As one other participant who has had a bad experience with Vibrant stated: " underwater creations(creator of vibrant) don’t have any literature on there site of independent scientific studies of the product. They only have end user reviews. They don’t even have any independent guarantee of analysis of what you’re getting in the bottle. You’re just taking their word for it on the breakdown."
I'm pretty convinced that they're just trying to make it a "secret blend" so other manufacturers can't copy them - but it's silly because it's not hard to guess what it is. It's likely a bacteria in the genus Shewanella. There are so many research papers about the algicidal bacteria Shewanella - I don't understand why this company has to be so fishy and not transparent. They didn't really do any research themselves to invent this concept - but they act like they did. Give credit where credit is due.
There really is no reason to trust your corals worth hundreds of dollars to some proprietary formula that is not disclosed and has no real scientific literature to back it up. How can we know if we are "dosing" Vibrant correctly if we don't even know what it is? How can we know what interactions it has with other organisms? How can we trust that it is reef safe when there are many accounts of people's tanks crashing or corals dying due to Vibrant? This is why I don't think people should resort to using Vibrant or even recommend it to other people - even if they have gotten good results themselves. Why? Because they aren't telling us what it is - and it obviously matters in this case because it is negatively effecting people's tanks.
You're not to blame for this issue really, they try really hard to make it sound like a cure all magic solution. It's predatory marketing imo. As many people will say in the chemistry subforum - don't add anything to your tank that you can't test for.
Bacterial strains can be patented. Also, the bacteria that eat algae are well known - these species are not genetically engineered nor unique to the labs of Vibrant. Thus, they don't have much to lose to give us general information on what the bacteria is and HOW the bacteria works. Simply telling us what genus the bacteria is, and how it kills the algae and eat it will not give out more information to competitors than they already know. Any competitor who wants to copy Vibrant could simply look under the microscope from a sample of Vibrant to determine what species of bacteria it is. In essence, I believe they are hiding information from their consumers NOT their competitors. Why? Because any competitor with a microbiologist could look under a microscope to determine what strains it contains, meanwhile the consumer shouldn't have to go through these loopholes to know what their product is.
Also, I'd say your last statement is not necessarily true. A business CAN exist selling products that don't work - that's what the term snake oil comes from. Products like Kick-Ich which are supposed reef safe ich treatments still exist - even though there is no true reef safe ich treatment. They mostly sell due to customers who don't know any better and due to customers that are desperate. Not saying that Vibrant is snake oil - it is indeed capable of killing algae (perhaps not in a good way though) - but it does illustrate that a working product is NOT required to stay in business. What is required to stay in business is to SELL - which can easily be done through marketing alone instead of furthering actual product development or research.
A sand bed is the easiest way to get Nitrate to essentially 0. I have been doing it for years. That is if you don't disturbed it and don't add a bunch of antibiotic to your tank.
UWC clearly state that Vibrant is "95% Cultured Bacteria Blend" so it does matter a lot. People should have some understanding of what their dosing to there tanks, or at least not be lead to believe that its something its not.
