Anyone Vodka Dosing?

[OcEaN-BluE]

Hey any of you local guys had any experience with vodka dosing so that you could share you results and methodology with me? After reading up on it and researching it for a while now, I think I may want to try it. Any sharing about your experience would be appreciated.

 

[VitalApparatus]

Man you gotta let me come see your setup, sounds like a killer sump.
Cant help with the vodka,Im currently dosing about 3 oz of Jack Daniels every 10 minutes or so ;-)

 

[OcEaN-BluE]

suRE i'D BE GLAD To shoW off My Costly Obsession. I got frags to trade too. Pm me anytime..

 

[Reefdiver77]

I think MrRyanT may be able to help you with that. I believe he did a presentation at the last meeting we had at his house on this very thing.

 

[mempho reefer]

After much contemplation and research, I started dosing two weeks ago. I'd just transferred to a new tank about three weeks ago and wanted to limit the negative effects of a cycle. I also had some bubble algae and a bit of cyano in the old tank. I think the cyano was due to old lights but I didn't want it to become a problem in the new tank. Most of the bubble algae and cyano were scrubbed from the rocks before being added to the tank. A week into the transfer I noticed a few bubbles and a little bit of cyano along with a diatom bloom on the new sandbed and some rocks. So, I started the vodka dosing. As of today, the diatom is completely gone, there is only one very small area of cyano, and the few bubble algae are starting to turn a light green and a couple are even almost clear indicating die off. I tested all parameters yesterday and here's what I got:
Ammo: 0, No3: 0, Po4: 0, PH: 8.2, kDH: 11.2, Calc: 400-420
I plan to continue dosing until all visual traces of algae are gone and then stop. My tank has a alot of LPS corals and I've been told that long term dosing can lead to bleaching in those corals so I don't want to risk it.

 

[Mako Shark II]

No, but I had a pretty fair amount of Rum last night at Playhouse on the Square!

 

[OcEaN-BluE]

I am not having a problem with algae at all. I added some sand, rock and corals from another tank and had a slight nitrate spike. my Blue tip acro and a nd a couple other SPS started to look a little rough and bleaching in a couple of spots. I immediately did a 50% water change and brought the nitrates down i guess halfway. I dosed a few doses of sugar to jumpstart the biological processes from the dieoff. This helped out dramatically. But I was reading up on the results for SPS from other people from Vodka Dosing and it looked promising in regards to the increased coloration of the corals and depletion of nutrients from the water. I have a couple of DSBs in the system (1 in sump, 1 in another tank plumbed in line) and this was doing a great job of nitrate processing until I added the new stuff. I just wanted to give Vodka a try and wanted some advice and experience. thanks.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

I never dosed vodka,I used sugar and had real good results.Just be careful not to add to much,you will get a brown slime residue on live rocks and sand.

 

[MrRyanT]

I dosed vodka for about 6 months at one time. If done properly I think it definitely works to reduce excess nutrients. I had algae problems that it wiped out. I quit dosing after that and now keep things under control with live rock, gfo, carbon and water changes. I would not recommend vodka long term because in my experience the corals didn't look as good.

 

[OcEaN-BluE]

Cool thanks guys. thats just what I was wanting to hear. I wanted to just dose to bring things under control and stop. Thats good to hear. What about coloration MrRyanT? did the SPS not improve in color while dosing?

 

[MrRyanT]

They did improve at first but then towards the end before I quit dosing they started looking worse. It might be that I just needed to cut back some on the dose, I'm not sure. I was just more comfortable using tried and true methods.

 

[mempho reefer]

FYI. This is the plan I'm following.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php

 

[ducklabdad]

If anyone is interested in a copy, Rhyan and I did a presentation last year at one of the Club meetings on Carbon Source dosing. I had put together a powerpoint presentation that we used.

It covers a number of different Carbon source dosing methods including Vodka.If anyone would like a copy send me your e-mail in a PM and I will e-mail a copy to you (As long as our e-mail here at home is up, we have had some connection issues in the last week.)

I think I have some copies I will bring to the next meeting, if anyone is interested as well.

Bill

 

[ducklabdad]

Sent to you Jason, let me know if the file came over and what you think if it did.

 

[OcEaN-BluE]

Yea I've got that same plan and thats what I've been looking at. So has it been worthwhile for you and how long have you been dosing??