Sugar Results & Phospahte Question

[Lonnie]

I have always had high nitrates & phosphates in my 220 gal FOWLR tank. I have a 55 gal 'fuge w/ caluerpa (sp?) & 35 gal sump for my heaters, pumps & skimmer.

Fish include a Stingray, Lion, Paddlefin Wrasse, clown, panther & saddle groupers, a lobster & a few emerald crabs. My fish are basically pigs & I hate to starve them for clean water. I feed approx. 4 silversides daily.

Nitrates would always creep to 40 in approx 3 weeks & phosphates were always around .2ppm A 120gal water change always dropped readings back down to 25 & .15 respectively. Fish were always healthy, but obviously algae was always a problem.

If I changed 120 gal every 2weeks, I could get my readings lower, but I was a slave to the tank & spending a fortune in salt & RO filters.

After reading about 100 posts on the topic, I finally thought I would try sugar. Added 1 tsp at first & no noticeable reaction. I did this for 2 more days with no cloudiness & nitrates hardly moved.

Then I tried 2tsp & got a very slight cloudiness of water & nitrates came down slightly. Did the same the second day & no cloudiness as well as the 3rd day. Nitrates were down over 5pts, but phosphates remained steady.

Skimmer went crazy (green slime), the filter sock foamed up & needed changing every2 days. Things were starting to work now.

After a few more days of dosing, I upped the dosage again to 3tsp. Got some cloudiness, & nitrate readings were definitely dropping. Over the next 5 days I continued this dosage & the nitrates came down to 0.

Algae started to die off the rocks & my skimmer & filter sock required daily cleanings from basically a yellowish residue. I continued this for a week expecting the algae to continue dying off & the nitrates to stay at 0, which it did. I started slowly removing algae from the glass, trying not to make any sudden changes. The remaining remanents of algae in the fuge was turning grey & disappearing. The tank glass was staying clean.

Here is my source of confusion....
Previous to the sugar I used some phosphate remover drops by Blue Life USA & they dropped the readings to .1

The nitrates remain 0 with my sugar addition, but the prosphates are not dropping due to the sugar & actually increased slightly, likely due to the algae die off. I know if I can drop the phosphates, I can totally clear the algae.

I do not think that increasing the sugar dosage will lower the phosphates & may crash my system. I am manually removing algae to slowly eliminate it.

My question are as follows:
1. Should I reduce the sugar dosage to find lowest level that will maintain 0 nitrates or maintain current dosage until all algae has died off?

2. Will the sugar eventually hurt my system, even at the smallest dose that will maintain my current levels.

3. I would like to do a water change, but I hate to change what is actually working. Any suggestions or experiences here?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Lonnie

 

[Icefire]

use a phosban reactor with GFO

 

[Lonnie]

I already have a reactor. My concern is the usage of sugar.
Lonnie

 

[guntercb]

Lonnie,

If the sugar is working, why don't you find a good routine for dosing it. Like maybe 2 tsp of sugar monthly. See if it keeps your nitrates at 0. If not, maybe you need to go to biweekly dosing.

Good luck,
Chris

 

[glassbox-design]

based on your results it seems sugar wont lower it anymore....

i'd be interested in seeing the effect of a vodka and vinegar cocktail would be....it could be the bacteria that is best utilizing the sugar only eats up no3, not po4. odds are not, but it's just a wild idea.

perhaps the binding action of the blue life has made an impact on the bacteria's ability to eat up the remaining po4? again just a wild idea...

throw chaeto in your fuge, should lower p and n... and grow rapidly. no need for other gadgets, what you have should work.

 

[dots]

Less is more when using the sugar, my best results have come when adding a minimal amount daily to offset the nitrate that was created recenently. By doing so, even if you have a slight accumulation your regular WC schedule will compensate.

I have played with sugar a lot and have purposly crashed my nanocube three times to see causes and effect of adding too much.

