my rice experiment

[kkil4life]

I love it, people talk down about other products, but I obviously missed something because this guy puts rice in his tank... LOL

I was contemplating putting in fried chicken cuz I thought if the entire world likes chicken, I'm sure bacteria would too.......lol
rice was not my idea, its been in the thought process pipelines of many people, I was just willing to put it to a test and many others were brave enough to give it a try at the same time

mbones and rod, please update us on ur rice experiment

 

[philbo32]

I was contemplating putting in fried chicken cuz I thought if the entire world likes chicken, I'm sure bacteria would too.......lol
rice was not my idea, its been in the thought process pipelines of many people, I was just willing to put it to a test and many others were brave enough to give it a try at the same time

mbones and rod, please update us on ur rice experiment

Have you put the rice reactor back in your system kkil4life? Anything more to report after your crash (from the powercut)?

 

[rodcpierce]

well, mine has been in there for a good 3 weeks or so now, but the cyano has now gotten worse, and there is brown algae all over the place. Im going to do a water change here on it in the next week or so. Im not willing to give up just yet.

 

[kkil4life]

philbo32, after the powercut and stuff, I moved houses, so that meant I needed to move the tank as well. I have the tank up and ready, but unfortunately I didnt connect my sump yet.......so no skimmer and no reactor....

will definitely have this up and running soon though, but this time in a more controlled atmosphere......like in a qt tank where i can watch what I add and see what it effects

 

[rodcpierce]

the rice in the reactor is definitely being "used up" so to speak. It is getting abit smaller in size. I dont know if this is due to the bacteria eating it up, or just from tumbling and wearing it down. The skimmer is also pulling out MUCH more then it ever did before I put the rice in there.

 

[NTSdude]

I love rice, for the hobby? This is amazing.

 

[kkil4life]

rod, the rice is definitely getting used up......infact I need do a write up on the observation of rice being run without any bio load......

 

[kkil4life]

rod any update on ur rice?

I managed to get some bio-pellets, and decided to give it a go
its definitely slower than the rice in providing a carbon source.......
maybe I should mix in some rice with the bio-pellets and see what comes out of that......

update next week

 

[daveonbass]

how are you measuring the amount of carbon? How do you know it's less than the rice? If you are simply judgeing it by how much skimmate is produced then I have to say that's dead wrong. If the pellets are not removing any N or P fast enough then I would recommend adding some sugar or other VSV instead of rice. The rice would probably add more negative harmful stuff than would be helpful to add.

 

[oscar.millan]

Won't the mixing of bio-pellets and rice negate any evidence that the rise is working?

Part of a good experiment is to control variables, I think by adding biopellets you are contaminating your results, or lack of results.

I'm extremely skeptical that rice is doing anything, but if you add biopellets to the mix, you might as well start over and work on another experiment.

I would be deeply humbled if this actually worked, but trying to use rice as a carbon source is just crazy to me.

Good luck with your experiment.

rod any update on ur rice?

I managed to get some bio-pellets, and decided to give it a go
its definitely slower than the rice in providing a carbon source.......
maybe I should mix in some rice with the bio-pellets and see what comes out of that......

update next week

 

[kkil4life]

how are you measuring the amount of carbon? How do you know it's less than the rice? If you are simply judgeing it by how much skimmate is produced then I have to say that's dead wrong. If the pellets are not removing any N or P fast enough then I would recommend adding some sugar or other VSV instead of rice. The rice would probably add more negative harmful stuff than would be helpful to add.

someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong......bio-pellets are a source of carbon, but it takes time for it to work, right? why does it take time?
because its not releasing enough source carbon for the bacteria? or is there not sufficient bacteria to consume the carbon source.
with the rice, I could see immediate results in a short time of 3-5 days.

what this has led me to conculde is, if I use a very little amount of rice for a very short period, it would fuel the bio-pellets into working faster.
once the bps are doing their work, remove the rice

this would eliminate any threats or concerns people have about rice, right?

 

[Genetics]

Using rice is completely different then using other additives that are usually recommended. Rice is not only a source for carbon, it contains phosphorus and nitrogen molecules. Due to this and the unknowingly amount of each being added it would make sense to see varying results as the rice begins to breakdown.

The amounts being added contain much more organic material than a simple fish mortality. Because of this, it is no wonder that a tank may see effects similar to a fish dying but on a much greater scale. In addition, I cannot help but think that the total dissolved organic content of the tank spikes with this method. If this is indeed true one would expect tissue necrosis to be prevalent.


For these reasons, I cannot foresee this method working longterm. If one wants to experiment with reactors I would argue using biopellets. Or if one wants to experiment with new substances, I would look at making bioplastics.

 

[kkil4life]

genetics, all what you said could be true, or it could be untrue.

if a tang died in a nano, thats definitely going to throw everything out of balance, but if a chromis died in a 500g tank, I dont think its even going to bother anything
similarly we're using a low quantity of rice for the system, and I dont think it should be of much concern, and as I've shown in the experiment, the po4 and no3 are NOT of any harmful levels.

heck nobody even knows whats in the coral food, or even fish food, WE JUST BELIEVE what the manufacture advertises, and in some cases, its a SECRET RECEIPE which we're not supposed to know, so why are people so skeptical in the case of rice?

 

[Fishamatank]

I can not believe we are still discussing using rice in reef tanks.
I have read nearly this entire thread and have not seen any evidence that makes me think it is a good idea. Speculating that it may work is one thing, total misinterpretation of experiments is something else altogether.

