Opinions on dosing vodka alone?

[rsantangelo3@co]

Looking to just add a little vodka to my 90 reef maybe once or twice a week to help with some things. I currently dose 2 part c balance and iodine. As well as running a phosban reactor and i run activated carbon as well being a mixed tank. Will dosing a little vodka help with sps coloration and not off set anything too much?

 

[Chyendra]

I dose vodka alone and it works well for me. Vodka dosing has definetly lowered my nitrate levels and has helped me keep them near 0. I still run GFO to help with phosphate removal.
I can't comment on improving SPS colors, my frags are all pretty new. You can find lots of threads where people attribute their SPS color improvement to dosing vodka. IMO it will only help your coloration if your tank has too high of nitrates and that's why your SPS aren't coloring up. Lighting, flow, alk, ca, mag, and general parameter stability are all important considerations when trying to improve SPS health.

 

[beeker]

i currently dose vodka only 2 days a week on my tank, it is effective and works even at a low dose and even only 2 days a week

my tank is about 200g worth of water i dose 7 drops, monday and friday only

i do add a few other chemicals with the Vodak but they aren't nesscessary to acheive results

 

[allsps40]

I tried vodka only and had issues did a low dose even. I am starting it up again slowly but am thinking about using MB7 as SunnyX is.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

Wow, I wish I can get away with 7 drops twice a week. I dose 7 ml a day in my 125 and I believe it really made a difference in the corals colors. I just recently started adding Lugol's to my tank at 2 drops a day and really notice that my blues, oranges and greens are really standing out.

 

[Thairun]

I dose vodka alone and it works well for me. Vodka dosing has definetly lowered my nitrate levels and has helped me keep them near 0. I still run GFO to help with phosphate removal.
I can't comment on improving SPS colors, my frags are all pretty new. You can find lots of threads where people attribute their SPS color improvement to dosing vodka. IMO it will only help your coloration if your tank has too high of nitrates and that's why your SPS aren't coloring up. Lighting, flow, alk, ca, mag, and general parameter stability are all important considerations when trying to improve SPS health.

I have to agree with Chyndra, been dosing vodka alone religiously since June last year everyday. Though this help my No3 near zero but never my PO4 that hovering 0.1+ppm. Thats enough making my SPSes difficult to hold color and growth retarded. Since 2 months back bettling with cyno outbreak and intoducing biodigest to boost up good bac futile, I stopped them and run rowaphos aggresively.With the help of reliable po4 test kit hanna checker my PO4 now dropped to 0.5ppm. SPSes now coloring back with nitrate rising around 5ppm. Intended to dose vodka back this time round weekly rather than daily to bring down nitrate, I started with this passed 3weeks dosing MB7. Hope this will balance up my bac composition in the tank.
Bubble gum milli growth started to show
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=138333&stc=1&d=1297173200
as well as my bonsai coloring back from browning
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=138332&stc=1&d=1297172645

 

[Wiskeyrebel]

Is it ethanol that helps? What proof is the vodka? I may or may not make vodka in all proofs and was thinking what would be best and how to dose it

 

[Logzor]

i currently dose vodka only 2 days a week on my tank, it is effective and works even at a low dose and even only 2 days a week

my tank is about 200g worth of water i dose 7 drops, monday and friday only

i do add a few other chemicals with the Vodak but they aren't nesscessary to acheive results

How do you know it is actually the vodka doing anything? I find it hard to believe that you can measure the benefits of .7 mL of a 200g+ aquarium. Especially since you are also dosing some zeo products (i think) :rollface:. I would, on the other hand, believe that there is a noticeable increase in water clarity with that small dose.

I think that there is a huge amount of heresy and poorly develop dosing regimens (based on particular system, rather than systems in general). If we can, in fact, get away with dosing this little vodka I think it would be a great thing as vodka dosing becomes very risky at higher doses. I may try a similar ultra-low dose on my stock system and see if I have any results.

When dosing vodka (even for Beeker at his ultra-low dose) I would advise dosing a bacterial supplement, otherwise the vodka may favor a particular strain, which can be a bad thing. There have been a strong correlation between vodka dosing and persistent cyano outbreaks even though N/P are kept at minimal levels by the vodka. Not exactly sure how this works but it happened to me.

