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Testing Vibrant Aquarium Cleaner: 1 Week Update


HarryPotter

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What would kill the snails? Is everyone dosing exactly the recommended amount?

The area I'm treating is ~80 gallons

 

First dose I did at 7ml - snails dead 4 days later

 

Second dose 5ml 6 days later

 

The 2.5ml added yesterday after Tiny unintended water change

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I'm not quite at one week, but I'm cautiously optimistic. The gha seems to be weaker and seems to be breaking up a bit. Every time I blow off the rocks it's like a little snowstorm.

 

I'm waiting to take pictures at the 1 week mark tomorrow, but I really do think it's improved since last week.

 

No dead snails that I can tell, but I don't have a lot in this tank anyway. But I've seen at least a few cruising around still.

 

Thats good!

 

Cyano is going away fast , bubble algae is starting to break loose .

 

2.5 doses so far

 

Nice!! Ill see the tank again in a week to update you on it

 

What would kill the snails? Is everyone dosing exactly the recommended amount?

 

 

Yep, I did 10ml for 80 gallons of water. Which is more than the "clean tank" amount but less than the "dirty tank" amount.

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You guys are making me a little nervous.

 

I have a Christmas Tree worm rock that I've had now for well over a year. It does have GHA that I've been battling ever since I got the rock. I take it out and brush the stuff off and it keeps coming back. So.... I ordered a bottle and should get it tomorrow.

 

I'm hoping the feather duster worms and my nano conch snails all pull thorugh.

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I've dosed 2 tanks with this 4 times each so far. My JBJ 45 with GHA and my Red Sea Reefer XL425 with diatoms (still newer tank so expected.) Nothing has died in either tank. The GHA has not gotten much better yet, but one thing I have noticed is I never have to clean the glass anymore. I have been dosing every 3 days, 5ml in the JBJ (a little more than needed) and 10ml in the Reefer which is exact since after displacement there is 100 gallons total in there.

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I dosed the saltwater tank last Monday, but my only actual issues are valonia and a patch of bryopsis, which should supposedly take longer to fix. All my snails are still kicking (two trochus, an army of nano conch snails, and Batman the black frilled limpet). Peppermint shrimp and pom pom crab are also fine. I'm apprehensive about dosing again in this tank if people's snails are dying, though - plus I'm not skimming this tank. I'll wait until it has a skimmer to try again, and just keep going for physical removal.

 

On the other hand, the freshwater tank. I had hair algae and turf algae trying to carpet the substrate. Two days after dosing the freshwater version (also last Monday), it was all turning white and clumpy. As of yesterday, there are maybe four small patches trying to hold on, but even those have turned grey and fall apart pretty easily. Nerite snail is still going strong, all ten tetras and three corydoras are accounted for, and I'd already moved my red cherry shrimp out of this tank anyway. Second dose should be going in this evening.

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wait did you lose anything?

No, not that I can tell from dosing Vibrant. It's just been a long time since my last snail bomb, so I don't have a lot of snails to begin with.

I dosed the saltwater tank last Monday, but my only actual issues are valonia and a patch of bryopsis, which should supposedly take longer to fix. All my snails are still kicking (two trochus, an army of nano conch snails, and Batman the black frilled limpet). Peppermint shrimp and pom pom crab are also fine. I'm apprehensive about dosing again in this tank if people's snails are dying, though - plus I'm not skimming this tank. I'll wait until it has a skimmer to try again, and just keep going for physical removal.

 

On the other hand, the freshwater tank. I had hair algae and turf algae trying to carpet the substrate. Two days after dosing the freshwater version (also last Monday), it was all turning white and clumpy. As of yesterday, there are maybe four small patches trying to hold on, but even those have turned grey and fall apart pretty easily. Nerite snail is still going strong, all ten tetras and three corydoras are accounted for, and I'd already moved my red cherry shrimp out of this tank anyway. Second dose should be going in this evening.

I've compared pictures from week ago when I started dosing and I don't think there's much difference at this point. I have noticed that the greyish gha seems to be breaking apart more easily, but the greener gha is pretty much unchanged.

 

But I didn't really expect much to happen in the first week anyway, so we'll see what happens next week.,

 

That's really interesting about the freshwater tank, though. I may have to try some. Do you have live plants?

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I've compared pictures from week ago when I started dosing and I don't think there's much difference at this point. I have noticed that the greyish gha seems to be breaking apart more easily, but the greener gha is pretty much unchanged.

 

But I didn't really expect much to happen in the first week anyway, so we'll see what happens next week.,

 

That's really interesting about the freshwater tank, though. I may have to try some. Do you have live plants?

 

Yehp - anubias, vallisneria, a tiny anubias nana var petite, and some stauro that's too stubborn to die even though I don't have the right parameters for it :P I think at one point I picked one of those fake marimo balls that was maliciously made with the most stubborn algae I've ever seen, and a few hairs got caught on the fertilized substrate and went rampant. Decently sure it starved out my floating plants somehow.

