Lets talk about Vodka/sugar dosing

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<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13050228#post13050228 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by IRISSERVICE
tagging along
Jdieck's calculator?
Click to expand...

This one: http://home.comcast.net/~jdieck1/chem_calc3.html

Click on Flash Version, that one is pretty nice.

You can enter the total water volume, the current Ca, Alk, and/or Mg number and the target range you want to reach, then click on what you'll use to raise it. There are quite a few additives listed.

Click calculate, then dose according to instructions. Don't overdose a product if you are super low. Dose some each day if you need to bring up any number significantly.
 
I have been Vodka dosing on and off for over 2 years. I use Prodibio's BioDigest occasionally to diversify. My tank is over 4 years old and I have a moderate sandbed.

ReefWreck, I would suggest you back off the vinegar and sugar. Try just Vodka. I too have struggles with cyano and I think you are feeding the cyano at this point. Too much fuel.

Marc.....I would suggest you hold at 2.5 ml. Ya won't jinx anything but you can over dose your tank. It just might not be your ALK that is causing the issues you mentioned. It's usually high ALK that causes loss at the tips.....that and ODing...........

I have overdosed and when I did there were no signs of a bloom, no stringy bac masses but there was SPS coral stagnation, distress and loss. I lost near every zoa in the tank too.

Currently I am dosing a mere 1/2 ml on my 175g total water volume and things are good.

That's my 2 cents. Back to lurking. :)
 
I'm still kinda hovering around 20-30ml a day, but I'm not being as diligent for the past 2-3 weeks. I'll miss a day here or there. .. I need to test my nitrates again, but I have 0 diatoms now, and 0 cyano....a first for this tank. I also haven't done a wc in a couple weeks, I have been doing them up until this point every sunday on the dot..but I ran out of salt and had to go out of town, and am just now mixing up a batch...which I"ll add tomorrow (this will make it around 2.5 weeks since the water change).. I'm wondering if a lack of my doing the water kinda gave my bacteria/vodka a bit of time to work with what I got in the system.. as everything looks clear..

unfortunately though I had to turn off my ozone as my Second skimmer pump broke and is no longer usable. I don't want to interrupt my BM250s skimming by plugging an ozone line into it as it really been doing a good job the way it's setup right now.

I do want to give prodibo a shot but I think i'm going to finish off this handle of Vodka first.
 
I know we've discussed quit a bit in this thread. But I don't believe we are anywhere near the end of this discussion. We've talked about vodka, sugar, vinegar, amino acids, and bacteria supplementation. But we still have yet to talk about other additives.

One that comes to my mind is actually ammonium. This is in stark contrast to what zeo users are doing with zeoliths' removal of NH4+. What are peoples thoughts on this subject. Would ammonium addition be beneficial not only in removing the pastel coloration causing better, deeper colors while benefiting zoox? Are there other benefits I'm missing with this?
 
Genetics, other than the zoox preferentially take up ammonium vs nitrates?!? My guess is that ammonium levels in most reef tanks are so low, they get NO3 from the water column. Just a guess. There are two reasons that zeolithes are used to reduce ammonium: 1) this helps reduce NO3 :), and 2) the adsorption of ammonium becomes a source of food for the bacteria in the zeo reactor(just like algae likes to grow with light, water movement and nutrients are most available, ie overflows). This biofilm allows for more bacteria cultures to be cultivated through the creation of lower O2 levels, which cultivates denitrifyers.

IMHO, K is something that needs to be watched with using probiotic methods....
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13067378#post13067378 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by stony_corals
Genetics, other than the zoox preferentially take up ammonium vs nitrates?!? My guess is that ammonium levels in most reef tanks are so low, they get NO3 from the water column. Just a guess. There are two reasons that zeolithes are used to reduce ammonium: 1) this helps reduce NO3 :), and 2) the adsorption of ammonium becomes a source of food for the bacteria in the zeo reactor(just like algae likes to grow with light, water movement and nutrients are most available, ie overflows). This biofilm allows for more bacteria cultures to be cultivated through the creation of lower O2 levels, which cultivates denitrifyers.

IMHO, K is something that needs to be watched with using probiotic methods....
Click to expand...

I probably don't have much insight into zeo but I thought the zeoliths absorbed nutrients such as NH4, K, Rb and so on. That's one possibility why K becomes limiting in a zeo system compared to other methods. Bacteria can grow on the zeoliths but I'm not sure if they have access to the NH4 to denitrify or utilize as a food source. I'll have to look into that at some point.
 
Just a mini-update. Just completed Day 19 of Vodka dosing. Nitrate appears to have dropped slightly using my Salifert kit. I picked up an API kit so I compare my results.

The reef looks great. Coralline seems to be getting more prevalent, the glass doesn't get much film algae at all. My skimmer doesn't seem to be pulling out much, when I expected more skimmate due to dosing. All my corals appear fine. Alkalinity continues to be lower than usual. I had to dose some baked Baking Soda last night to buffer it up a tad. That could be completely Calcium Reactor-related though. I may just go back to the normal media I'd used previously.
 
I was reading through this months ReefKeeping Mag article about Vodka and have been contemplating taking the plunge but thought I might get some feed back from the group. I have 120 gallon tank (4'x2'x2') with a 40 gallon sump lit by 8x54 watt T5's. There is a lot (too much, probably 100+ lbs) of live rock and mostly extremely dense Fiji rock. The live rock is also getting old, some of it has been with me for 10 years or so. My sand bed is moderately deep being about 3" and is a mix between "sugar fine" sand and small aragonite. I also have a 5” deep sand bed in the sump contained in a 10”x12” Tupperware. There is a little cheato floating around down there illuminated by 36 watts of 6500K PC. My skimmer is a stock G-2 and I have been running a Phosban Reactor with bulk GFO. The tank has been running for about 7 months since I moved back in Jan. When I reset up the tank I thoroughly rinsed and dried the sand and added about 150lbs or so of the sugar fine.

