[galleon]

This is a much better form of discourse.

Originally Posted by MammothReefer

Both of our bacteria blooms were caused by adding to much of a food source (carbon in your case) for the bacteria present in your system in unstable ill equipped tanks to handle the increased bacteria,

Not ill-equipped to handle the increased bacteria, but the increased carbon. Ask Randy what happens when he adds too much vinegar, or Rich ross when he had to drop his pH with a gallon of vinegar. They also get blooms.

The mistake I made was panic. I had a pH spike. I had two options: add an acid to titrate that also happened to be labile organic carbon, or go get CO2 to bring the pH back in line. The panic said "bring down pH now", so in went just enough vinegar to titrate the pH down to an acceptable level. The 100% water change was not enough to remove all the carbon.

(the bacteria was then consumed by the algae hence the green water)

More likely the ammonia produced by any remaining dying bacteria and the decomposers feeding on them. Marine phytoplankton like to use NH3 as it requires no redox reactions for energy. Then there's the 10 day lag, with no measurable nitrogen change in between, hence the "mystery".

However from my understand (and I say this with confidence but not with 100% certainty). The cause of demises in both our tanks what not the bacteria bloom it's self, but the oxygen being rapidly depleted.

Agreed 100%.

Your quick action saved yours, and I hope your UV filter will keep things in check. (I've used ozone but have no experience with uv filter so it may do the trick I can't speak one way or the other on it)

This was the first system I've ever run without it. Not anymore. As I said in my blog post, they are magical and I wouldn't take it off.

What did your ORP test at when you said all your parameters were on par?

No idea. ORP is mostly black magic, in my opinion, unless you are directly controlling ozone. My guess is it wasn't great simply because of the hetertrophic bacteria consuming O2 and making the water less oxidizing. The green water likely did the same at night.

What I notice here if yes you say the tank was cycled 2 small piece of non-porous tonga branch, from Nov?

And that large, very porous Porites rock (only the front is a veneer of encrusted Porites, it's a chunk of live rock for all intents and purposes). I also I'm not sure I've seen the porosity of branch rock quantified relative to other forms. Think about scale here. People are going bats*** because it only has three pieces of rock in it, now look at the full tank shot and imagine it scaled up to something like a 150. People also forget that LIVE coral skeletons are incredibly porous themselves and have everything from bacteria to endolithic algae living in them naturally.

Do you not feel that when you add corals, or pieces that have a mass that is significantly equivalent to that of the sum of your rock that you're tank will not re-cycle?

An Acropora is a micrometers thick layer of tissue over a relatively huge, porous skeleton that is a biofilter in itself. So, in short, No. In fact, I would have had no qualms about not using any live rock at all in this system. I have run successfully Acropora growing systems with ZERO live rock or biofilter to speak of. I only used it to mount frags on above the bottom and I like the look of branch. Die off from the rock is what caused the ammonia spike to begin with.

I added labile carbon that I normally would NEVER have otherwise added, so this was NOT an inevitable I told you so problem with my husbandry that everyone "warned" me about, That is what I have been trying to get across.

We can quibble all you want about the semantics of timing, but to me, the video speaks for itself, there was no random crash going to happen if I maintained things the way they were going. That's the other thing I have been trying to get across. Very little, rare food additions occurred, the skimmer was ripping (again think about scale), and I used tons of GAC relative to tank volume..

While I agree the presence ammonia is what people test for in terms of cycle completion. I don't believe we can assume that solely the lack ammonia is a sign of stability and the completion of "cycling" for an SPS capable tank. This can be compounded by large water changes (100%) where you are removing anything beneficial that is present in your water leaving you with very little surface area for things to re-cultivate from.

This is all arm wavy and speculative, in my opinion.

Well.. that about sums it up. I'm stupid discussion, debate, and conversation with me is pointless. I'm glad you can share your tank with us. I wish you the best of success. I look forward to future updates but will not participate in the discussion.

That is not at all what I said and your contorting it is icky. The way the discourse was going was stupid and pointless. Your last post started to change that.

Take care, and I do hope hope there are no hard feeling on a personal level. If we ever meet at a conference, drinks are on me!
-B

No hard feelings, I love a cold beer and coral talk.