How long for vodka to work?

[hkgar]

I have a 90 gallon display with a 20 gallon sump and about 85-90 net water.

I started dosing vodka on 9/27/11 with Nitrates at 15 and PO4 at .06

I am currently (12/04/11) 6ml vodka daily and nitrates are 25 and PO4 is .04

Obviously I am not getting any results and can't figure out why.

Any advise would be helpful. Am I just being impatient. but 2.5 months and I think I should have seen results rather than increasing Nitrates.

I am running a phosphate reactor with RowaPhos. I started that when PO4 went up to .10 while dosing.

 

[Steve Wright2]

I'm no expert hkgar
But of it was my set up, I would be trying to eliminate the source of the nitrate issue 1st before using Carbon dosing to fight it

I have been dosing Vodka for approx 1 year now, and measure 0 and 0 N and P on Salifert kits ( Yes I do appreciate a Hannah Checker would contradict those results)

I started when my tank was reading about 5ppm nitrate , 0 phosphate, but I had algae issues and decided to fine tune my tank on order bacteria took the initiative on processing the nutrients I had, thus competing with the algaes for them

IMHO - Vodka or any carbon dosing method is a fine tune for reef tanks, rather than the immediate reaction to elevated N and P

things to look at
1) whats in your sump? do you have rock or bioballs in there, something that could do with a good clean out?
2) are you using any mechanical fillter media anywhere, that again could do with a thorough clean/ replacing etc?
3) get some images up of your set up and tell the experts on here more about it, fish stocks, feeding regime, food types, maintenance routine etc as I am sure many of them would then offer some great suggestion in order to reduce your nitrate down to a manageable level from which carbon dosing can fine tune it for you

Steve

 

[Retired Reefer]

Vodka dosing has worked well for me. I have a 140gal. with a 40gal. sump, pretty good bio load and I feed fairly heavy. My NO3 is .1ppm and PO4 is 0. The best advise I can give is to goggle "notes from the trenches vodka dosing" it is an easy read and will walk you through step by step.

 

[tmz]

What does your skimmate look like?

 

[hkgar]

Ok, regarding my setup
The sump has a Reef Dynamics skimmer ins135, a phosphate reactor running RowaPhos and an AquaClear 110 filter with sponge, carbon and some kind of ceramic bio tubes.

The tank was has been up since 2004 with a DSB and until recently I never had a nitrate problem. It is now primarily an SPS tank and is lit with 2 AI Blue LEDs. I use a CA reactor. The current fish population is 1 Blue Hippo, 1 Yellow Tang and 1 Clarki Clown.

I recently started making my own frozen food and may very well be over feeding. I am going to discontinue the home made food and go to only Formula Two flakes and/or Nori pieces on a clip.
I do weekly 10% water changes and clean the AquaClear at that time. I replace the carbon in the AquaClear once per month

Don't know what else to tell you.

 

[hkgar]

What does your skimmate look like?

Skimmate is a dark green and quite smelly. I empty it and clean it every 2 to 3 days.

 

[hkgar]

I am thinking of reducing the amount of vodka 25% tomorrow and using vinegar to replace the reduction in vodka. Any thoughts on this approach?

 

[hkgar]

Vodka dosing has worked well for me. I have a 140gal. with a 40gal. sump, pretty good bio load and I feed fairly heavy. My NO3 is .1ppm and PO4 is 0. The best advise I can give is to goggle "notes from the trenches vodka dosing" it is an easy read and will walk you through step by step.

That is the article I read when I first started using vodka and use the ramp up schedule it reccomends

 

[tmz]

When I switched over 25% of my vodka dose to vinegar the patchy cyano problem I had abated. Some use only vinegar with success too.

The skimate sounds like most skimate when carbon dosing is in play, so it seems bacteria are growing and being exported .

A cut back in food may help. Also I'd take out the ceramic media in the filter box ,say a third every few days . Maybe the sponge too. The aerobic ammonia reducing bacterial activity on them is likely contributing nitrate to the water column.

 

[hkgar]

When I switched over 25% of my vodka dose to vinegar the patchy cyano problem I had abated. Some use only vinegar with success too.

The skimate sounds like most skimate when carbon dosing is in play, so it seems bacteria are growing and being exported .

A cut back in food may help. Also I'd take out the ceramic media in the filter box ,say a third every few days . Maybe the sponge too. The aerobic ammonia reducing bacterial activity on them is likely contributing nitrate to the water column.

I have been considering taking out the sponge for awhile and will do it.I have only used the ceramic media to hold down the carbon bag, although I know they contribute to aerobic ammonia reducing. I will reduce them about a third every 3 days.

 

[hkgar]

I am concerned about the affect on PH of starting to add vinegar. My PH currently stays about 8.3 I will closely monitor the PH

CA is about 440 and dKh is 9.9

 

[hkgar]

Is my math right?

If I am dosing 6ml vodka and replace 25% with vinegar I would be dosing 4.5ml vodka and 12ml vinegar (1.5 oz of missing vodka times 8). A total of 16.5 oz of combined vodka and vinegar?

How much can (should) I increase each week of the combined mixture. I am thinking about 1.5ml.

 

[bertoni]

That rate of increase seems reasonable to me. The math seems right, too.

 

[tmz]

I think you mean mls not ozs.
Both vodka and vinegar will drop ph about the same over time. Vinegar just does it right away and needs to be dosed more slowly than vodka. It's also important to dose the vinegar during photosynthetic periods when some of the CO2 can be used by photosynthetic organisms.

