Vibrant Aquarium Cleaner: Does it solve algae in your reef tank?

I’d want to tell you about Vibrant today. It’s an algae treatment that claims to heal anything algae-related in your tank. According to the manufacturer, it brightens and cleans aquariums in as little as 12 hours. It is a ground-breaking liquid aquarium cleaning. Bye-bye, algae and murky water.

This is meant to repair everything wrong with your aquarium. Turf algae, or what I believed was turf algae, has been a problem in my tank. We haven’t been able to pinpoint its exact location. I took it to a local reef club meeting, where they examined it under a microscope and determined that it was, as far as we can tell, some form of turf algae. It didn’t react to the vodka. In my tank, I use vodka as a dosing agent. I don’t have any additional issues with algae.

It’s slow to grow, peels off in tufts, and wasn’t much of a bother, but I reckoned. We’ve heard good things about Vibrant, so let’s give it a shot and see what happens. So, Vibrant comes in a bottle with a standard dripper top, which is what I’ve been using. You open it up and spray out as much as you’d like. It also comes with a small measuring cup, which I used in my tank after reading the instructions online. I ended up using one milliliter per 10 gallons of system volume twice a week as a dosage rate.

That works out to roughly 28 milliliters twice a week for my tank. Or, as I did, every three days. As you can see, the difference between not using Vibrant and using Vibrant was night and day. The algae began to fade altogether. It didn’t happen right away; it took a few weeks to observe a significant difference. However, I saw that the algae was becoming darker. There were some bubbles on it, and it was receding in the tank.

I also discovered that my nitrate level, which had always been measurable, has suddenly dropped to zero. Which could be a concern for my acropora in the long run, but I haven’t observed any serious issues caused by Vibrant. A handful of my acropora frags have started to shrink around the base. And this was after the majority of my algae had vanished.

I’ve found that at that dosing rate, the algae isn’t dissolving nearly as quickly, if at all. Some of it appears to be a little more active than previously. So, just to get rid of that last little amount, I could end up picking it up again. But, overall, I’d say Vibrant has done an excellent job cleaning out my tank.
Some people claim that it is ineffective for them.

People who used phosphate remover noticed that Vibrant didn’t work as well for them, which I discovered merely by browsing Vibrant threads. Vibrant began working nearly immediately after they removed the GFO from their system.

So it’s possible that the bacteria in Vibrant is in need of some phosphate. Phosphate required for bacteria to thrive and perform their functions. So, anything like phosphate remover that you have in your tank should removed. Having said that, I do take a daily dose of vodka and have done so for a long time. I didn’t make any changes to the dose regimen and discovered that Vibrant was happy with it. When I used Vibrant twice a week, I noticed that my water became hazy on occasion, generally the day after I dosed. Just a smidgeon of a difference and it would clear up, so keep that in mind.

Don’t put too much in your tank. One milliliter per 10 gallons twice a week is the recommended dose for lawn algae. That’s probably the most you’ll want to do. People who overdo Vibrant have a higher risk of coral or other aquatic life dying in their aquarium. So that’s something you absolutely don’t want to do. What is in Vibrant is a subject of debate. On the back of the bottle, it simply states that it contains 95% cultivated bacteria, 1% aspartic acid, 5% half-percent vinegar, and 3.5 percent additional ingredients.

So you’re most likely dosing some form of bacterium. So Prodibio or another one of these bacterial sources might be able to provide you with the same results. I’ve been dosing the bacteria that’s meant to get rid of nitrate and phosphate for you for a little while and haven’t seen the same results as Vibrant. I haven’t had any threads that have been examined under a microscope, nor have I come across any threads that have been examined under a microscope.

Is it possible that these are plant cells? It’s possible that this is a single-celled algae that we’re dosing in our tank. So I’m curious if you’ve examined it under a microscope to see if there are bacterium cells, plant cells, or any other identifying features that we might be able to see on a tiny level in there.