Sugar dosing results

ErosJN

ErosJN

New member
With no water changes from last weekend to today, my Nitrates went from 80ppm to 5ppm in 5 days with sugar dosing. I understand that sugar dosing is a remedy and not a cure but I just wanted to share my results. I'm sure my Nitrates were out of line due to heavy stocking in a 210 gallon with 75 gallon sump and skimmer that was rated for 100 gallons. As of 2 weeks ago, I switched over to the SRO 5000int skimmer rated for a 500 gal. Aquarium I believe. This weekend I'll do a 50 gal change and see where things are at. Here's my sugar quantity:
Saturday: 2 table spoons 80ppm
Sunday: cloudy water
Monday: 1 tablespoon 40ppm
Tuesday: 2.5 tablespoons 20ppm
Wednesday: 4 tablespoons 10ppm
Thursday (today): no sugar 5ppm

Having an overrated skimmer surely helps... the gunk and smell that has been getting pulled out this week is quite remarkable!
Question, can I stop sugar dosing cold turkey or will that set an off balance for bacteria?
 
I've been successfully dosing sugar (pure fructose) for a few years. I did recently switch to nopox so I could automate
the carbon dosing.

I would keep it up at a lower regular dose to try to sustain the desired no3 level. Probably not good to keep swinging it up and down.
 
I see. Thanks for the response. My goal is to get it to 0-2ppm and stop dosing to see if my skimmer and water chsnges alone can keep it at that reading. If it starts rising back up then I will follow your suggestion and do a light dosing on a regular basis.
 
Yes. The cloudy water comes from bacteria blooms after large doses. My sustained dose on my 250 (350 total) system is 2 teaspoons a week. I would fully expect your 4 tablespoon dose to cause cloudy water.
 
That's quite significant. I tried sugar dosing on a softie reef but the RBTAs did not like it one bit. Ended up dosing vodka which very slowly brought nutrients down over time (admittedly I was dosing extremely conservatively).
 
I was mimicking an old totm and using pure fructose, so not sure if that makes a difference. I have 10+ btas , four different varieties, and they continued to grow and split as always.

I started the sugar dosing at 100ppm+ nitrates. Every test kit showed out of range. After about 6 months of the two tea spoons a week it was down to 10-15. That is when I could start successfully keeping sps again.
 
Thanks for the valuable info. I may copy you and do the 2 teaspoons weekly just to keep it steady. One thing that was odd was it only clouded bad the first time i dosed. Even when i did the 4 tablespoons there wasn't much clouding. Your 2 teaspoons weekly doesn't affect your water's clarity, does it?
 
Thanks, I think I'll use those days aswell. @IrishTang, I just used standard pure sugar from walmart.. most people tend to dose on a much lighter scale to bring nitrates down over a several month period, but because I don't have any super fragile corals, I dosed heavily to bring down to between 0 and 5 in a week. I'll test the nitrates when I get home a post photos
 
I use ascorbic sodium (vitamin C ph neutral) because I had read that sugar caused large cyano outbreaks.
 
Thanks. Anyone else get cyano from sugar dosing? I had some grow over the week, just did a little maintenance and got rid of it.. I'm willing to deal with alittle of it to get the results I have, just wondering if it will continue to grow with sugar dosing or will it eventually stop after the system gets used to the sugar dosages.
 
ErosJN said:
Thanks. Anyone else get cyano from sugar dosing? I had some grow over the week, just did a little maintenance and got rid of it.. I'm willing to deal with alittle of it to get the results I have, just wondering if it will continue to grow with sugar dosing or will it eventually stop after the system gets used to the sugar dosages.
Click to expand...

ttt
 
Some, but when the nutrients get low enough it seems that other bacteria out competes the cyano. Good flow and such also helps keep the cyano away
 
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