Randy's vinegar dosing limit. I found it!

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Viengar drives bacterial growth to reduce nutrients. I could possibly encourage cyano, but small doses generally don't seem to do that.

It could possibly contribute to sand clumping, but that happens in many tanks without vinegar dosing (including mine before I ever dosed vinegar).

 

[clugo]

Randy, your DIY iron recipe is below. What is "sodium citrate dihydrate?"

"I selected a dose of about 0.1 to 0.3 mL of a solution containing 5 g of iron (as 25 g of ferrous sulfate heptahydrate) in 250 mL of water containing 50.7 g of sodium citrate dihydrate. "

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you have to ask, you probably can't buy it.

Try this DIY:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1807946

 

[clugo]

thx

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

:thumbsup:

Happy Reefing.

 

[clugo]

Randy does it have to be the fergon brand? Will any brand do?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Well, it should be ferrous sulfate, and then it depends on what the other ingredients include. Fergon doesn't have anything that concerns me.

 

[clugo]

Randy, what do u thk of these ingredients? I've looked around and haven't found fergon yet.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

That looks OK, let it dissolve overnight in RO/DI, shake it up, let the solids settle out,a nd use the clear greenish liquid.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Clugo: Given that your tank appears to be newly set-up, what are you trying to accomplish with vinegar dosing and/or iron supplementation? One typically uses vinegar/vodka/bio-pellets in an effort to promote reduction of nitrates to nitrogen gas via bacterial action.

There's no particular harm in vinegar dosing from the start of a tank other than perhaps promoting bacterial slime and/or cyanobacteria, but one doesn't typically have nitrate issues until after the tank's been running a while and is more heavily populated.

 

[hugorsf]

So i'll start to dose vinegar to my tank!
I'll star with the conservative 250gallons! It's ok to follow this map?

Can i just dump all the vinegar to the sump (tank is better?) at once?

 

[tmz]

A high flow areas is agood dosing point .
Vinegar will drop pH precipitously. Better to dose it slowly during periods of photosynthesis.
I'd say you could probably dose up to 1ml per ten gallons at once without much initial effect on pH. After reaching that level , I'd spread the dose out in equal increments over the course of the day.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

IMO, those chart doses are low and ramp up unnecessarily slowly.

 

[ridetheducati]

So i'll start to dose vinegar to my tank!
I'll star with the conservative 250gallons! It's ok to follow this map?

Can i just dump all the vinegar to the sump (tank is better?) at once?

Depending on your bioload, you may end up dosing close to 200 ml of vinegar per day.

 

[hugorsf]

Yeahhh so i'll first finish to set-up my dosing system (need a little more programming) and then start dosing vinegar!

Thanks!

 

[swk]

Just added a 1.1 ml pump to take over vinegar dosing. I was dosing in my top off water mixed with kalkwasser. Here's a pic

Just upgraded to this tank 3 weeks ago, so excuse the wire clutter. Have yet to strap everything down.

 

[BrentH]

Nice thread I'm at 250 ml a day vinegar and.no3 hasn't seemed to move a bit yet been ramping up for over 4 weeks I'll keep going fingers crossed was going to add vodka 10 ml a day but from other thread found out better to stick with vinegar and dose more..... I've noticed my skimmer collection cup filling up faster and has to be related to the carbon dosing .curious we're does the vinegar go or do if the bacteria levels are not enough to consume?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Other creatures are capable to taking up acetate from vinegar. Even zoox in corals, which is likely why the brown up with overdoses.

 

[swk]

When does one stop increasing the dose?

Is it when you first see a reduction in nutrients, and then ride it out?

Or do you continue to increase until nutrients are where you want them?

I am up to around 50ml a day on a 75 gal display with 20 gal sump. I've had some sps issues lately and though I'm sure there are other things at play, I just want to check everything that I'm doing to make sure I'm not making things worse.

Thanks
Sean

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It depends on why you are dosing it.

Are you tracking nutrients?