my rice experiment

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well guys, I'm out.

Rice has done nothing, NO3 seems to be slowly rising, never has fallen in two almost two weeks. My PO4 is still 0 but the big tell sign is the corals. My RBTA looked a lot worse today than it did yesterday...so I'm pulling the plug. There is now CYNO all over the substrate, which is something that was going away when I was using the BP.

Personally I think that those of you that are having "success" with rice are really just having success in spite of the rice. Maybe I used the wrong rice...sushi rice. it was tumbling well...as seen in the video...and the skimmer was working like a champ. But when I took out the rice it had an awful "eggy" smell. really bad egg smell too...BAD. and that was with what I consider generous flow through the reactor.

Again my corals were just not expanding the last two to three days...and when my RBTA, which seems to do well in spite of all the high NO3 levels I did have, starts to go down hill...I gotta chalk it up to the ONE thing I did change...I added rice.

I have the same EVERYTHING else that I started the tank with...and has been that way for over a year. The NP BP were the first addition ever...before I had tank, rock, sand, water, sump (and and rock), and a skimmer. Nothing else. Added the BP. and now the Rice...and with only the rice...the tank started looking worse.

the proof is in the "rice" pudding. I see negative effects...so I'm not going to try it any more. The old BP are back in...just because I have nothing else to put in there..and who knows maybe they will start to work.

The rice was still "solid" though after the 11th day...so that was neat...but oh my word it was smelly.

No livestock was lost, and hopefully everything will recover, maybe I just need to do a large WC and get my NO3 back down, and remove anything that the rice may have leached.

I'm gonna keep following the thread...but for this reefer...rice is a no go.

good luck.
 
When rice turns yellow rice it is associated a fungi which causes citreoviridin poisoning from fungi mycotoxins.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16025655

To quote from a paper on fungi and rice grains;

'Mycotoxin contamination
is less commonly reported for rice than for many other cereal
crops (Tanaka et al., 2007), but rice represents a very good
substrate for fungal growth and toxinogenesis since it is used as
an ideal culture medium to test the toxigenic potential of fungal
isolates (Bars and Bars, 1992). Among these rice mycotoxins,
aflatoxin B1, (AFB1), fumonisin B1 and ochratoxin A are the
most toxic for mammals and have hepatotoxic, teratogenic, and
mutagenic activity, causing damage such as toxic hepatitis, hemorrhage,
edema, immunosuppression, hepatic carcinoma, equine
leukoencephalomalacia, esophageal cancer, and nephrotoxicity
(Norred, 1993; Santos et al., 2001; Altuntas et al., 2003). AFB1
has been classified as a group 1 human carcinogen and fumonisin
B1 and B2 as group 2B carcinogens by the International Agency
for Research on Cancer (1993)'

'Mycotoxin production is unavoidable and at times unpredictable,
which makes it a unique challenge to food safety.
Decontamination of mycotoxin-contaminated food is not fully
successful, and control of mycotoxins is the need of the hour.'

Source 'MYCOTOXIGENIC FUNGI, MYCOTOXINS,
AND MANAGEMENT OF RICE GRAINS
K. R. N. REDDY
C. S. REDDY'; http://130.88.242.202/medicine/Aspergillus/articlesoverflow/reddy08.pdf
 
philbo32 said:
When rice turns yellow rice it is associated a fungi which causes citreoviridin poisoning from fungi mycotoxins.
Click to expand...

then to avoid poisoning the coral tissue, Would it be worth replacing the rice to less than a week before the rice yellow?

I think while we can encourage this situation.
to remove all waste from the column again
 
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IMHO not worth the risk of poisoning your tank with rice associated mycotoxins. This is just my opinion, it appears that there have been a number of fungi associated with rice and they seem to produce some very toxic byproducts. Plus the health risk to yourself and anyone else living in your house, not trying to scare people but it could potentially be a serious problem.
 
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good news is that my corals are already perking up. Rbta looks better, not great but better. I think it was for the best to get rid of the rice.
 
daveonbass, do you run carbon? In your situation I'd throw some carbon in there to pull out whatever junk the bunk rice left in there. JMO
 
A summary might be worthwhile for those considering using rice for carbon dosing.
I'll start and perhaps others might add pros and cons or debate.

