[hfp75]

I was having a bit of GHA and GBA and was struggling. I tried Vibrant, and it worked, the GHA and almost all of the GBA went away, when I started to tapper back the Vibrant it took like 2-3 days and everything started to look bad, then my one Frogspawn melted followed by a torch and few other things. I had a fish die - probably from the ammonia/nitrites from the RTN of the LPS. Did a bunch of H2O changes and things settled down - then I got Dinos and lost another 2 fish.

I basically did a partial restart. I pulled out all the sand and about 2/3 of the rock. I had rock cooking and got new sand and presto we are in business. My tank never really did a cycle after the sand/rock replacement. I did 1/2 of the sand one week and the other half about 2 weeks later. So, now I have new sand and a bunch of new live rock. Tank looks good and I have restocked it with fish. Some corals, but the corals are not really all thriving, so my params are still normalizing. I'll give it another week and I will do a SUMP clean out too. This should be almost a full reset over a few week period.

In the end, I think that my initial problems from GHA/GBA were from a sand bed that had 2 problems, first it had sand that was too large in size - lets detritus collect, second it had been in for 4'ish yrs and was saturated and the detritus was fermenting there. New sand is a finer size, less likely to let detritus seep in...

My dinos are gone and I am keeping lighting low, corals light (not many), and getting fish established to get nutrients into the tank, once its a few months old I'll try more corals again... I have added in chaeto from my other tank and it slowly disintegrates - providing nutrients for the bacteria.

I noticed that my Dinos really took a hit when I started adding fish and Chaeto right into the main display and did a 3 days black out followed by really weak light. The tank looks good.... I am afraid the Dinos might return if I brighten up the lights or let my nutrients drop off... Good thing I can add in chaeto from the other tank...

I keep waiting for New Tank Syndrome, but so far it really hasn't happened... maybe my bacteria cultures from the old rock and sump have done their part and stabilized the tank.

In the end, Vibrant was a fix for a problem that needed an intervention. I should have just changed the sand initially. Could have saved a bunch of heartache. Vibrant is just a carbon source to rev up the bacteria..... then the bacteria consume more nutrients, in fact the goal is that the good bacteria will compete for nutrients - thus starving out algaes. Not a bad theory, but for me it came down to a nutrient problem, from an old sand bed.

I would be curious to know how to remove a carbon source from an aquarium that relies on it. Vibrant = Steroids (for bacteria) (When the Vibrant went away the bacteria went through a die off as they adjusted to the withdraw, and this in turn started a reaction of bad events)