To Vibrant or Not to Vibrant

[robertpdx]

I'm always interested to hear people's results with Vibrant. I have a 20g nano and never had an algae issue for the first 6 months of starting the tank but then I was keeping caulerpa prolifera in the display. It grew like crazy and I eventually got tired of trimming it so I removed it. Algae followed. Since then I went through a Vibrant cycle that worked, but triggered cyano. I took care of that eventually with chemiclean. The algae came back a few weeks after that. It seems obvious now that I wasn't exporting enough waste during that treatment. Lighting is an AI Prime set to approximate the Ecotech AB+ spectrum and has about a 10 hour photoperiod, and my alk/Ca/Mg all in the right ranges, but I wasn't monitoring NO3 and PO4. I since have acquired a PO4 ULR checker.

I made a bunch of filter socks and now change them out every 2 days and recently added an airline skimmer which is working (for curiosity I tested ammonia in the skimmate and never have seen such an intense green color before).

Careful feeding using quality food, keeping PO4 at 0.04-0.5 (occasional dosing of Phosphat-E) and weekly 20% water changes have it receding, but it's very slow.... so every now and then I ponder trying Vibrant again. The inhabitants are doing great, there is coraline growing all over the back of the display (and my powerhead which is annoying)...if I could just get that hair algae gone...

Please keep us updated on your progress!

 

[RobertTheNurse]

Yeah. I hear you. I will def keep this topic posted. Im using a VERY conservative approach to this. I have a 65...dosing it as 60G at half dose...0.5 mL/10 G...so 3mL and plan on dosing every 2 weeks.

Prior to dosing my parameters were:

Nitrate 10
Phos 0.02
Alk 8.9
SG 1.025
Ammonia 0
Temp 77.8

I did a major manual removal of the turf algae and the algae on my powerhead/heater etc prior to dosing.

I dont really have a completely dirty tank...I just find i am having to constantly remove turf hair algae every water change. I was really hesitant to use this product as I have researched the pros and cons for a few weeks and tried various attempts to control...

So although its not completely out of control...I want some other "ammo" to help me do less invasive removal.