Running Vodka dosing and run biopellets reactor at the same time???

I don't but it seams counterintuitive. I dose vodka and vinegar with MB7 and Bactive8 with great results. Being that they both do the same thing, you could just run a little more biopelletes or a little more bacteria/carbon to achieve the same results.
 
I don't.
I've run vodka and vinegar for almost 4 years and strongly prefer these soluble organics to pellets.
I don't like the monomers from the pellets.
I don't think bacterial supplements are necessary ; they occur naturally in the tank when the organiccarbon source is added.
Pellets are polymers( carbohydrates) AS an oversimplified description of the process:They degrade via bacterial activity to monomers( sugars) then to ethanol( vodka), then to acetic acid (vinegar),then to acetate on on to methane in anoxic areas.. So, adding vodka or vinegar to pellet dosing is just getting to the end of the chain faster and skipping the higher levels of the cascade where many including me have had poor responses from corals..
 
Plus you can fine tune your levels with vodka/vinegar that you can't do with pellets. You decrease the flow for your pellets (has happened to me), then you can get a slime in there or the pellets being stuck to each other. I have seen increase of hydrogen sulfide when they are glued together. As TMZ said, the end source is so much more bioavailabe anyway.

Alex
 
Plus you can fine tune your levels with vodka/vinegar that you can't do with pellets. You decrease the flow for your pellets (has happened to me), then you can get a slime in there or the pellets being stuck to each other. I have seen increase of hydrogen sulfide when they are glued together. As TMZ said, the end source is so much more bioavailabe anyway.

Alex
Using a recirculating reactor would enable you to adjust the flow through the reactor without changing the tumbling of pellets.
 
do you really notice any differences with using vodka? I've always been pretty skeptical myself.

That depends on whether I drink it or dose it.

In the aquariums in my system which house a healthy well fed fish population along with hundred of corals ; it keeps NO3(<0.2ppm, )and PO4( <.03ppm) very low. Zoanthids and an several other corals do better with the extra bacteria and organic carbon; sponges and filter feeders are proliferous,ime.
 
Back
Top