 

[beeker]

LOGZOR

this isnt my first time dosing Vodka to a tank

my 200g is actually the 5th saltwater tank i've ever ran

i used this method of Vodka dosing on my 29g BC on nano-reef with great sucess but realized that after 2 months of daily dosing a lot of negatives started to happen (IE Stn, Rtn, Cyano, loss of color, concrete looking coral tissue)

it's not to say that i didnt have good results from dosing the Vodka daily for the first month, but i noticed the Vodka reached a saturation point to where it was only giving me negative results with continued dosing so i stopped for 7months

when i decided to go back to Vodka i was dosing 3 days a week, i felt that even this was too much compared to the Bio-load/food i was adding to the tank, so i dropped it to 2 days a week and got all the positives (color/growth) without any of the negatives i have had before

on the 200g i waiting 5 months before even trying the 2-3 week dose of Vodka to let the system get stable first

yes i do add Phols Xtra and Elo's amino's along with Elo's Pro skimmer, but i feel that none of these are needed to get results, Vodka alone can get you the same results over time, i did notice a good benefit from the Phols Xtra, but it smells like vinager and aminos mixed together so in a way dosing this plus the Elo's aminos and Vodka isn't nesscessary as its a carbon source and doing the same thing the Vodka is

hope that helps clarify

i'm always tweaking **** on my tank monthly since going with leds i've had to be a scientist and try to have some method to my madness, i've learned everything first hand for the most part and that is why i can say what i can say about my setup and system, i'm not an expert

i'm just a guy that takes about an hour a day looking at every coral in his tank and determining wether or not what i did has had a positive or negative effect and i adjust from there, it's all trial and error for me

like right now i dose the Vodka 2 days a week, but also realized after 2 weeks of dosing pohls Xtra my coral colors were getting too Pale, so i dropped dosing the Phols 7 days a week down to 5 days a week, even at 5 days it was still too much and now i'm debating wether to dose the Pohls 2 days a week inbetween the Vodka dosing or not

but this is why i like this hobby and its crap like this that keep my brain entertained, lol

my new dosing will most likely be

7 drops of Skyy Vodka 2 days a week, Monday and Friday
3ML of elo's pro skimmer added daily
2 drops of Elo's aminos added daily
2ML of Phols Xtra dosed only on tuesday and thursday

I'll keep my dosing at this for the next 2 weeks and report my info when i'm done

i could also buy 100+ different of the snake oil products out there and try them as well, but that is far too time/money consuming so i only bought the products i felt were backed with the most verbal/post/first hand support

K+ is another product i looked into but have not decided to try it at this time

 

[jdyer88]

Is it ethanol that helps? What proof is the vodka? I may or may not make vodka in all proofs and was thinking what would be best and how to dose it

in addition to this question i would ask could you use just a neutral grain spirit instead of "vodka"...which is cheaper to um, buy, and can be more pure

 

[koralkrab125]

if you run gfo and dose vodka i have noticed it is somewhat redundant because as the gfo absorbs po4 it isnt removed from the system until you change out the gfo, so i just run carbon and dose vodka and mb7 and now i have perfect water perams

 

[SDguy]

If the OP is asking about vodka dosing alone vs. vodka dosing with bacterial additives, then yes, dosing vodka alone works just fine, I'm on like 3 years now.

If you mean alone as in replacing some of the other things you listed like cabon, phosban, and two part, then no, some of those things have nothing to do with vodka dosing, and you'll want to continue using them as you do now (except the GFO).

 

[birdman1979]

I dose vodka via brs pump on a controller. I''m down to 4xper day while the lights are on for 15 seconds. I throw in a dash of MB7 after I clean the sump or vacuum the sand bed. No cyno or any other type of algae... this stuff works. Some of my sps start to rtn as soon as alk climbs above 8dkh but other wise its a great addition to a quality skimmer for keeping the tank clean. I personally don't buy into the monoculture theory but adding MB7 or equivalent now and again is pretty easy. I think the vodka is doing the heavy lifting though.

 

[MammothReefer]

I dosed vodka, alone and vodka with others for sometime on my older system.

I found that on my old system both Vodka, alone and Vodka+ worked but I was happier when I did the Vodka/ZeoBak/Phols/AA Combo. At the time MB7, and a lot of the other stuff wasn't around. (my old system was about 500g).

I have to say when it comes to vodka, biopellets ect.. If you don't need them (ie nitrates in higher rangers ect) No reason to run them. My older system demanded something to assist with nitrates. It was literally OFF the chart when I decided to go the vodka route. I had tried to follow another tanks system that I really liked, but it just didn't work out for me.

I had something like 30-40 fish (many very large) and really needed a way to reduce nitrates. Vodka did the trick, Vodka+ helped my corals look alot better.

My current system has a heavy bioload as well for it's size..but it's looking like my current husbandry levels w/GFO+Carbon. Appears to be enough to keep my parameters where I want them. However if things change I will be adding the pellets back on.