[Frogger]

A little over a month ago I started adding Vibrant to my reef tank. I have added a very low dose every second week. Two weeks ago I added my 3rd dose.

The reason I added Vibrant was I had a small amount of hair algae growing in my tank and I just wanted to keep it under control.

My tank is a 75 gallon reefer mostly sps (acros). It is a very very low nutrient tank, not by choice, just because my tank exports nutrients very well. I have been adding nitrates and phosphates regularly to my tank. Started adding nitrates to control phosphates. Needed to add phosphates because adding nitrates removed all phosphates (not good another story).

I add a lot of nitrates and I still cannot get a nitrate reading on Red Sea Pro test kit. But it helped with my coral colours and health exponentially. It also helps me to control phosphates from being all over the planet.

After the second dose of Vibrant I started to notice my phosphates were rising up really high. So I stopped adding phosphates. My phosphates kept increasing (getting a reading of 50+ Hanna ULR). At about this time I started noticing my coral colours not so bright.

My next step was to start adding more nitrate to the tank to try to stabilize the phosphates. After the 3rd dose I started to notice my coraline algae pealing off the back glass in sheets. My alkalinity (2 part) usage dropped to a fraction of what it was several weeks ago. My phosphates were still high. The colour of my corals are pale. One thing to note is I haven't had to clean my glass in about 3 weeks and there is nothing growing on it.

I was getting a bit concerned so I started doing research and it appears I am not the only one running into this problem. It appears that Vibrant is designed for reefers with high nutrients especially nitrates. It appears that the bacteria in Vibrant are aggressively using the nitrates. In my system because it is a low nutrient system that is not good because no nitrates= poor color, slow growth and high phosphates.

In the past 3 days I have been adding enormous amounts of nitrates and my phosphates have come down, I am now adding enormous amounts of nitrates and some phosphates and things are turning around. My alkalinity usage (2 part) has started to increase towards normal usage.

Conclusions
I like what Vibrant does and the affects on unwanted algae growth is. I feel I need to have a better understanding of the processes within my tank when I chose to put a new additive into it. Also trashing Vibrant claiming that it crashed my tank without fully understanding how or why is not fair to the product. These are my experiences and my experiences only, yours might be completely different.

Other reefers experiences with Vibrant are welcome.