So, after reading all 63 pages in three days, I would like to share my experience with AFM. I originally started about six months ago on 1 65 gallon tank that is very lightly stocked. 2 inch DSB, 70 lbs of LR, 1 frogspawn, 1 green tip anemone, 1 Cole tang, 1 tomato clown, 1 electric blue damsel, 1 lawnmower blenny, plenty of CUC. I run 2 media reactors (1Seachem Denitrate and BRS GAC & 1 BRS GFO), with a moded Superskimmer 220). Lighting is 4 T5's, and params all check out.
Back to AFM, when I started dosing six months ago, I quite after approx 4 weeks because I didn’t see any change. Not that I had a huge HA problem, but I wanted to nip it before it got out of hand.
Hope #2, was to use a UV sterilizer, in hopes that I could brush off what spots I had and hopefully it would be zapped. This worked great for water clarity and I have to say that during the 5 months I was running it, I did not have to clean the walls once!! But still, the HA grew and was always present.
Hope #3, was to start dosing VSV. I started four weeks ago and all is well. No complaints there. Fish look good, water is looking great, params are all in check, frogspawn and my green tip are all looking fine. I ran my UV sterilizer for the first week of dosing, and after reading several long posts, and learning alot about the bacteria populations in our tanks, I decide to take my UV off line as I think it may have been killing off what my VSV was trying to attempt. At this point I started dosing 2 caps of AFM again, every three days.
Results: I am close to eradicating all my algae. With the scrubbing of the algae by hand in tank, wet skimming, very wet skimming, AFM, VSV, constant water changes, media changes on time, it is almost over.
What I would like to say to anyone reading this is that AFM is not the cure all for algae. It is a powerful tool that in conjunction with hard work and good husbandry, will help you out. It’s really a matter of how bad do you want it gone.
I would also want to thank you all for contributing to this thread. Best wishes and good luck.