my rice experiment

[kkil4life]

update day 10th day

lol, I've acually lost track of the days I've been using rice and thought it was day 9, whereas its actually the 10th day.....lol

anyway

1.all kinds of algae, including, dino, cyno, gha, other glass algae has either turned white and died or has turned brown and dieing or dead already.
the algae on the sand like the dino and cyno has become a brownish power like detretius and I need to siphon it out. but I just added a diamond watchman goby and he is cleaning the heck outta the sand. my sand looks WHITE. infact the goby has taken to the very same corner that I've been posting pics and that are looks pretty nice. will update a pic asap.

2.corals have adjusted to the low nutrient system, infact I've been purposely overfeeding the past 2-3 days that too without washing my frozen food.
I will post up test results later today.

3.rice is still holding up pretty strong, but I have a feeling 1 and 1/2 cups for my system is too much and might decide to take out some of the rice in a day or two when I do my water chage.

4.haze is still there in my water, but its so little that you can barely notice it. today I cleaned a bit of my back glass, and wow I actually have some coralline growing there.

my rocks definitely need some cleaning as well, and I will get about that asap.
its amazing that I had so much gha and other algae that I didn't even notice it till now after the experiment.

5.all tank parameters are in check and I'm glad to report after 10 days of using rice, I'm actually very very glad that I started this experiment.



on a side note, to all those of u that pmed me and those of you who posted on this thread about starting rice. please post up your experiences and if you have any questions pm me and I will be glad to help you out.

"First we had to share our vodka with the fishes.......and now they want our rice too....whats next? our mcdonalds too?"
I think I need to make that my new signature

 

[aurora]

Wow...clean tank in 2 weeks with nitrate/phosphate under control. You are right about needing less rice now that your nutrient level is lower. Then again, if your change water has some nitrate/phosphate in it, you may need the rice for a couple of days after your water change to get it back to a low level. This is not a bad thing. Most corals in nature will get periodic nutrients in between dry periods as results of storm/current changes. Therefore episodic short burst of increase nutrient may make them happier. IMHO, fed corals are happy corals. I'm definitely not a fan of ULNS since I feel like the corals are starved and likely not respond to stress well. I know your LPS and softies will thank you for it. KK...you might want to delay any reduction in rice after making a water change and depeding on how your system responds afterward, make the appropriate change.

 

[kkil4life]

Wow...clean tank in 2 weeks with nitrate/phosphate under control. You are right about needing less rice now that your nutrient level is lower. Then again, if your change water has some nitrate/phosphate in it, you may need the rice for a couple of days after your water change to get it back to a low level. This is not a bad thing. Most corals in nature will get periodic nutrients in between dry periods as results of storm/current changes. Therefore episodic short burst of increase nutrient may make them happier. IMHO, fed corals are happy corals. I'm definitely not a fan of ULNS since I feel like the corals are starved and likely not respond to stress well. I know your LPS and softies will thank you for it. KK...you might want to delay any reduction in rice after making a water change and depeding on how your system responds afterward, make the appropriate change.

I think the required rice is about 1/2 cup per 50-75g depending on stocking.
I'm goin got keep the rice for a bit more before I decide to cut down.

 

[kkil4life]

heres a pic of the corner a few days ago

and here it is today

I've added a diamond watchman goby to help clean up the sand, and it looks like the rice and the goby are doing a good job. the goby was added about 2 days ago. it was added after all the cyno died and turned brown.

this used to be gha

all turned white and now I need to clean it.

 

[Logzor]

Why did this work so well?

 

[icycoral]

icycoral, I forgot to ask you, how old is ur skimmer?
my skimmer was like that for the first month or so, everytime I feed or put my hand in the tank it loses its foam head. its not like that anymore. I think ur skimmer still needs to break in properly.
nothing u should be worried about.
infact my skimmer overflows everytime I turn the power on and off....lol

I bought my skimmer used and have had it about 6 months now

hhmmm, this is interesting.

I've been using kalk to dose my top-off everyday to maintain my calc and alk, and I used to dose 1.3L each day with my litermeter. calc was stable, but alk seemed to drop about 0.5 dhk or so. I just increased my topoff to 1.5L instead a few days ago and when I checked my alk it was 9.3 whereas it was usually on 8.2 to 8.7ish. I thought that I might have added baking soda and forgot about it. but now when I saw ur post, maybe the rice helps buffering alk as well?

the rice definitely does have magnesium and is released to the water.

so rice not only works as carbon dosing but also as alk and mag buffereing?
lol.....looks like we got an all in one winner here

others on the rice train, can you guys check this out as well?
would be realllll interesting

i was thinking that at first but usually if you increase your magnesium your kh drops and calcium goes up my mag went up kh is up and calcium i think is toward the higher side of 460-480 ppm the API test kits aren't the most acurite. may have had somthing to do with the larger than normal water change or now that there are less phosphates my water chemistry is changing maybe I'll get higher calc with less mag because of the lower PO4

 

[thebanker]

Gotta say... i'm thinking about turning my Phosban 150 in to a rice reactor given all the success. And I was a skeptic about this at first!

 

[icycoral]

see the diatoms on the sandbed as well.....this has actually become real bad during the no fuge period

from all these pics, I'm forced to believe that I have way too much nutrients bound up within the rocks and I need to do something about it rather than the normal water changes and cleaning the rocks.
thus the experiment with the rice.......
will test no3 and po4 numbers every couple of days to see what happens.....

heres a pic of the corner a few days ago

and here it is today

wow thats a little bit of a differance aye

 

[jcolletteiii]

Phenomenal success! I have the feeling that this thread may eventually lead to a decline in biopellet sales. Good job.

 

[thebanker]

How "good" are the skimmers you rice guys are using? As with any carbon dosing, the skimmer is key to removing bacterial biomass.

