Vibrant, nitrates and my experiences. The good, the bad and the ugly

[gregzz4]

I agree with you Glenn that it's definately a balancing act with nutrients, but also beneficial bacterias.
When I first started dosing nitrogen and phosphorus, you were the first to agree that it's needed. Since then, I've not needed to run either GFO or Carbon.
And, after I balanced mine, I stopped dosing both NO3 or PO4 products. My tank balanced itself with fish load, SPS and just a filter sock with a decent-skimmer.

With that in mind, I'm considering adding some bacteria to my new tank(started 2 mths ago). Either I'll use Seachem Pristine, or something similar such as MB7. Haven't decided yet. If we could buy DR Tim's I'd consider it too.

As for GHA/Cyano, in my last tank (shut down before summer) I had great success with as above; decent skimming, a sock changed weekly, a bi-weekly water change, and some hit/miss rock turkey basting. I even stopped cleaning the sand. It got to the point where if I didn't like the look of the sand, I'd just siphon the top off and replace it with new - maybe 10lbs once/year.

Near the end before I shut the tank down for a re-do last spring, I was getting some hair algae and cyano, but only due to me not basting the rock and cleaning the sand.

I went 3 years without gha/cyano issues before I got lazy.

So, I feel that with a decent WC schedule/filter sock changes/clean rocks and sand when needed, we should be able to keep our tanks balanced without spending $40/cup for a product that might/may throw our tanks completely out of balance.

I feel that, with the 'right' kind of bacteria that won't upset my SPS, my tank will be balanced for years as it was between my restart in 2016 and this last shutdown 2019.

I currently have some bacterial 'mulm' on my LR that is gobbling up enough of the nutrients in my water to upset my SPS, causing them to pale some, and leaving a 'sludge' all over my rocks and sand.
This weekend, I'm planning on adding either MB7 or Pristine in small doses to clear this up and see what happens.

Maybe this should have been posted in a different thread, but it's relevant to Vibrant's claims of removing 'sludge'