 

[Aqualund]

Vinegar is a pretty mild acid and really wont do much to affect your alk or PH once it dissolves into your system, I wouldnt worry about it. Believe me I dealt with all types of acid, and the only one that did some work on my alk cause I needed it to was hydrochloric acid.

Honestly I see no reason to switch carbon sources. All you're doing is giving food for the bacteria that you want to eat the nitrates...whether you give it to them in vodka or vinegar doesnt really make a difference. Your end result is the same.

For an SPS tank I would examine youre flow and the nature of your DSB. Is the DSB at least 4 inches deep, with 1 inch of very coarse media at the bottom, with a layer of 1.5 inch crushed aragonite on top of that...and then topped off with a 1.5 inch layer of fine sandy material? Thats a preferred method of DSB as it keeps large particulates from reaching dead zones at the bottom and building up nitrates...and allows for gas escape in an upward manner once the nitrogen cycle is complete. A 1 inch plenum below that would be even better.

If you want to do a real DSB fill up a 5 gallon bucket in the same manner of layered rock and plumb it into your fuge...then remove the sand from your display. you'll get better results, and its easier to maintain.

If you just have a 2inch layer of aragonite on the bottom of you tank with all of those tughtly packed rocks...well you just have dead zones all over the place which over time will just elevate your nitrates.

What are your ammonia and nitrite levels? what are nitrite, ammonia, and nitrate levels in your RO/DI top off water? Do you use RO/DI water? If not, you should.

As for food...you can save a lot of money...just buy romain lettuce and clip it to a rock, and all youre herbivores will eat the crap out of it! but if you really want seaweed...get the sushi nori from the international section of your grocery store...its about 85% less expensive and its the same thing.

In the fuge...less is more. All I have is bio balls, skimmer, and colerpa. and I keep it clean of detritus. I also clean my gravel weekly with a 20% water change weekly.

I would aquascape your rocks a bit better to get better water flow as well.

Oh, and you need to clean your skimmer. all that buildup on the inside wall of the skimmer is limiting the skimmers ability to push dissolved organics to the collection cup. that acrylic should be cleaned almost daily.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

.whether you give it to them in vodka or vinegar doesnt really make a difference. Your end result is the same.



It wasn't in my tank. Vodka caused cyano issues and vinegar did not. That may not happen in all tanks certainly, but a reasonable number of folks using vodka who then develop cyano have switched to vinegar and the problem went away.

 

[Aqualund]

I would attribute that difference in not the difference of vodka or vinegar in your system, but rather that vinegar is dilluted acetic acid. Acetic acid and ethanol(vodka) have essentially the same chemical composition except acetic acid has one more O and one less H and Ethanol is the other way around.

You would have the same results if you just lowered your dose of vodka. If you accounted for that, and still had cyano with one and not the other, then differences shown were differences in the water makeup that were affected by the dosing, and not the dosing itself.

 

[tmz]

Vodka and vinegar involve different bacterial cascading effects in acetogenisis. Carbohydrates and sugars even more so ;some of which is negative. The by products are different and the strains of bacteria are different at ifferent levels of the process..
Using some vinegar along with vodka resulted in an abatement of the cyano that developed with only vodka dosing in my tanks and others report the same outcome.The vodka oxidizes to acetic acid( vinegar ) at some point but that involves a step or two that does not occur with vinegar. They are both sources of organic carbon but create different reactions in the tank.
Adding organic carbon drops ph. The bacterial activity produces CO2.
It can be significant even long term as organic carbon dosing is a continuous process, about .15 in my case over a period of months.Limewater dosing and a CO2 scrubber offset it in my set up. Vinegar drops ph precipitously If dosed in bulk the drop can easily be observed almost immediate4ly on a ph monitor.

There is no need for a 4 inch sand bed for dentirfication . Denitrification via facultative heterotrophic bacteria occurs in shallow hypoxic ares, even bacterial mulm.Sand in a bucket will not have enough nutrients moving down for the bacteria to be of much use. Diffusion is too weak and slow . Live beds with rock on them have the advantages of advective flow and channeling organisms to keep them somewhat effective in deeper areas .

Bioballs or other media designed to support large areas subjected to high flow of oxygenated water support aerobic ammonia reducing bacteria which are good for reducing ammonia and nitrite but leave the nitrate in the water column where nuisance algae can get at it.Using them in a reef tank usually leads to a nitrate increase.
FWIW, I prefer small water changes totalling about 40% per month .

 

[Aqualund]

Oh, I see were clarifying by dosing vodka and vinegar together now. Well, whatever. Not all tank conditions are the same and a lot of people like to simplify by saying that vodka causes cyano and vinegar does not, where there is most likely 4 million other reasons for the cyano outbreak in the first place. So it is an improper attribution to say that vodka dosing causes cyano, because I can cite 1 tank that did not result in cyano for every tank that you say does result in cyano. End result is the same, and thats my point. If you get cyano, cut back your dosage.

DSB's are not required, of course. But they are beneficial once established. That is why they are employed by some of the best SPS reef tanks you can view online, and yes they only become really beneficial when you make them deep enough that they keep large organics and oxygen out of the denitrifying zone, but constructed in such a way to allow the nitrogen cycle to complete through gas exchange.


Shallow sand beds with adjective flow only offer areas for detritus to build up and little or no oxygen free zones to form except within live rock...youre not getting it in the shallow sand bed thats for sure. This only results in Higher nitrates.

 

[djkms]

Back to the question at hand. How long for vodka to work? I am currently on week 6 with no results yet. Specs in my signature (except NO3 is 25-30 and PO4 .04). I feed the tank 2 times a day, once with NLS pellets, once with Rods and half a sheet of Nori. Actually my nitrates have started to creep up but my phosphate has been rock steady at .04.