I maintain Alk with Kent SuperBufferdKH added to my RO/DI ATO that uses close to 3 gallons a day. I use Kent Turbo Ca added to 1gal of RO/DI and dripped slowly as needed. Calcium is also replenished through weekly 25% water changes using Oceanic Salt and my RO/DI typically test out at .4 micro siemens.

Water Parameters are as follows

SG 1.025
Temp 79.6-80
pH 8.01 (right now, 2 hours into photo period) (typical range is 8.15-8.2)
Alk 9 dKH (typical range is 11-12)
Ca 435
Mg 1400
PO4 undetectable with Salifert / suspected to be high…
NO3 7.5 using Salifert
Si undetectable with Salifert and assumed to be correct

I think my Alk is lower than normal right now because I am a few hours from being topped off and running GFO seems to drop my Alk and pH consistently.

Other Conditions

My fish load is light, 2 percs, 2 small green chromis, and med fathead anthias. I recently cut way back on their feeding and Im feeling bad for it. I have small cyano bloom right now wich probably stemmed from me siphoning out gravel due to a weird green coating algae (pictured below). My SPS colors are pale... very pale and growth is stunted to say the least. There has been some tissue recession at the tips of torts and on some cap’s and a couple danae’s.

My goal is to lower nutrient levels, increase SPS growth, to see better colors over all, increase feeding to see my clowns smile again, and to do this at a reduced cost compared to GFO and Carbon. My fears are that my G2 skimmer might not be enough and that my sand bed will have a poor reaction (big cyano bloom) as most of my SPS frags live on the sand bed. Lower pH and alk also tend to worry me quite a bit. I know to start slow and with my tank I was thinking about .4 ml. Any words of encouragement or caution?

Thanks and sorry for the long winded description…




reefphish
 
I've been dosing for almost 4 weeks now. I'm on Day 27. The coloration of my corals was never a factor to me, as I feel I have a decent variety of colors. I'm just wanting PO4 and NO3 to drop. They are dropping gradually, nothing significant to report yet. This week I dosed 3.5 ml per day.

Part of the problem or reporting NO3 numbers is I used 5 different tests (3 different people tested) last week and they were all different numbers, ranging from a low of 10ppm to almost 80ppm. No matter what the number actually is (probably 25ppm), it isn't anywhere near zero yet.
 
MoReefer, all of your parameters are fine. What you need to do is get another hobbyist with his kits to test your water and verify those numbers. Alk at 9 dKH is perfectly fine, as is the pH level you reported. Double check (which means calibrate) your refractometer.

I would just nuke that cyano with Chemi-Clean or Blue Life's Red Slime Control. Either work perfectly. Your skimmer will need to be off for 2 - 5 days while the cyano dies, and you don't want to run GAC nor GFO during that period. You may need to add oxygen to the water with a pump & airstone. Once it is dead, do a big water change and fire up the skimmer and GAC.

Clean your skimmer's collection cup and riser daily.

With such low numbers of NO3 and PO4 currently, I wouldn't worry about feeding your fish. But that's just me. I feed heavily.
 
Thanks for the advice Marc... I calibrated my refractometer using RO/DI just now and it checked out fine. The cyano is minor right now (only about 4-6 sq inches) and not spreading. Its really just localized in the places I was siphoning off the top layer of sand. I would like to verify my PO4 with a photometer, but I dont have one available through any LFS or the Reef Club here. Im looking at buying the one made by Hanna this month. I'll shoot a pm off to one of the other local reefers here and see if he feels like testing my water

Do you think the G2 is powerful enough to keep up while vodka dosing. Is 7.5 NO3 high enough. Im sure my PO4 is high, I just dont have a reliable test right now for it.
 
Well, you said PO4 was 'undetectable' so I figured it can't be that bad. You have to realize you're talking the the guy that had to survive The Phosphate Wars of '05 with readings at 3.0 and higher. If you see clear liquid, you're doing better than I am.

If you don't have SPS in the tank, you could even just leave all the lights off for three days of darkness. That kills the cyano and your skimmer will pull out all kinds of crap.

It is hard to state that your skimmer is good enough for Vodka or not, as it comes down to how you have it set up, what your current skimmate is, and what you're expecting to happen. Since I started dosing vodka, I've seen a decline in the amount of skimmate collecting, contrary to what I've been told. I'm not really sure why, but everything seems to look pretty good and I'm just keeping an eye on everything closely.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13123496#post13123496 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ganjero
I have a question, is everclear better than vodka for this purpose?
Click to expand...

Everclear is vodka, it has a higher amount of ethanol, which I can't remember of the top of my head...What proof does it say?
 
Everclear is 190 proof or 95% grain alcohol.

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MoReefer, ASM-G2 skimmer will be adequate for your tank size. Your tank parameters look good and I think you'll be fine with this method. 0.4mL is a good starting point on your tank with 80 proof vodka.
 
Everclear is just the same really with a higher amount of ethonol. I use the 80 proof vodka just because it is easier since that is what most others are using. I'd think that with everclear if someone would overdose a little it would just magnify the bad. I can nt see everclear being any better though dealing with doses from 1-5 ml in most cases.
 
Two nights ago, my tank got cloudier and cloudier. I was really afraid I was getting a bacterial bloom after all. I checked everything and the equipment and parameters were fine.

Then I saw it. My BTA was spawning. :lol:
 
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