! No other change. For some reason my Ca spiked and would not come down. Had to turn my DOS 2 off for over a week.
????
There really is no reason to trust your corals worth hundreds of dollars to some proprietary formula that is not disclosed and has no real scientific literature to back it up. How can we know if we are "dosing" Vibrant correctly if we don't even know what it is? How can we know what interactions it has with other organisms? How can we trust that it is reef safe when there are many accounts of people's tanks crashing or corals dying due to Vibrant? This is why I don't think people should resort to using Vibrant or even recommend it to other people - even if they have gotten good results themselves. Why? Because they aren't telling us what it is - and it obviously matters in this case because it is negatively effecting people's tanks.
OP
OP
Sometimes you see the results and with forums like these can see when products can be effective so I partially agree. When the wheels fall off, we have no idea how to eventually correct and that's where these products tend to hurt us. Look at all the success people have with Zeovit. We have NO idea what's in it but a lot of people have success. I ran zeovit about 10 years ago but when stuff started going south through strange symptoms I decided to walk away from it and go with a simpler solution.
I personally dosed vibrant because I saw what amazing turn around my LFS had with it after several years of use.
I am going back to the KISS approach as every time I deviate I end up with some type of issue that's very hard to diagnose.
OP
OP
Also, as this thread has progressed I've been testing Po4 consistently, I believe my tank is processing 0.02 phosphates daily. If I dose at 5pm to get it back to 0.08 it will drop to 0.06 within 24 hours. I believe a large portion of this is from the cyano; it seems to take off ever since I started dosing po4. Considering it was at 0.01 when this issue started I am going to keep going with the assumption that my bacteria was limited in po4 and thats why no3 won't go down.
You're not to blame for this issue really, they try really hard to make it sound like a cure all magic solution. It's predatory marketing imo. As many people will say in the chemistry subforum - don't add anything to your tank that you can't test for.
LC8Sumi
Well-Known Member
Interesting read.. I have two things to add:
- I've been battling an algae type in my tank for 3 years!!! Tried all the nowdays popular methods, but neither of them made a dent in it. Actually I'm prettey sure that the nowdays popular methods are just as 50-50 as vibrant is, because it's pretty obvious, that most of the people don't know what they're talking about, they just follow the masses, and if they're lucky (50-50) they don't fall on their faces. Anyway, I've then, as a last resort tried vibrant and that ereased it in a month.
- If I were the manufacturer of a well working product, neither would I give out the recepie & contents to the public. You don't go to Coca Cola and ask for theirs, why would UWC give it away?
+1, if it was that bad, they've went out of bussiness by now.
- I've been battling an algae type in my tank for 3 years!!! Tried all the nowdays popular methods, but neither of them made a dent in it. Actually I'm prettey sure that the nowdays popular methods are just as 50-50 as vibrant is, because it's pretty obvious, that most of the people don't know what they're talking about, they just follow the masses, and if they're lucky (50-50) they don't fall on their faces. Anyway, I've then, as a last resort tried vibrant and that ereased it in a month.
- If I were the manufacturer of a well working product, neither would I give out the recepie & contents to the public. You don't go to Coca Cola and ask for theirs, why would UWC give it away?
+1, if it was that bad, they've went out of bussiness by now.
Bacterial strains can be patented. Also, the bacteria that eat algae are well known - these species are not genetically engineered nor unique to the labs of Vibrant. Thus, they don't have much to lose to give us general information on what the bacteria is and HOW the bacteria works. Simply telling us what genus the bacteria is, and how it kills the algae and eat it will not give out more information to competitors than they already know. Any competitor who wants to copy Vibrant could simply look under the microscope from a sample of Vibrant to determine what species of bacteria it is. In essence, I believe they are hiding information from their consumers NOT their competitors. Why? Because any competitor with a microbiologist could look under a microscope to determine what strains it contains, meanwhile the consumer shouldn't have to go through these loopholes to know what their product is.