Rice will provide a carbon source as it breaks down, a saccaride
(It is mostly carbohydrate). This will fuel bacteria and may fuel the growth of bacteria that will reduce NO3 and PO4 provided they are exported via gac(granulated activated carbon and skimming and the additions of nitrogen in the rice are offset.

A saccaride at some point turns to glucose as I undrstand it and Cliff has cited articles in the past that show glucose in particular may have a detrimental effect on corals. This has also been my personal experience when dosing sucrose( table sugar) which combines fructose and glucose.

Rice may contain trace metals which can be harmful in a reef tank.

Rice provides a fertile field for fungi and scary mycotoxins.

Rice contains significant fiixed nitrogen in the protein and B vitamins; fats too. . So it's questionable as to wether it will add to NO3 or PO4 in some situations.

While it may be possible to control the rice breakdown and the amount of organic carbon released by flow adjustments. I'm skeptical that this is acheivable with current technology and knowlege of how rice decays.

There is no long term experience with rice dosing to evaluate as there is with other sources such as ethanol and vinegar for example.
 
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Last update

Well I'm not buying the Mycotoxin producing fungus. If those types of fungi and molds were present in my tank and producing toxic metabolites that were effecting my system I think I would be seeing serious losses. I still have loads of pods crawling around in my tank, my corals look ok along with all the critters. from cucumber and coco worms to the cardnal fish and flasher wrasse they all seem fine. that's with a reactor filled with rice that is a nice shade of yellow.
However... My no3 is up to almost 20ppm
b211f513.jpg



65115bf2.jpg

I checked it twice with the redsea test kit, and twice with the API test kit. I'm not sure why the rice seemed to work the first two weeks. 20 ppm NO3 isn't a crazy high level of nitrate but I'm jumping off the boat so to speak before it gets too high to fix with a good water change. Definitely will keep following the thread and look forward to seeing others results with the "rice experiment". I can't help but regret my swapping of the skimmer mid experiment and refilling my reactor in the middle of the test, this I feel was not conducive to the scientific process.
 
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ouch......I'm gone for a week and I've lost two of my best generals.
I haven't read much on this thread in the past few days, but I'm just about to hook up my sump again, and should have my new batch of rice in there asap.

this time, I've let my no3 and po4 levels creep up a bit so that I can see how much time it needs to pull out the nutrients.


as for the rice, I think we need to be specific about WHICH KIND OF RICE we will be using.
I will post up my rice details in a bit, so that everyone who's used rice can compare their rice and results to it.
 
Yeah not exactly sure why but when I repacked my reactor my n/p levels started going up and after a week I saw no decline. One thing that keeps bugging me is I used more rice the second time I refilled my reactor maybe I should have used less. I rinsed it the same way and thought it was rinsed better. Also this will give me a chance to see how much n/p will build up in my tank by next week without using rice and not having the giant ball of macro to use it up. So even though I put last update in the title of my last post I don't think it will be. I'm going to monitor my levels over the next few weeks and see where they go. Would like to hear from Dave to see if his n/p levels stay the same with or without the reactor.
 
I have a question. I think that I read somewhere that clams, softies, and Lps like nutrients in the water? Has anybody tried this in a predominantly lps or softy tank? With clams? Mixed reef? Also wondering if lighting levels would affect anything? Watching the rice train but have a couple of big clams and lps.
 
I've had a tbsp of rice in the compartment of my 12g for 4 weeks now and pulled it out today. My no3 was at 20ppm as well, which is higher than it has ever been. The rice smelled of sulfur and disintigrated when I touched it. It seemed to be holding up well until this week. Corals were doing ok and there was almost no algea growth. Today was the first time in that time that I cleaned the glass. I used to have scrape it about every 4 days.
 
yes I did ace the BP back in my reacto after cleaning out all the rice.still no change. NO3 did go up to 20 just before I took it completely offline. Now with BP it's still not going down. POzd is still reading zero. All the corals bounced back except the rbta, it still looks a little stringy. But I'm not worried. The cyno did explode while using the rice...and still hasn't gone away. My rice was so egg smelly that it simply had to go. There was no way that it was helping at that point.

sorry but I do NOT recommend using rice to export N and P levels.
 
If the flow through the reactor is slow enough, it can become anoxic, but most people seem to use flow that is far beyond what's needed to prevent that. A good skimmer likely is enough to keep the tank's water column oxygenated in all but very extreme cases.
 
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