What kind of skimmer, and if it's not too personal, how much did you pay for it (since there tends to be a correlation between skimmer price and quality)? Also how close do you have the effluent rice flow to the skimmer intake?

 

[SimonSKL]

update

the local reef guru (lbaldrey on RC) came over and was kind enough to bring his elos po4 kit to test the water.

as promised and as per highlandreefer, approx 1/2 of rice was put into about 300ml of RO water for over 24hrs. keep in mind, that I purposely didn't wash this rice very well as I wanted to see how much it can leach.

you can see in the pic that I made a mistake and compared it to the MARINE chart rather than the freshwater chart.
it showed up as 0.01 po4 in the marine chart which is equal to 0.1 in the freshwater chart.

This shows that the rice does leach po4, but its so little that it can be completely ignored

now for the goodie.......
po4 test of my tank water

it didn't even register the color.....that LOW

looking at my tank today the LPS are also showing a little stress due to dramatic decrease in nutrients, but I hope this should all be sorted in a day or two.

so lets hear your opinions guys........

I too am intrigued by your experiment with rice and the positive results so far and am willing to give it a try. I am currently running 1000ml of BP and GFO for months and I just seem not able to get rid of the GHA. Both my P&N are zero or non-detectable per Hanna Checker and Salifert test, respectively. I am about to replace the GFO anyway and will replace it with about 1/4 cup of long grain rice to see how it works. I will continue to run my BP since I have paid almost $100 for it. I will report my result whenever I can.

BTW, I soaked about 1 cup (~100g) of long grain white rice (without washing) in a gal of RODI water for about 2 hours did a PO4 test with my Hanna PO4 Checker. It read 1.32ppm! I had tested the RODI before adding the rice and it was 0.00ppm. I guess there is quite a bit of PO4 attached to the rice so it is pertinent to wash the rice real good before using or you are adding a lot of phosphate to your system.

 

[DZs]

(Quoted from KK----from all these pics, I'm forced to believe that I have way too much nutrients bound up within the rocks and I need to do something about it rather than the normal water changes and cleaning the rocks.
thus the experiment with the rice.......)

My thoughts as to why I can't get my Nirates down too. I have no algae issues within my system. TLF 550 reactor with Denirate has not worked for me. Sooo here comes the rice this Thursday

 

[Du]

It read 1.32ppm! I had tested the RODI before adding the rice and it was 0.00ppm. I guess there is quite a bit of PO4 attached to the rice so it is pertinent to wash the rice real good before using or you are adding a lot of phosphate to your system.

IMO no problem here. If you have 1.32 ppm in 1 gal it will be ~0.02 ppm in system. (300L)

 

[icycoral]

@ simonskl thanks for the heads up on the phosphates in the rice i have some rice soaking in salt water to test when my kits get here but i will check it for PO4 when i get home tonight

 

[kkil4life]

Why did this work so well?

simply because it acts as a solid carbon dosing method, with little to no ill effects.
I did a little reading up on yahoo and google (I prefer yahoo, but thats a whole different story), and you can see that rice husks is used to filter waste water and water used for other sources. so I said, why not document this for the world to see......and 10 days later still going strong with the rice.

 

[kkil4life]

I bought my skimmer used and have had it about 6 months now


i was thinking that at first but usually if you increase your magnesium your kh drops and calcium goes up my mag went up kh is up and calcium i think is toward the higher side of 460-480 ppm the API test kits aren't the most acurite. may have had somthing to do with the larger than normal water change or now that there are less phosphates my water chemistry is changing maybe I'll get higher calc with less mag because of the lower PO4

maybe your skimmer is not in the right depth of water or some other thing like that, y dont u post on the filteration forum and I'm sure u'll get some answers how to make it better. maybe you can meshmod it or something.

about the alk, and mag.....maybe we're jumping to conclusions saying that it buffers the alk and mag, we should wait for more people to try it and see since these are levels that we didnt pay attention to in the begining. maybe urs was just due to ur waterchange and mine was due to the increased kalk. not sure but its beneficial either way
lets see what others report on this

 

[kkil4life]

Gotta say... i'm thinking about turning my Phosban 150 in to a rice reactor given all the success. And I was a skeptic about this at first!

I was following ur IO liquid n and p reducer thread and was really interested in that, but I think this would be a cheaper and better source of carbon dosing.

I hope rice manufacturers dont read this and hike up the price for their "reef ready rice".....lol

 

[kkil4life]

wow thats a little bit of a differance aye

haha, I didnt even compare the first pic to the last, I was always comparing day to day pics......my tank looks even better than those pics, so now I need to aquascape.

 

[kkil4life]

Phenomenal success! I have the feeling that this thread may eventually lead to a decline in biopellet sales. Good job.

there are people who will be happy to try something like the rice just cuz its cheap and effective, and there will be people who believe marketing gimics and hype and go ahead with the bio-pellets.

I'm just ur regular reefer who decided to experiment with the rice and document what was going on.
and I have to say, I person doesnt really make a difference, and that y I have to hand most of the credit to icycoral as well who jumped on this train.
thanks icycoral for all your documentation of the rice experiment.

 

[kkil4life]

How "good" are the skimmers you rice guys are using? As with any carbon dosing, the skimmer is key to removing bacterial biomass.

What kind of skimmer, and if it's not too personal, how much did you pay for it (since there tends to be a correlation between skimmer price and quality)? Also how close do you have the effluent rice flow to the skimmer intake?

I run a reef octopus extereme 160 with the purple pinwheel......as for price, the octopus is available online for about $290.
it is a pretty kickass skimmer.
my output from the rice reactor is in the same chamber as the skimmer in the sump. so its probably about 5-10 inches away from the intake of the pump.