Experience with Vibrant.

[bones6966]

Tank is doing well, no ammonia, or nitrites and nitrates not going crazy.

Fish doing well and all my coral look fantastic. 

and I have a LOT less algae coming back now. 

I might keep the bottom sand free. 

All in all looks like it worked well so far. 

On 10/10/2021 at 5:49 PM, mcarroll said:

I'm not sure whose advice you've been following so far, but mollies, guppies and crushed coral aren't a very common way to start a tank.  (For good reasons.)

 

Consider redesigning the tank with the standard design elements:  live rock, protein skimmer, lights and flow.

 

More folks have used that combination successfully than any other, by far.  Substitutions are just that....substitutions.  Be wary of them.  Some are acceptable, some are unacceptable.  I would save deviations from the standard setup for your next tank/when you have more experience.

 

Folks do reef without live rock, but I'm not sure I'd consider doing it as a newbie.  It would be a VERY VERY slow setup if I did.  If you can get live rock, do so.

 

FYI...

 

Phosphates are never harmful as far as I can tell, and I've read quite a bit on them (related articles I've saved on my blog).  Corals – even Acropora – seem to be VERY healthy when grown in water with high phosphates levels. There's one study floating around where they tested PO4 levels up to some crazy level like 4 ppm or something.  Maybe higher.  My own tank has phosphates >2.0 ppm...corals are great, fish are great.  There are several notable tanks out there running "crazy high" nutrient levels...they just aren't popular in the hobby for some reason....off the top of my head, Scripps Institute's tank, PaulB's.  I wouldn't say too many folks on N-R keep "crazy high" nutrients, but you don't generally see anyone around here chasing nutrients down to zero like you do a lot of places.  Lots of good examples to follow here IMO if you look around.

LFS *was* my main source of info. but that is becoming less so every day.

and the live rock was back in the tank after the clean, not trying it without rock. 

[Haacheew]

Based on my personal experience.  Vibrant works extremely well for me for the past 2 years.  I have used it many times.  I still have half bottle left.  It's very powerful so follow its instructions carefully.  And remember to remove any chaetos you havef before dosing Vibrant.  It completely destroyed my chaetos TWICE (both times were my fault for I forgot to remove it prior to use).

 

No idea about phosphate level.  Too lazy to test.  I only observe how my coral react and do water change accordingly.