 

But it's dying now :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

should you dose this if you dont have any algae in your tank? use it as a preventative measure?

If you don't have any you are doing something right. I'd say just stick with what you are doing. No need to add anything if it isn't necessary.

That said, i am on week 4 of vibrant and my tank is looking awesome lol.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 5:18 PM, HarryPotter said:

 

Didn't do anything, I stopped after 4 weeks. 

 

I agree I tried it also and well no Bueno..............

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ReefSafeSolutions

Same story here, my Dad and I figured it was worth a shot.  I've used it for several weeks now and have only watched my sand and glass get more algae.  My sand is the worst, I've been trying to get nutrients down for weeks and even with this Vibrant junk nothing is working.  Luckily the stuff wasn't too expensive.  Glad it worked for some people, I guess.  

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HarryPotter
3 minutes ago, ReefSafeSolutions said:

Same story here, my Dad and I figured it was worth a shot.  I've used it for several weeks now and have only watched my sand and glass get more algae.  My sand is the worst, I've been trying to get nutrients down for weeks and even with this Vibrant junk nothing is working.  Luckily the stuff wasn't too expensive.  Glad it worked for some people, I guess.  

 

I think it "Worked" for other people because Vibrant also recommends that you increase water changes and manual removal. So the actual Vibrant isn't doing anything.. just the increased maintenance is. 

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ReefSafeSolutions

:lol:

 

"Vibrant worked for me because I did a bunch of water changes!"

 

I love that.  So awesome.

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I did no water changes and had success with it.  Vibrant knocked out a bunch of hair algae after 2 weeks of doses.  I can't see any adverse effects,  I plan on continuing to use as needed.  

20170201_171247.jpg

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I did not go about testing this very scientifically, but here's what went down in my tank:

 

I had some annoying turf algae, so had introduced Dr. Tim's Waste Away as a weekly dose in December.  After doing this for 2 months, the algae improved, but didn't disappear.  As others mentioned above, I was also doing more basting and removal, though my water change schedule remained the same.

 

So while there were improvements, the algae was not gone, so I introduced Vibrant as a replacement for Waste Away on Feb 6, dosing about 2ml in a 15 gallon system.  I dosed another 2ml on Feb 12.  Both times were immediately after a water change.  

 

I don't question that Vibrant had a further impact in reducing the algae. It's still there in a few spots, but has undoubtedly improved.  However, I have also been having coincident issues:

  • My biggest trochus which had always been a very active grazer died shortly after the second dose.  This was after I noticed all of my trochus snails falling off the rocks after the first dose.  They almost seemed drunk and couldn't right themselves - I thought they became Astrea...
  • Some of my acropora have slight amounts of STN at the bottom where there is less light.  This includes my green slimer, which had always been super plush
  • My plate coral shriveled up after the first dose of Vibrant, and is now just a few clumps of tissue on a bare skeleton.
  • My birdsnest had some flesh blister and slough off on some of the branches
  • The flesh on the leptoseris was becoming ostensibly thinner and losing fluorescence in spots

I can't say these are all caused by Vibrant, since the timing was also right when I switched from one bucket of Tropic Marin salt to another of the same brand.  But I suspect that Vibrant may be so effective at cleaning that it over-cleaned the water.  I did a double water change and a dose of MB7 the weekend following the second Vibrant dose and have increased feeding. Things seem to be recovering - the remaining trochus are actively grazing again, acro STN seems to have slowed and possibly halted.  The plate coral still looks like crap, but we'll give it time.

 

Some of these changes seem like ones that could also be caused by a spike in Alkalinity, and in fact, I had noticed my Alkalinity increase to 8.4 while it was normally around 7.0-7.5.  The dosing schedule was unchanged, but perhaps the uptake was temporarily reduced.  (New salt bucket alkalinity tests low if anything, so that did not cause any notable change in parameters)

 

My take is that this Vibrant stuff has merit, but their suggested dosage may be too high in certain conditions.  I'll give it another shot later, as this was far from a scientific test, but I don't think I'll use this as part of my regular maintenance schedule just yet...

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ReefSafeSolutions

I wish I had the same results you guys have had.  I can say with confidence that it hasn't done anything for my system.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I didn't catch this thread earlier but Vibrant made a world of difference in my tank. I feel there was a fairly good account of the problems I was having in my tank thread, but to summarize bubble algae was out of control even with an emerald crab in the tank, and I had a severe problem with dinoflagellates. It had gotten to the point the tank was completely bubbly snot-covered in dinos after a 6 hour photo period every day and was affecting the corals. H202 had some impact but caused further coral issues, black-out had a brief impact but the dinos just came right back.

 

I think this product is a big YMMV scenario, as with dinos there are hundreds of strains and I don't have a microscope to even attempt to classify what ones I had. It did work, keeps my glass much cleaner and overall I would recommend it's use for tanks that had ongoing problems like mine.

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