 

[Genetics]

so why are people so skeptical in the case of rice?

There are many reasons for people to be skeptical. Placing this much organic material in a tank and stating it only has positives is ludicrous. Materials that contain organic phosporus or nitrogenous material are not detectable with test kits. So stating N/P did not rise precipitously may be misleading.

Yes, manufactures try to label and sell anything they can to make a buck. Purple Up = Calcium Carbonate, Kalkwasser = Calcium Hydroxide, and many more cheap products sold with names. Personally, I try not to add anything to my reefs of which I don't know the composition. Meaning those unknown coral additives are useless in my book. But if I had to venture a guess, I would think most of those are either amino acids or vitamins.

 

[daveonbass]

plain and simple rice is dangerious to add...there is NO way of knowing exactly what's in the rice, because there is no way of knowing what was in the soil of the particular rice and hiw much the plant had to absorb when growing. That aside, I personally think that the only "positive" reports are from people that had very well established tanks that actually COULD handle the extra carbon and pollutants. In other words their healthy tanks helped the livestock survive a disaster in the making as opposed to the idea that the rice helped to clean things up in an almost ULNS system. In my personal experience it just made things go from bad to worse. And the rice broke down into some nasty fowl smelling stuff...it was no wonder the rice made my skimmer go crazy, it wasn't removing the already bad stuff (n and p) from my tank, it was just trying to skim out the rice.

if you truly want to try and remove the N and P then I highly recommend just the biopellets. They do work, and can accomplish the goal you are looking for. But if that's no good for someone then there are other tried and true methods that are not remotely as dangerious as adding rice.

 

[oscar.millan]

kkil4life I'm sorry bud, I wish you were onto something, but I hate to see you continuing on this path. Rice isn't going to work, I thought it was a silly idea from the beginning and I just couldn't see how you connected the dots.

My family makes this drink out of rice water called Horchata, I think you're better off making some of that. It's quite tasty actually. Couple of points, rice would be soaked in water for a day or two, then throw in a blender with water and a couple more ingredients.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is that the water that came out of the soaked rice was always full of debris. Furthermore, the rice was brittle and would break easily. Chemical composition aside, which I believe it to be the most important fact as to why you are off target, the consistency of the rice was different and would break very easily. To think that now we have to tumble the rice, it would just be a complete mess.

I'm sorry again bud, I wish you were on the brink of a new discovery, but I'm afraid to see other people try it and have people lose corals, fish, etc. In some ways I commend you for trying something different, but when there is no science, background, knowledge, experience behind it, it just troubles me.

Please consider this a failure, learning experience, and move on to something else.

 

[kkil4life]

I can not believe we are still discussing using rice in reef tanks.
I have read nearly this entire thread and have not seen any evidence that makes me think it is a good idea. Speculating that it may work is one thing, total misinterpretation of experiments is something else altogether.

so u read the thread, but u didnt see my gha dieing, u didnt see the po4 and no3 numbers going down, and pics of the test kit showing the results?
and then u didnt read bout the others having the same results?

bro, if u think its a bad idea, can u tell me WHY u think its a bad idea?

 

[kkil4life]

There are many reasons for people to be skeptical. Placing this much organic material in a tank and stating it only has positives is ludicrous. Materials that contain organic phosporus or nitrogenous material are not detectable with test kits. So stating N/P did not rise precipitously may be misleading.

Yes, manufactures try to label and sell anything they can to make a buck. Purple Up = Calcium Carbonate, Kalkwasser = Calcium Hydroxide, and many more cheap products sold with names. Personally, I try not to add anything to my reefs of which I don't know the composition. Meaning those unknown coral additives are useless in my book. But if I had to venture a guess, I would think most of those are either amino acids or vitamins.

exactly, my point.
since we dont know whats in rice, theres two ways to find out, either do a full test on each rice grain and see what it contains, and this is not feasible.
the second way to do it is to experiment using rice in a controlled manner, and as far as I could, I'd tried to do that. but one person cant do it, u need more people to see what results they get.

so far, my results were positive, so u really cant say that rice does not do anything.

does rice help......definitely
does rice ruin ur tank.....no, but everyones tank is different and the more people experiment, the more we find out about it

 

[kkil4life]

kkil4life I'm sorry bud, I wish you were onto something, but I hate to see you continuing on this path. Rice isn't going to work, I thought it was a silly idea from the beginning and I just couldn't see how you connected the dots.

My family makes this drink out of rice water called Horchata, I think you're better off making some of that. It's quite tasty actually. Couple of points, rice would be soaked in water for a day or two, then throw in a blender with water and a couple more ingredients.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is that the water that came out of the soaked rice was always full of debris. Furthermore, the rice was brittle and would break easily. Chemical composition aside, which I believe it to be the most important fact as to why you are off target, the consistency of the rice was different and would break very easily. To think that now we have to tumble the rice, it would just be a complete mess.

I'm sorry again bud, I wish you were on the brink of a new discovery, but I'm afraid to see other people try it and have people lose corals, fish, etc. In some ways I commend you for trying something different, but when there is no science, background, knowledge, experience behind it, it just troubles me.

Please consider this a failure, learning experience, and move on to something else.

no ones lost any coral or any fish, what r u talking about?
there have been no casulty at all..........
am I missing something here?