Dosing Beer ?!?..better yet, share a beer with your tank.

aurora said:
This reminds me of another observation I posted several years ago. When I first set up my 300g system, I had a faulty pH meter and ended up dosing too much Kalk...massive snowstorm. I came home from work to find the tank looking like someone had poured milk in it and the livestocks looking really stressed or dying. My alkalinity was like 2 and Ca was 200. Since my system volume was about 400g and I only have about 30g of ro/di water on hand, I did about 150g water change using dechlorinated tap water. Ca got up to about 280. All the LFS were closed and in desperation, I remembered that 2pt calcium up is essentially CaCl and that is the same thing used in some snow melt. I picked up a bag of Dow Flakes from a local Homedepot and used that to bump up my system Ca. It took about 4-5 quarts of flakes to get my system back to a Ca of 400. All my corals, including some good size SPS colonies survived and I only lost one angelfish and 3 cleaner shrimprs. I felt what I did saved my tank and I posted my experience on the RC Chemistry Forum and man did people flamed me including Dr Holmes-Farly about using unproven chemicals in my reef. There was a lot of discussion and a bunch of people chimed in on the thread. A few months later, Dr Holmes-Farly published the recommendation for his homemade 2-part soln after doing some analysis using...you guessed it...Dow Flakes. It's now almost 10 years later and no one questions the safety of using Dow Flakes, Mag Flakes and Baking Soda.

I wonder if someone with access can pull up a thread that old....

BTW...I drink Heineken and Corona.
Click to expand...

Here you go.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286474

But FWIW people do now question the safety of Dow Flakes and Mag Flakes as they have changed production/collection procedures and no longer claim the same quality they once did.
 
It's an interesting approach to reef keeping. However, if you figure the amount of time and money people put in their tank do you really want to recommend using beer? Think about it, beer is made from a variety of sources. Someone adding Corona may get completely different results than someone using a Stout.

I think if you want to not screw around and be serious about this you should talk about dosing. What, when, how much, and how long you have been doing it. How are your corals before and afterward? Are there any pictures to lend credence to this methodology?
 
Wow...Thanks Canadian

I reread that thread and relived some interesting experience and memories. I wonder how many of those people are still in the hobby.

Genetics...I don't have any before and after pics but I can show you the latest pics some of my colonies. I didn't have any significant issue with my tank to start with before using beer and my experience is that I find it easier to dose beer for the above reasons and my SPS are still doing fine if not better. I guess this is more convincing evidence than if someone start dosing beer AFTER they have a problem with the tank. Then you don't know if they did something else to change the outcome. My reef is about 10 years old and if it farts, I'd know about it. AGAIN, I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS IF YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR TANK LIKE I KNOW MINE. Most of my colonies are at least 5 years old and as you can tell, I like tables and don't frag much. Tank is 30" deep and 72" wide. Most colonies are at least 12".

th_DSC_1353.jpg


DSC_1354.jpg


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DSC_1349.jpg


DSC_1344.jpg


DSC_1345.jpg


DSC_1335.jpg
 
Darn...one of the pic wasn't posted right...15" blue/purple millie table...
DSC_1353.jpg


Vallida...grew this one from a 1/2 inch snub...

DSC_1389.jpg
 
aurora said:
Well...you have a right to your 2 pennies. However, most of the stuff that are posted on these boards are anectodal and not scientifically proven anyhow. Who has time to do a truly scientific study using controls and blinds anyway? When I first entered this hobby more than 10 years ago, it is the collective OBSERVATIONS of hobbyists on these boards that helped me became successful. Some observations makes sense and others don't but it is the collective body of observations that in the end wins out. However, someone has to make the first observation and mine is "beer is likely safe and can probably be used instead of whatever carbon you are dosing". If you happen to be a beer drinker, this may work for you since it's readily available and most of the time you are looking at your tank with a beer in your hand. Give your tank a swig and VOILA...instant maintenance. It doesn't get better than that. It is rare that I can say I truly enjoy the maintenance part of this hobby.

This reminds me of another observation I posted several years ago. When I first set up my 300g system, I had a faulty pH meter and ended up dosing too much Kalk...massive snowstorm. I came home from work to find the tank looking like someone had poured milk in it and the livestocks looking really stressed or dying. My alkalinity was like 2 and Ca was 200. Since my system volume was about 400g and I only have about 30g of ro/di water on hand, I did about 150g water change using dechlorinated tap water. Ca got up to about 280. All the LFS were closed and in desperation, I remembered that 2pt calcium up is essentially CaCl and that is the same thing used in some snow melt. I picked up a bag of Dow Flakes from a local Homedepot and used that to bump up my system Ca. It took about 4-5 quarts of flakes to get my system back to a Ca of 400. All my corals, including some good size SPS colonies survived and I only lost one angelfish and 3 cleaner shrimprs. I felt what I did saved my tank and I posted my experience on the RC Chemistry Forum and man did people flamed me including Dr Holmes-Farly about using unproven chemicals in my reef. There was a lot of discussion and a bunch of people chimed in on the thread. A few months later, Dr Holmes-Farly published the recommendation for his homemade 2-part soln after doing some analysis using...you guessed it...Dow Flakes. It's now almost 10 years later and no one questions the safety of using Dow Flakes, Mag Flakes and Baking Soda.

