[rockman]

Ive been looking into zeovit for some time now and Iknow there are alot of mixed feelings on the subject ,just wondering whos using it?Any one here?

[Wes]

i am an ex-zeo head...

not zeovit but ultralith...pretty much the same deal.

it is too fussy to my liking, it's really hard to keep it in the "sweet spot"

My biggest challenge was keeping the dkH between 6-8. You dial everything in good and colors look good, growth explodes and your alk starts going down of course. Than I would up the Ca Alk dosage to compensate and as soon as I barely went over 8, everything looked like crap and stuff would RTN. I would finally correct it and get everything dialed in again just to start the viscious cycle all over again.

This viscious cycle continued for about 8 months and i finally gave up last weekend when i lost a few of my favorite acros because my alk went over 8. Some people do well with it, there is no denying you can get awesome colors if you are able to keep things dialed in, but i am going to switch to another method that doesnt require me to test my water every day to prevent underdosage of this and overdosage of that...

[rockman]

the new 1 part salt mix they have is suppost to be perfectly balanced,what salt did ya use ,thanks.

[Wes]

the salt mix i use mixes to the right params...it's Calcium and Alk Dosing that is the tricky part...not much room for error...

as your calcium/alk demand goes up, you have to adjust your dosing...but bump it up too high and stuff dies on you...

and that's another thing you have to be careful about, every week they have some new product to push on you it's gotten out of control. "Use our salt, carbon, lights, bacteria, food, amino acids, Potassium, rocks, blah blah blah, and that should help you with your problem until our next product comes out next week"

[fritz]

I didn't use zeo because of the abundance of products. Zeo has you strip every last thing out of the water and then add it all back in, one product at a time. Ultralith was more appealing to me since it comes in "Starter packages" that contain everything you need to get going. It only has four products to use but you really only need three. I was happy with it overall and didn't have the problems that Wes did. I stopped using it since I switched to an LPS dominant tank.

mshur uses zeo and has for some time with outstanding results. As Wes mentioned you can't have your alk wonder around but that applies zeo or not. SPS IME do not like wandering alk. Make sure you are spot on if using 2 part, test at least twice a week to make sure you're not over or under or get yourself a GOOD calcium reactor.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

	LPS Large Polyped Stony corals – In the aquarium hobby this is a common division of the species of stony corals based upon the visual assessment of the size of the polyps. Corals in this category were among the first stony corals to be kept successfully in captivity and include many very beautiful species. Commonly kept Genera include Euphyllia (hammer/frogspawn coral), Favia (brain coral), Plerogyra (bubble coral), Lobophyllia (meat/tooth coral), and Caulastrea (candycane coral). LPS corals also include the popular solitary non-colonial stony corals such as Fungia (plate coral), Cynarina (button coral), Trachyphyllia (open brain coral), and Herpolitha (tongue coral). Like their SPS counterparts, LPS corals require good water quality, intense lighting of the appropriate spectrum, adequate water movement and regular supplementation of calcium.

[Wes]

Fred Ultralith is becoming just as bad, new products get added to address problems it's not that simple 4 product system anymore. IT appears to be following Zeovit footsteps. "If you are one of the people w/ brown algae problems we now have a new product blah blah blah"

my alk wasn't unstable, but as stuff grows your demand goes up. with a very small window, it's hard to keep it dialed in. It's normally not a life or death situation if your alk happens to increase/decrease by 0.5 dkH. With a zeolith system, it can be.

I loved it when everything was dialed in, but hated it when things were not going well. There is too much trial and error involved in it still with things that cannot be measured, like bacterial populations. Too much bacteria will stunt your growth and your alk shoots up w/ normal dosing and BAM rtn event, too little bac and you get algal blooms...

I got sick of playing chemistry set.

