help with carbon dosing!

[eddiereefs]

hey guys, im on day 8 of carbon dosing .07 ml. i have notice some slight changes the nitrates went down a tad and water clarity, howver i have not noticed a big change is skimmate, its green not brown. is it too soon to tell? i am running gfo, its been in for almost a month so i figured it wasnt as potent to imbalance the po3. i know that carbon dosing mostly tackles nitrate so i do not think that is it. ive read a lot of posts where people were pulling brown sludge just days after their first dose. i really want my skimmer to pull out some nasty stuff the efficency is half the reason i chose this route. please chime in if you have first hand knowlege.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

I've been carbon dosing for a few months. I've only noticed a slight increase in skimmate, but my nitrates have gone down from 40-80ppm to undetectable. No other changes, same heavy feeding habits. I wouldn't worry too much about the skimmate, instead pay attention to the real reason you're doing it, The water quality. As long as nitrates are dropping you should keep the dose the same or you risk having an algea bloom. You should notice a continued decline in nitrates, then once you get to the level you want you can adjuct your maintanance dose to fine toon where you want to keep your nitrates at. It realy doesn't matter what your skimmate looks like

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

also, how large is your tank? I'm assuming you dosing vodka because your dose of .07ml is about 1 drip of vodka. Even then that's a pretty small dose. Probably ment 0.7ml? anyways, I'd just keep on the schedule the chart gives and keep checking nitrates untill you notice a decrease. If your nitrates are very high, you'll probably see a fast drop initialy (like 80ppm down to 40ppm reletivaly fast) where as if your nitrates are initialy low the changes will be more gradual (like 10ppm down to 5 ppm).

 

[bertoni]

It's too early to tell, and I wouldn't worry about visible skimmer output, generally, as has been stated