Also, I'd say your last statement is not necessarily true. A business CAN exist selling products that don't work - that's what the term snake oil comes from. Products like Kick-Ich which are supposed reef safe ich treatments still exist - even though there is no true reef safe ich treatment. They mostly sell due to customers who don't know any better and due to customers that are desperate. Not saying that Vibrant is snake oil - it is indeed capable of killing algae (perhaps not in a good way though) - but it does illustrate that a working product is NOT required to stay in business. What is required to stay in business is to SELL - which can easily be done through marketing alone instead of furthering actual product development or research.
I am super late to the party, but stop vacuuming the sand and it will get anoxic areas deeper down that will use no3 and turn it into nitrogen gas and lower your levels. You have to keep these areas devoid of oxygen for this to work by not really disturbing it too deep. You don't need any po4 for this to happen. Most people with mature and undisturbed sand beds have trouble keeping nitrate above about .1 to .5, which is more than enough and in a good sweet spot where you have enough, but not too much. If you decide to do this, it could take a few months. This is natural and works well.
Sulfur denitrator is another option.
If your nitrates are at 50, then that is growth limiting to most kinds of macro... especially chaeto. It will grow again as you lower the number. If it is not growing, then this is why. Nitrate is a necessary building block to all organic tissue, but it is also a poison at higher levels - the level in which it is a poison depends on the tissue.
Rock does not bind nitrate.
I suggest that you leave your sand alone, wean yourself from the additives and monitor. The N might go up in the mid-term, but as that sand gets the anoxic populations of bacteria, it should start to come down.
Sulfur denitrator is another option.
If your nitrates are at 50, then that is growth limiting to most kinds of macro... especially chaeto. It will grow again as you lower the number. If it is not growing, then this is why. Nitrate is a necessary building block to all organic tissue, but it is also a poison at higher levels - the level in which it is a poison depends on the tissue.
Rock does not bind nitrate.
I suggest that you leave your sand alone, wean yourself from the additives and monitor. The N might go up in the mid-term, but as that sand gets the anoxic populations of bacteria, it should start to come down.
I use about 2" of sand and I have nitrates that you have to send out to ICP to even detect. They are about .1. Deeper is better, but anything over about 1" will work to some degree. I do not like to take up 6" of tank space with sand, so 2-3" is all that I am willing to do and it works fine for denitrification, sand sifters and all of the critters.
Not that this really matters, but we looked at some vibrant under 3 different powered microscopes and found no bacteria like UWC says. Not a single one. Even if it was bacteria, it would have a shelf life like all the others like KZ or Dr. Tims or the like. One of the guys who let us use his lab equipment to look thought that there was algaecide in it. I am very highly skeptical that it is what they say that it is. They absolutely have the right to not tell us what is in it, but I think that they lied about what the contents are - I wish that they would have just not said anything like all of the other black-box supplements that are out there. This is yet another case where using the manufacturer as the only (or most trusted) source is not a great idea.
blitzkragz
Active Member
I have only been at this a year. But in my experience a kessil H380 turned on 24x7 over nothing but a 1.5' x 1.5' sump chamber with some media at the bottom will grow insane green hair algae in about 2 months, and strip nitrates down to zero unless pruned.
My results might be skewed because of the type of mechanical filter I use, but growing just GHA under an H380 seems to have the most dramatic effect (more than chaeto) on raising PH and stripping nitrates. The H380 is an absolute monster!
My results might be skewed because of the type of mechanical filter I use, but growing just GHA under an H380 seems to have the most dramatic effect (more than chaeto) on raising PH and stripping nitrates. The H380 is an absolute monster!
A sand bed is the easiest way to get Nitrate to essentially 0. I have been doing it for years. That is if you don't disturbed it and don't add a bunch of antibiotic to your tank.
I don't know what is in Vibrant, but it is not likely to be a bacterial culture, and it most likley have erythromycin in it.
Scrubber_steve
2500 Club Member
UWC clearly state that Vibrant is "95% Cultured Bacteria Blend" so it does matter a lot. People should have some understanding of what their dosing to there tanks, or at least not be lead to believe that its something its not.
I read through some of the UWC Vibrant Q&A thread & according to UWC there's nothing Vibrant can't do that's great. People seemed to be sucked in & gobbled up all of it. I found some of what I read contradictory, confusing as a result of the claims made, & on algae in general - mis-informative.
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