[fritz]

Pshht
You do need to closely watch your system but then again any successful sps system is going to have really stable parameters. The only way to do that is to constantly test your water (one of the reasons why I went to an lps system )
I really liked the system and if I were to go back to sps I would use it again if only for the first year the tank was setup.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

	LPS Large Polyped Stony corals – In the aquarium hobby this is a common division of the species of stony corals based upon the visual assessment of the size of the polyps. Corals in this category were among the first stony corals to be kept successfully in captivity and include many very beautiful species. Commonly kept Genera include Euphyllia (hammer/frogspawn coral), Favia (brain coral), Plerogyra (bubble coral), Lobophyllia (meat/tooth coral), and Caulastrea (candycane coral). LPS corals also include the popular solitary non-colonial stony corals such as Fungia (plate coral), Cynarina (button coral), Trachyphyllia (open brain coral), and Herpolitha (tongue coral). Like their SPS counterparts, LPS corals require good water quality, intense lighting of the appropriate spectrum, adequate water movement and regular supplementation of calcium.

[Wes]

Quote: Originally Posted by fritz Pshht You do need to closely watch your system but then again any successful sps system is going to have really stable parameters. The only way to do that is to constantly test your water (one of the reasons why I went to an lps system ) I really liked the system and if I were to go back to sps I would use it again if only for the first year the tank was setup.

Fred, I like you but you are barking up the wrong tree here, lol. I had to test water every day, you can't sit there and tell me every successful sps keeper does a complete water param check every single day. I was checking alk every day for the last 2 months. Most people have room to wait a while before they have to make adjustments, i.e.

Non-Zeo User
"Wow i have been getting really good growth, my alk is only 8, i should bump it up a tick soon."

Zeo User:
"Wow i have been getting really good growth, crap now i have to fiddle with my dosage again and test every single day for the next month so i don't kill everything."

There is a HUGE difference, with a window that small you are fiddling alot it's alot easier to keep things stable when you don't have to worry about stuff dying if your alk lowers 1 point over time because of increased growth.

Try keeping a tank where everything is growing great and you are right on holding at 7 dkH one night. The next day you get home from work and a tort is RTN'ing and alk is at 8.1? WTF? why did it jump up like that i've been dosing the same amount for months? (keep in mind this was a slow increase over the course of dripping for 24 hours, not a spike) Oh crap, in attempt to lower phosphates, i increased my bacteria dosage a drop "STILL UNDER RECOMMENDED AMOUNT!!!!" and growth came to a screetching halt overnight and nothing used up the 2-part.

I pulled the plug and turned off the 2-part doser...alk stayed rock solid for 4 days, meaning zero growth!

FWIW, the first several months or "Stage 1" as zeo heads call it was pretty easy, it got more picky as time went on.

	SPS Small Polyped Scleractinians - Sometimes known as Small Polyped Stony corals. These are hard corals that have extremely small polyps. They are typically on the difficult side and require Metal Halide lighting or dense Power Compact or T5 arrays. These corals are prized for their rareness and ability to be easily fragged into multiple colonies.

	LPS Large Polyped Stony corals – In the aquarium hobby this is a common division of the species of stony corals based upon the visual assessment of the size of the polyps. Corals in this category were among the first stony corals to be kept successfully in captivity and include many very beautiful species. Commonly kept Genera include Euphyllia (hammer/frogspawn coral), Favia (brain coral), Plerogyra (bubble coral), Lobophyllia (meat/tooth coral), and Caulastrea (candycane coral). LPS corals also include the popular solitary non-colonial stony corals such as Fungia (plate coral), Cynarina (button coral), Trachyphyllia (open brain coral), and Herpolitha (tongue coral). Like their SPS counterparts, LPS corals require good water quality, intense lighting of the appropriate spectrum, adequate water movement and regular supplementation of calcium.

[rockman]

Im likeing the fact that it is more work ,I like working on my tank and it gives me a good reason to test stuff every day .Im gonna wait and see what other people have to say.

Thanks for the info guys.

Frank

[Wes]

the work didn't really bother me as im always playing with tank anyway. It's the dead acropora that eventually broke me down lol.