yeah zeovit takes quite a committment and the costs do add up. I've never experienced a cycle so fast as the zeovit cycle happening in my aquarium now though. The initial buy-in and the potassium dosing is the pricey part. Potassium's so expensive
. Zeovit and reef-fresh and the like have a lot of skepticism but at least it's not as strange as vodka dosing
I think one of the problems is the lack of test kits that have a range of 0.0 to 0.5 ppm nitrate. A few articles in advanced aquarist talked about testing that low. I had wierd algae stuff going on in my previous tank when introducing rock or pulling the rock out of the water and resubmersing it. Nitrates would test 0 on a salifert kit but I had this hunch there was enough in there for some algae types.