mixing vodka and vinegar

[tmz]

Vincent,

I agree that 60ml of vodka is substantial. FWIW, I have a heavily fed system that is 600gallons and use only 26 ml of 80 proof vodka( 40% ethanol) and 64ml of 5% vinegar( ie 5% acetic acid ) per day and have been at that dose for abut 3.5 years . In total organic carbon,adding the vodka and vinegar it's equivalent to 34 ml of vodka and that keeps the NO 3 at around 0.2ppm per the salifert test kit. Some times, when nitrates are high at the start of dosing, folks have had difficulty getting a noticeable drop for months .

 

[vincent1972]

Hello TMZ,
i just can't seem to reduce the nitrate level below 20ppm with the 60ml vodka,
that's why i gonna dose vinegar also , to try to lower the nitrates below 20ppm
i dose the vodka also for months now and the results are not that what i was hoping
grtz

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Maybe your nitrate kit is not accurate?

 

[Big E]

Yes, you can mix them, but I wouldn't store either one highly diluted in water.

Direct mixing together is fine.

I didn't know that.................thanks for the correction. Just to clarify................you can mix both in the same bottle & store & dose?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, you can mix vodka and vinegar straight from the bottle.

 

[vincent1972]

The nitrate test kit that i use , is only 2 months old
it's the high sensitive test kit of D&D aquarium solutions (Deltec)
it's a comperator kit

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've not used that one, but you should note that many nitrate kits are not especially accurate. That is easily shown when folks test the same water on a bunch of different brand nitrate kits and get a variety of widely different answers.

 

[vincent1972]

this one is normally accurate because i have compare it to the hanna nitrate test for labratories

 

[vincent1972]

is it normal that my skimmer go crazy after dose vinegar?
i see that there is much more skimmate after i dose the vinegar

 

[HighlandReefer]

Keep in mind that reducing nitrate using carbon sources to increase bacterial populations and then skim them out takes some time. I would not expect results over night, it may take a week or more before you can detect changes using hobby grade nitrate test kits after you change dosage amounts.

One other thing, overdosing vodka is much easier than overdosing vinegar. Most tanks can take quite a bit of vinegar before negative results show up.

Increased skimmate is what you would expect when dosing carbon sources like vinegar. If the skimmer goes crazy, you will need to adjust it down until things return to normal, however I never experienced this problem when dosing fairly large amounts of vinegar alone.

 

[HighlandReefer]

FWIW, I have tried a variety of carbon sources and mixtures, my choice like Randy is just vinegar. I see less cyano when dosing vinegar. Acetate (vinegar) is commonly found in ocean ecosystems and many organisms readily utilize it which makes me feel more confortable using it.

 

[vincent1972]

i dose vodka for 2 to 3 months i started with 1ml and increase it to the amount i'm now using (60ml) , i never had cyano problems , since yesterday i started to at also vinegar (yesterday 10ml , today 11 ml)
approx one hour after i dose the vodka and the vinegar i can see the skimmer pulls out a lot more junk , and this goes on for one hour or so and then the skimmer returns to normal skimming

 

[tmz]

Hello TMZ,
i just can't seem to reduce the nitrate level below 20ppm with the 60ml vodka,
that's why i gonna dose vinegar also , to try to lower the nitrates below 20ppm
i dose the vodka also for months now and the results are not that what i was hoping
grtz

Hi,

I remember several accounts of high nitrate issues that took several months and longer to respond. In some of those accounts, PO4 went down but nitrate didn't move much. Perhaps, PO4 is used up in aerobic activity with some NO3 but there isn't quite enough PO4 to support enough bacterial acitvity to get the benefit of anaerobic denitrification.
If your PO4 is undetectable , holding off on gfo while the nitrates are as high as they are might be worth a try before increasing the dose . My concern is that increasingteh dose might lead to buidups of organic carbon.

In my case, nitrates hit the 60ppm to 80ppm range about 4rys ago. I don't know why they spiked but suspect an older deep sandbed. GFO costs for PO4 were becoming an issue too.

I tried a remote deep sand bed, increasing the chaeto refugium and a few other more traditional approaches without sucess. Then I tried vodka, vinegar with good results on PO4 but not much on NO3. Some said sugar was faster so I tried it. But even in very small amounts it harmed some lps.
I did not wan't to do large water changes on the 600gallon system. Finally, I built a sulfur denitrator . It took NO3 down to near 0 in five weeks. Vodka and vinegardosing has kept it there forthe last 3.5 years without the denitrator at moderate dosing levels even though I feed a lot. I now also use a little gfo to pick up the low range PO4.

 

[vincent1972]

I will try now with vodka and vinegar and in a few days i gonna start also a remote deep sand bed.
with that i gonna try to lower the nitrate level.
if it not work after , let's say 3 to 4 months then i think i'm gonna build a sulfur denitrator and will try it like you did.
i run at the moment another brand of phosphate reductor and i see that the Po4 level is increased a little about 2 weeks.
with Rowaphos it was always 0.02 , now it is 0.08

 

[vincent1972]

I'm dosing now 60ml vodka and since yesterday raised the vinegar from 10ml to 12ml.
today i noticed that a monti is not expanding polyps like it used to do.
is this due adding vinegar?

 

[bertoni]

Maybe. I'd watch it carefully.

 

[tmz]

As I noted earlier the over all dose is quite high,imo. So increasing it with vinegar could pass a critical point. Vinegar is not likely to be harmful ,nor is vodka but the overall dose of organic carbon in excess can be.

 

[vincent1972]

What should i do now ?

 

[bertoni]

What is the phosphate level now?

 

[vincent1972]

it is still 0.08