Just started carbon dosing...

Dosing pump setup and will start on 20ml tomorrow morning... Overall less cyano all over, and my chalice is growing back... I love it!
 
OK, so updates.. Just did a 20G water change, and replaced GAC & GFO as well. While I was sucking out the water with my trusty hose I just vacuumed off as much of the cyano from the rocks as I could.. I got so much, it was disgusting! My rocks are much much cleaner now... so real test begins. When I used to do this without carbon dosing, the rock would be completely re-infested within hours, if not a day.

We all know carbon dosing is very much imbalanced to removal of nitrates, something like 16:1 vs phosphates, but I would expect to see much less of it come back, and at a much slower pace.

Pictures! Gigs look very happy, and water is still hazy while carbon does its job. Also started 20ml of dosing as of today, so we'll see what the increased dosage brings. My chalice is looking better, and more colorful each day!!

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I can't wait to have my reef back... FTS

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It's getting there. Hows the cheato?


Just got rid of it today because it was starving, and started since I began carbon dosing.. Didn't really grow much, and started starving so it was time to go.



So it has now been 24hrs since the WC and the cyano covered rock areas that were cleared yesterday haven't come back! Normally they would be the same if not worse by now, so that's a great sign. I think my protocol is just going to be WCs every 1-2 weeks, changing GFO & GAC, and sucking out as much cyano as possible. I just got the high capacity GFO from BRS for the first time, so next time will be with that.. not sure if it's worth it but we'll find out. So far so good!

The lone SPS I have, LPS, and chalices are looking great since going up to 20ml, so no casualties there.. On the plus side, my fish must be happy because I have gone from feeding once a day, or every other day, to twice a day!

I'm a realist and fully expect some of this cyano to come back, but the fact that it's coming back slower, and MUCH less aggressive is great.. This isn't an overnight solution, but a longer term slow stabilization.

Thanks Skunkmere for putting me over the edge on the carbon dosing. I owe you a beer my friend!
 
Glad to hear you're beating it. From experience I can say that GFO alone couldn't get my phosphates below 0.15 ppm over the course of several months. What worked for me was 1 week of LaCl to get it to undetectable. Now I use a combo of GFO and carbon dosing to keep it between undetectable and 0.05 ppm.
 
So an interesting observation... for the sand bed experts out there.

One thing I noticed before I started carbon dosing was my entire sand bed was just messy looking like this with no air bubbles... I didn't think that was totally normal because my old 60G cube never had a bit of cyano, algae or anything and my sand was clear from the top, all the way through. So when I saw my sand bed here being red, green and just no bit of clean sand I was kinda worried.. Since starting carbon dosing, there are spots where it's clean not just from the top but going downward too... Sorry for the crappy description but pictures will help.

Here you can see how all of my sand looked from the side... looked green, red and no clean visible sand from the side like this. Anyone know if this is a good or bad thing?

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Now you can see since carbon dosing, I'm seeing this in a bunch of spots.. It's cleaning up!

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Here's the dirty parts again

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Clean spots coming through

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Nice view... This was never this clean since the cyano outbreak happened.

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Seems like it's getting better starting from the bottom and going up..

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Today even less cyano which is a great sign.. it's actually pleasant to sit and stare at my tank like I used to! My lone SPS frag has tremendous polyp extension like never before, is getting better color and looks great. The chalice that about died (ended up with about 5% left and two eyes) is growing, and the two separate patches are about to touch each other. I have not seen this chalice grow in MONTHS after knocking on deaths door.

Overall, it's awesome.. Dosing pump automated makes my life easy and stress free. Just need to keep on the bi-weekly WCs and suck up as much as I can because it seems once I export the cyano, my tank is handling keeping it at bay.

Who knows, maybe some day I can even add a fish!
 
Are you dosing 24/7? I just started with vinegar dosing but only during day so my PH is more stable.

I am not.. my doser turns on at 8:00 and runs until 8:14:30 right now, so it's about ~20ml. I have found that my pH doesn't move at all, it's always a steady 8.1-8.3.
 
So nightly I find myself peeling off cyano from the sand bed like never before, it just "rips" and kinda moves around inviting me to pull it.. Got out probably 6-9" squared of heavy jelly like cyano... sand bed released so many air bubbles when I started peeling it.

I'm starting to suspect the problem went from bad to worse when the cyano choked out the sand bed complete, and just turned it into a nitate repository..
 
Just upped the dosage for tomorrow forward to 23.1ml. The chalice is growing back with a vengence and one of the neon green SPS frags that was about done and bleached (was ready to pull it and toss it) is browning up and getting zoox again. I can actually see a neon green polyp about to start popping out..

As I move up in dose slowly, the benefits are improving!
 
So post thanksgiving update... Bumped it to 30.1ml today and skimmer is working like a champ.. The cyano spots that were there are still there, but nothing coming in new spots and the sand bed looks better than it has in a LONG time. More clean spots throughout the sand bed too when looking at the side of it..

Overall, my chalice is now really really showing visible growth, and the highlighter acro frag I have is doing amazing.. I had a blue SPS frag that was doing well with great polyp extension some weeks back and then for whatever reason I lost a lot of frags, just not this one. Polyps receded and started to bleach at the base, but when I started dosing it just stopped the bleeding and just sat there... This morning I noticed there are polyps extended and the bleached spot is coming back!

I'm making some water and will do a WC this morning, and change out GFO this week (leaving the GAC I have alone) to the BRS high capacity.. Hoping that might help get rid of whatever is left.. I'm going to use the hose during the WC to siphon out as much cyano as I can.

Overall, everything is much better.. I can deal with cyano for the time being as long as my corals are living and growing. I have no doubt that as my dosage of vinegar increases, and WCs progress we'll get rid of this problem.

Getting some SPS frags from a local reefer hopefully today so those will be another good little indicator of health.
 
So I am seeing less and less cyano and the little parts on my sand are turning green'ish in color, which after googling looks like one of the latter stages before it burns itself out of nutrients... Rocks are clearer but not completely clear. Certainly, awesome progress.

This morning I picked up six frags from a very generous local reefer (Thanks Mark!) and so far all are doing great with phenomenal P\E. I added Oregon Tort, Birds of paradise, Ponape birdsnest, a purple rimmed monti cap, and some others... Oregon Tort looks AWESOME!

While I don't think carbon dosing is the end all be all for everyone, it certainly helped me GFO work much much more efficiently. Before Carbon dosing I spend a couple hundred dollars of GFO, and running it constantly. I haven't done anything different, but in conjunction with bringing down my nitrates, the GFO is working way better.

Will update after a water change this week with some new pictures. Now I have to start planning on dosing 2 part when I continue to add more SPS.
 
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