repeating Chemiclean treatment

[asylumdown]

yah sorry if my reply came off as snarky. The tone in my head when I wrote it sounded completely different from the tone that came across when I just re-read it now.

I still stand by the assertion that I am suspicious of products like MB7 for all the reasons I've already listed, but a) I've never tried it and b) I was totally wrong when I said I didn't think any bacteria could still be alive in those bottles. That would have been a true statement for nitrifiers like Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria, but not for the kinds of heterotrophs that will be consuming biopellets. Whether or not there actually is any bacteria in those bottles, or whether or not they always work the way their producers claim in every application is something that I think still has a lot of room for snake oilery, but there's enough people who swear by them (such as yourself) for me to think it's worth looking in to. At some point we have to trust that people who make the products we use know what they're doing, but so many of those products have biologically meaningless fluff phrases on them like "maintains optimal enzyme balance" that the skeptic in me is constantly wanting to call foul. It doesn't mean they don't work obviously, but still. If this strategy works, I'll obviously continue to use MB7, for as long as it seems to work, even if I'll never be able to say for sure that what I think is happening is actually what's going on.

As for my theory of cyano - well it's changing as I learn more. It's still probably not even close to right, but the only thing I do know is that simply telling someone to reduce their nutrients, be that through more water changes, heavier skimming, or less feeding can result in some very confused and frustrated aquarists. There's way more to it than that, and I agree that phosphate isn't necessarily the whole story, but it's certainly part of it. It's just that when I was reading forums back when I started I came across way too many 1 or 2 sentence statements about the nature of things that were treated as absolutes with no justification behind them. It's why I try and always support what I say with some kind of theory or backup, so that even if I'm wrong, where I'm wrong or how I came to be wrong can be pointed out. It makes for wind baggy posts though.