About a year ago when I was carbon dosing I was having problems with big bacterial blooms. After discussing it with Randy Holmes Farley he recommended dosing some type of bacterial supplement thinking that a bigger bacterial diversity would improve that. It didn't seem to help but I suspect the problem was that I was too aggressive in the dosing. I recall though that after dosing with Microbacter 7 my water was exceptionally clear, much like the day after changing my GAC out. Fast forward to this week. I started dosing Microbacter 7 again since I have a lot of new dry rock and only a small amount of my old live rock in the tank. I do have my ceramic media in the sump which is probably plenty equivalent to plenty of live rock. I have again noted exceptional water clarity after doing this. Any thoughts as to why? Does the bacteria coat suspended solids and cause them to fall out of circulation in the tank? Anyone else dose bacteria?
I don't dose bacteria, but I started carbon dosing back up despite no N and P reading on my red sea kits with good results. Few other explanations other than the bacterial content far as I can tell - and this is exactly why I started it back up. Not to handle nitrate or phosphate "problem" but to keep the bacteria population up. The bacteria is encouraged to consume the detritus in the tank - now whether that's directly or it coats the stuff so it fall out of solution I"m not sure. Some folks say the bacteria converts the detritus in a form that easily skimmed - has your skimmate changed in appearance whilst this is going on?
I have never heard of using bacteria to polish your water. I have always just added carbon to clear things up. With that said, I'm sure it is possible. I just haven't done it. John
Yes!!! Do it! Having said that I should do that on my whateves tank with caulerpa that's overrun with cyano. Btw. What I'm saying is that what drives folks to carbon dose is N And P readings. Many folks describe clearer water as a result after doing this for a while. I'm looking to see how it works on my tank with no readable N nor P. While I've seen better results since I've kicked it off again but I'm not convinced that I have everything right.
My 125 is undetectable too. I have been feeding my fish and coral more hoping to see a change but so far it is still undetectable. I don't know what the frag tank is because I haven't tested it.
Did a little reading and they actually say in the directions that notable improvement in water clarity is expected. I put my GFO reactor back on line since PO4 was up to 0.04 which is the upper limit of where I like it to be. We'll see. If NO3 comes up I'll probably vinegar dose but much more slowly than last time
well, that would seem to indicate your skimmer is pulling out more stuff from your water....good stuff? bad stuff? But MORE stuff.....and if it cleans up your water *guessing* it's good. I've read stuff and left with the impression that skimmer do remove stuff that we think corals can use for food. Not connviced totatlly of that, but I am impressed by folks that have skimmerless set ups.
Among other things I've switched salts to Tropic Marin and I've begun to dose the Bio-active stuff. Haven't dosed long (second does today) so I'll see what's up widat.
I've used a few products on my tank during the initial cycle. I used a ceramic media in my sump that I soaked with microbacter 7, and then used a red sea cycling kit. From my limited experience the red sea kit seemed to just mask the issues of slow bacterial colonization. Its part of my list of suspects on my secondary cycle I seem to have going on. I have just finished up a 2 week cycle of microbacter 7, turning off the skimmer for 4 hours after dosing and my water was a lot clearer, and my nitrates really dropped. I missed a few doses during that 2 week period, but I feel like it helped. The bacteria blooms are starting to thin out and fade away. The first few days of dosing my skimmer was thick pasty foul stuff, but now its gross but not nearly thick or foul smelling. So I would say it works, as to who needs to use it or how often.....I cant really say.
