Randy's vinegar dosing limit. I found it!
- Thread starter Randy Holmes-Farley
- Start date
swk
New member
Diagnosed as Dino's IMO. I am without a microscope, so I can't be certain, but it certainly looks and acts the part. I believe I changed too many nutrient reduction methods at once. Cutting vinegar in half over a couple weeks, plus removing gfo in the last week or so, when this stuff popped up.
I have replaced the gfo and will try again slowly once the tank has been running on the new, lower vinegar dose for another couple of months.
Lesson learned
I have replaced the gfo and will try again slowly once the tank has been running on the new, lower vinegar dose for another couple of months.
Lesson learned
GTR
Active member
IMO, those chart doses are low and ramp up unnecessarily slowly.
I'm only on week three and have been using the chart linked in this thread.
I've seen nothing at all, good or bad. The system is about 1,400 gallons water volume with a very heavy invertebrate load. I'm not aiming for zero, I'm aiming for a level that doesn't exceed the highest level on the test kit. :lol:
:thumbsup:
Let us know how it turns out.
Let us know how it turns out.
markalot
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Question on Vinegar added to Kalk and vinegar dosing.
Nitrates 10
Phosphate .25 (it was worse) Salifert high resolution
I have a 150 gallon tank, I need to reduce nitrates and phosphates and I'd rather not run GFO or any phosphate reducing media. Right now I topoff with Kalk and have a fairly low evaporation rate, somewhat less than a gallon a day.
I'm adding 45ml of vinegar per gallon of Kalk to increase saturation, which is keeping my Alk steady at 9 KH for the moment. If I increase the amount of vinegar in the Kalk above 45ml / gallon will it also increase the Kalk saturation, or is 45ml / gallon the top limit as far as effectiveness?
In short I believe I need to be dosing more than 45ml of vinegar a day to see if that helps control nitrates and brings phosphates down a bit. Obviously I need to measure just how much topoff I'm adding a day in order to be more exact here.
Thanks!
Nitrates 10
Phosphate .25 (it was worse) Salifert high resolution
I have a 150 gallon tank, I need to reduce nitrates and phosphates and I'd rather not run GFO or any phosphate reducing media. Right now I topoff with Kalk and have a fairly low evaporation rate, somewhat less than a gallon a day.
I'm adding 45ml of vinegar per gallon of Kalk to increase saturation, which is keeping my Alk steady at 9 KH for the moment. If I increase the amount of vinegar in the Kalk above 45ml / gallon will it also increase the Kalk saturation, or is 45ml / gallon the top limit as far as effectiveness?
In short I believe I need to be dosing more than 45ml of vinegar a day to see if that helps control nitrates and brings phosphates down a bit. Obviously I need to measure just how much topoff I'm adding a day in order to be more exact here.
Thanks!
If you add more vinegar, then the water will be <b>able</b> to dissolve more Kalk, but you'd just need to add the exact amount of lime needed for your tank's calcium and alkalinity needs. Vinegar doesn't contain any alkalinity or calcium, except possibly as trace contaminants.
I dose both vinegar and limewater, but I choose to dose them separately to better control them.
markalot
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Thanks both for the answers. I am currently at 3tbsp per gallon and I am assuming once my phosphate problem fades alk usage will pick up which will require more Kalk. I'm hoping I can come up with a balance of vinegar and kalk and minimize two part usage. It's been nice having the doser off for the last two weeks. Brown acros ... not so nice. 
Aquarist007
New member
kenneth wolfe
New member
my experance shows that a full load saturation of 15/45 does not caries the bacteia growth and alk that 5/45 carries ...keppeing the kalk to vinegar ratio 5/45 gives me the same as 10ml with no vinegar with the added benifit of the small bateria bloow...it takes weeks for the bacteria to stablize (grow and die back) ..I dont chase numbers never have..I look at my tank..Putting extra venagar in ato dont do the same as seperate dossing of the two..I have seen my ato with heavy deposits from sitting disolve some of the older deposits that normaly would not get disolved with water alone..so an older ato contaner would need cleaned after changing ratios to be sure what your putting in is what you get out of your kalk/vinegar ...weeks to stablize..takeing it slow is a better plan here
markalot
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I just discovered how dangerous a super saturated solution of Kalk is when used for topoff. My sump level was slowly falling so I upped the timed topoff just a bit and of course the Alk rose, and rose significantly. 8.8 to start, 9.8 by the next evening.