I wonder if someone with access can pull up a thread that old....

BTW...I drink Heineken and Corona.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, I wasn't flaming you. I hear where you're coming from and I commended you for being the first with this approach. If it was me dosing beer, I just don't feel comfortable with the lack of measuring how much is going in without any indication of what may or may not be happening with your parameters.
It's one thing to add a foreign substance (ice melt, vodka, etc) to your tank for the first time and do it slowly after testing, testing and more testing. It's another just to pour an unspecified amount at random intervals and just going by observation. I feel that this approach is somewhat careless to the animals we are responsible for taking care of. If observation was all we ever went by and ignored testing kits, there would be very little understanding about what is going on in our tanks.

I`m just saying that this all would have sat better with me if I read that "I had a hypothesis, I tested before, measured, dosed, tested, observed, and everything looks great!"

Keep us posted with any other updates (good or bad).


BTW, really nice tank.
 
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Litter Box...I didn't take your comment as a flame...just off-topic and counter-productive. I posted an observation that I don't think anyone has noted before and your point is that you'd rather wait for a truly scientific study with controls and blinds. There's nothing wrong with that and I'd done the same on certain observation others had posted. However, the whole reason of my posting is to hopefully tweak the interest of some other adventurous BEER-LOVING reefers who may be willing to try the same. You obviously made it clear that you don't fall into that category.

I hope I wont regret doing this but it looks promising so far and I'll likely continue unless I notice something negative. Lots of people on this board have reported perfect parameters on their tank with failure to thrive issues. So the numbers doesn't paint the complete picture of a successful thriving reef.
 
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aurora said:
Here's what we find in a search for what's in beer...

The analysis of beer represents a significant analytical
challenge in several respects. For one, beer is a very
complex sample containing a wide range of components
including vitamins, amino acids, proteins and bitter acids.
http://www.thermo.com/eThermo/CMA/PDFs/Articles/articlesFile_3419.pdf


Ahhh...so in effect, I'm dosing both Carbon, AA and vitamins. This gets better and better.
Click to expand...

This should be posted in the chem forum, and have randy give her a go. If this is true you really could kill 2 birds with one beer:uzi::beer:
 
I commend you on your bravery and also on the corals in the pics they are beuts, good luck and maybe we can all give em a swig but I will be sure to call them a taxi after. Good read.
 
i like the idea and agree your dosing a lot of things and many have some potential benifit. a couple years ago when i first started playing with vodka i had a bottle of flavored vodka laying around the house (i'm a beer drinker too so it was just sitting there) that i started with - my thought is the flavorings is mostly just sugars anyway - so what could it hurt. anyway it worked fine, but i went to the straight stuff when that bottle ran out.
i think that your beer idea has some potential but the first thing that crossed my mind was the type of beer. i believe most large manufacturers pasterize their beers where as many microbrews filter. i wonder which would be better. i'm a microbrew guy myself and wonder what effect the more natural fermentation process and filtering would have, as pointed out there are a lot of varibles in beer
i'll be following along though just out of curiosity if nothing else
 
been following along, interesting idea. I too have had the ooops there goes my beer moment. a delicious double IPA at about 8.9% acans put up feeders, everything was good and it had a definite calming effect on my Maroon Clown. However at 6 bucks for a 22oz bottle, my tank will need to make its own beer money.
 
Tagging along. Thanks for posting this.
dow flakes-wasn't the makeup of it changed at some point making it unsafe?
 
woody283 said:
This should be posted in the chem forum, and have randy give her a go. If this is true you really could kill 2 birds with one beer:uzi::beer:
Click to expand...

I agree.. I have been following this thread from the start hoping Randy would come along..... This sure is interesting....

by the way Aurora... very nice tank !!!!
 
My lighting is 3 400W Radium/Luminarc reflectors on a light mover. I have blue LED light strips for night viewing. Just gave the tank another swig tonight from my Heineken.

Also took a Dremel to the big Tricolor table a few days ago. At 18" across, he was starting to shade his neighbors. It was tough cutting and chipping through 1" thick table but had to be done. Now I have to find a way to get rid of these big chunks...LOL.
 
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