[Norvern Rob]

Ok, i'll start off with my admittedly limited experience with ULNS, in my case ZEOvit. My tank has been running since April 2007, 650L display tank with a further 200L (actual water volume) in the sump. From the start I employed some of the traditional methods of nutrient control - Chaeto in an 18"x16" section of the sump and Rowaphos in a reactor. All went well and I had a constant Nitrate reading of 0.2-0.5 on a Salifert kit. Phos was undetectable on a Salifert kit with doubled reagents which was good enough for me, though I assume there would have been some reading if a D&D kit was used.

I decided to give Zeo a go out of curiosity, to see what it could do for my tank and the idea of no messy chaeto bed (everytime I was messing in the sump I seemed to end up with a tank full of shredded chaeto!) and no rowa changing appealed to me.

I'll clear one thing up - i'm not interested in a tank full of half starved SPS with a few fish that are fed once a day. I also have no interest in photoshopping my coral pictures and using several hundred W of actinic lighting to make them look as colourful as possible. (yep I read the Zeo forums )

So on to the changeover - I bought myself a second hand Grotech reactor (the large one) and the guy gave me some bottles of Zeo stuff as well - Food7, Start2 and some others i'll come to later.

So I pulled out all the chaeto and took off the rowa reactor, then installed the Grotech reactor the same day. I started with 1.2L of stones and doses as follows: (doses given to me by the Zeo forum mods for a net 600L system)

Start2 - 0.6ml per day, split into 2 doses
Food7 - 6 drops twice per week after an initial 10 days of daily dosing
Bak - 6 drops twice per week after an initial 10 days of daily dosing

So off I went, a bit nervous that I had no chaeto bed and no phos remover. I continued to feed the same - 4 cubes of frozen per day plus a few pinches of flake. I tested Nitrate and Phos every week and was pleased to see that Nitrate never rose above 0.2 and Phos remained undetectable on the Salifert kits.

3 months on and Nitrate now reads as 0 as well as Phos. (the lowest reading on the Salifert kit is 0.015 and my tests show no colour, so I assume levels are somewhere under that level - I do need to get a D&D kit and test properly though)

I am continuing with the initial dosing levels which are low, around half the level advised in the Zeo guide. I now have more fish and feed more - 5 cubes of frozen and some flake every day, as well as a couple of cubes of Rotifers put into the tank after lights out twice per week.

Coral colouration has on the whole remained similar (it was fairly good anyway) but quite a few are showing longer coloured growth tips and some are more colourful on the whole. Around a month ago I started dosing small amounts of Sponge Power and Pohls Extra, which have definitely contributed to the colouration - a beige acro with blue tips is now looking like it will turn completely blue (and it's growing well)

As for cost - I don't really know yet other than it's pretty cheap, as I am still using the same bottles the guy gave me 3 months ago, and they are nowhere near running out. The only thing I have bought is Bak, which I buy in the small bottles for freshness purposes. 250ml of Start2 goes a long way when you're only dosing 0.6ml per day!

So my take on it is: Yes it's a viable alternative to traditional methods - My tank is in the living room and I simply haven't got room for a proper sized DSB etc, I've no idea how I managed to get away with knocking a hole in the wall and installing a 4' tall skimmer in the dining room so I'm not going to push it!

However it's no magic solution and i'm guessing it works far better and more quickly on a tank that is already running well and has nutrients under control.

I also think that the presence of plenty of fish and heavy(ish) feeding helps to keep the corals healthy by way of natural food gained from fish waste. There's no need to push it to the extreme to try and get silly colouration, and ULNS isn't just for people that want that.

A couple of shots, I haven't got a decent camera so these aren't true to life but they aren't too bad. I had some trouble with AEFW a couple of months ago and then had a rockfall (caused by me) so the rockwork and some corals are slightly different to the last pics I posted up. The AEFW are thankfully gone, I was quite proactive and slung a couple of Acro colonies that I initially found them on.

My current fish list is:

Yellow Tang
Regal Tang
Sailfin Tang
Foxface
Copperband
Red Mandarin
Falco Hawkfish
Royal Gramma
Brownbarred Goby
Yellow Watchman Goby
Pink Spot Watchman Goby
Cleaner Wrasse
Choati Leopard Wrasse
Peacock Leopard Wrasse
White Bellied Yellow Wrasse
5 x Carberryi Anthias
1 pair Clarki Clowns (currently with eggs)
1 pair Perc Clowns
1 Bluestriped Pipefish

[ChrisR]

Rob,

Good to hear youre point of view on this as i hold quite a similar view on this, i started using the Zeovit method about 1 1/2 months ago as a tweek to my system as you have stated i just dont have the room(well do have the room but missus wont let me use it, so im confined to what i have) for a more conventional decent sized DSB/algae bed /cryptic zone for correct and suffiecent nutrient control and yes as you i also like my fish and would prefere a more busy tank than what is recommended in the ULNS guides. Dont get me wrong i've actually kept my small DSB running as i think in the long term it will benifit my system along the micro fauna lines other than nutrient control or ill just remove the sand and put more rubble in there and black it out and use as a cryptic zone to run concurrently with the Zeo system. Too me the use of a bactieria system is not about colour but more about what will help my system achieve as near as possible NSW levels - my tank wasnt that far out at 2.5-5 ppm and Phosphate at 0.008-0.015ppm with the way it was running(heavy stocked), i just feel that this is the way that suits me to run the tank now even though im away 2 weeks at a time working, i can leave the tank ticking over just fine with a minimal amount of dosing and leave the missus feeding the system 4 times a day with no real worries about nutrient overload. As i thinks been said time and time again over more than ione subject - THERE@S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT.


Yakult for the marine tank.


Chris.