Maybe quitting Zeovit

[Oceanic]

The super pastel colours are an aberration, a defensive reaction to photo saturation in a low nutrient environment. Promoting Zeovit as a way to get a "natural" looking reef tank is seriously silly.

I completely disagree with this statement, the ocean in its most pristine places is naturaly an Ultra Low Nutrient and naturaly bright enviroment using the power of the sun. Some of the reefs are comprised of miles and miles of shallow ultra clear water with prodominant coral colors that would put most tanks to shame. It is incorrect to think brown is the only "natural" color or the most common color of the natural reef. By using Zeovit or other similar pricipals we are only trying to replicate the fact that our corals are not stuck in an enclosed glass box.

Also remember that the ocean does not have powerfull actinic lights poised over top of it; however, it does have the ultra power of the sun sitting somewhere around the 5500K range. Stick a 5500K rated 1000 watt light over your tank then see what the colors look like! One would be pretty surprised how dull they would look.

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by midgetwaiter

The ocean doesn't look like zeo tanks. For every pastel blue "wonder zippy" acro you see on a reef there are hundreds of dull brown boring ones. The super pastel colours are an aberration, a defensive reaction to photo saturation in a low nutrient environment. Promoting Zeovit as a way to get a "natural" looking reef tank is seriously silly.

A "natural looking reef" was not part of my intent in that statement. The ULN was.

[Brent F]

Originally Posted by Oceanic

It is very easy with Zeo to over dose any of the basic four suppliments, the algae could be the result of the start2, zeofood7, or AAHC. Everyones tank is differant and you can't just go by what the label on the bottle says for dosing instructions. You may also have a latent PO4 build up in the tank sand, rock etc, that is being pulled out by the zeo system. Sometimes results take some time to be achieved, however, given some time and tweaking of the suppliments the tank will become nutrient poor using the zeovit method.

I found I was getting some hair algae until I started cycling th zeo reactor 3 hours on 3 hours off. Give it some time and tweek your dosing amounts and it will get better.

This touches on why I stopped dosing. It is too much work and a bit of a black art to do it right.

The simplicity of fish as a nutrient supply, skimming, and dosing only consumed elements (Calcuim and Alkalinity) seems to be providing better results for me.