I'm returning to just Kalk and will dose Vinegar separately as/if needed to help control nitrates and phosphates.
I'm returning to just Kalk and will dose Vinegar separately as/if needed to help control nitrates and phosphates.
my experance shows that a full load saturation of 15/45 does not caries the bacteia growth and alk that 5/45 carries ...keppeing the kalk to vinegar ratio 5/45 gives me the same as 10ml with no vinegar with the added benifit of the small bateria bloow...it takes weeks for the bacteria to stablize (grow and die back) ..
I'm not sure what any of that means. Bacteria don't live in 12.4pH limewater. Adding more vinegar enables more calcium hydroxide to remain in solution. 48 ml per gallon of water with 2.72 tsps of kalk instead of two is generally used as a max vinegar addition.
I'm not sure what any of that means. Bacteria don't live in 12.4pH limewater. Adding more vinegar enables more calcium hydroxide to remain in solution. 48 ml per gallon of water with 2.72 tsps of kalk instead of two is generally used as a max vinegar addition.
OK, I've been experimenting with upping and upping the vinegar dose for my tank. Hoping to stop any green algae on the glass and kill off some macroalgae and maybe bryopsis (which has not worked).
I've been adding more and more vinegar and less and less vodka.
Well, at the recent limit of 410 mL of lime-saturated vinegar, the tank really was noticeably poorer.
Most particularly, the RBTAs browned up (still orange, but darker and the white parts are now brown) and they expanded less and less, and the H. crispa also expanded less. Some soft corals were also shrunken.
Cyano also started to grow faster again.
Also, the green algae on the glass seemed to grow faster! Bryopsis is also out of control, although that may not be related.
So I've decided to cut way back and try 150 ml of lime-saturated vinegar with no vodka for a bit and see if things go back to normal.
Hi,
I know this was a while ago. But I was wondering if NO3 was not likely the limiting factor. Wouldn't be a good idea to dose NO3 if there is still some algae growing and you are dosing a lot of carbon?
If the goal is to reduce algal growth, then adding nitrate just adds more fixed nitrogen for the algae. One process or the other might work better with a higher nutrient level, but I think the odds are very good that adding more food will encourage more growth, even for the algae.
My rational is that since bacteria growth reduces about 10:1 nitrate to phosphate it is possible the phosphate continues high enough to encourage algae growth. It is fairly common to se threads of people getting nitrates 0ppm but phosphates still higher than 0.03ppm and still getting algae growth.
In a lot of these cases, including this reported by Randy, increasing dosing does not help. It sounds like as if the system had encountered a bottle-neck.
In other systems it works just great, and all the algae is gone.
Obviously I understand that we don't know what is this limiting factor. It could be different things for different systems. I also understand that nitrates might be 0 ppm because the algae are consuming it so that even nitrate might be increased.
I would really like to have a more comprehensive water macro and micro elements test to work with a more "educated" guess. But in the absence of that (I am not aware if or where we could get accurate measurements of that), I am just trying to come up with some of the possibilities for limiting factors.
Where would you start?
In a lot of these cases, including this reported by Randy, increasing dosing does not help. It sounds like as if the system had encountered a bottle-neck.
In other systems it works just great, and all the algae is gone.
Obviously I understand that we don't know what is this limiting factor. It could be different things for different systems. I also understand that nitrates might be 0 ppm because the algae are consuming it so that even nitrate might be increased.
I would really like to have a more comprehensive water macro and micro elements test to work with a more "educated" guess. But in the absence of that (I am not aware if or where we could get accurate measurements of that), I am just trying to come up with some of the possibilities for limiting factors.
Where would you start?
The algae can't live on phosphate alone, and they consume a lot of nitrogen relative to phosphorus, so I'm not sure why adding fixed nitrogen would help. I would consider a bit of GFO if the phosphate were high enough to cause problems with calcium carbonate deposition.