Its bad to add too much and screws with the Ph and Alk.

I am currently adding 1 cube of sugar daily and had a large explosion of growth from what I am guessing is feeding more combined with this. I never fed that much for fear of high nitrate accumulation and feel the two are offsetting each other currently resulting in an ideal balance to promot the growth along with the factors of flow, light, etc......

We want a nice culture that is stable and at a consitent population to take up the nitrate, unless it is an emergency, I would not increase the levels but wait for it to slowly bring down you nitrate level.

I really on GFO for the phosphate and have good results with it.

But in the end, there is no substitute for regular WCs and all of this just extends the time for us in between them.

my .02

 

[Lonnie]

I was using the GFO, but it seemed to deplete itself rapidly (2 containers lasted 2 days) & unless I wanted to spend $100 or more to get the levels down, I was wasting my time.

Now that I have the phosphate levels down to a reasonable reading, I can start using GFO again & it should last a while. I'm thinking my rock was saturated & there was such a large amount of phosphate to be removed, it seemed like I would go broke before I got the readings in check.

The drops that I used had a remarkable effect on the tank. 6 drops per 10 gallons were recommended. It would cause the skimmer to foam severely as well as my filter sock which would quickly clog & foam over.

The sugar has been by far the cheapest & easiest method so far to clean up the tank. I still intend to do regular water changes, but this seems to be able to keep readings in check between changes & has allowed me to make progress much faster than changing water every 2 days. The algae continues to die off the rocks & nitrates remain zero, so I assume it is being consumed. The only algae still growing is the hair algae, but it is more on an olive green now, so I expect it is starving as well.

I recently got a 2 softball size pieces of chaeto. It is growing well now.

I hope to start removing some of the caluerpa, which is now not doing as well. I have a 55 gal tank of it & was throwing a large handfull a week away.

Dots, your 1 cube daily (isn't that = to 1 tsp) for a 75 is more than my current dosage of 3tsp for 300 gal.

 

[dots]

I was looking for just that information today, and all it said was 4 grams so when I realized I might actually have to do some work, I lost interest and gave up..........

As far as how much, it depends on how big of a colony we need to take care of the daily produced nitrates. This should vary tank to tank and if your nitrate production is triple mine daily, then your hypothesis should be correct, but I am still unsure if my doseage is too much currently.

Its a tunning thing and the sugar is only one wrench in my tool box rather than a big hammer to fix it all, and that is how I try to use it. Otherwise, there is too much of a good thing in this case and can cause you more problems than it solves.

My best advice is moderation and don't get me wrong, I am still trying to figure out what is best as well.

Let me know what your observations are......

BTW, I tried growing Chaeto........didn't have enough to keep it alive and it withered away.

Doug

 

[Lonnie]

I noticed if I reduce sugar dosage, the skimmer slows down drastically. If I only got white foam, I would figure this was just the sugar. Since I see a greenish yellow residue, I know it is still removing something else.

The only cloudiness that I can see is if I look lengthwise (7ft.) through the tank. Looking straight in it is undetectable. I will get a white film on the glass every few days.

My thought was to continue the same dose until I get my algae under control, then slowly reduce the dosage until I see the nitrates start to rise. Then hopefully I'll find the balance point.

At this point, the tank is working well & I hate to try a WC that may upset the current balance. I'm planning to wait another 2 weeks to see what happens.

 

[Qcks]

mmmm.....

Just to clarify, Sugar (or vodka/vinegar) are all the same thing: your dosing hydrated carbon.

As far as what your culturing, sugar is a better choice if your trying to promote biodiversity in your tank. Metabolically speaking, Vodka and Vinegar are simple. Glucose requires an intermediate species of bacteria to break things down. The short of it is that glucose is more condusive to setting up a bacterial chain rather then a monoculutural bloom.

Also, while carbon dosing is quite effective at eliminating nitrate, it's important to realize that it's because nitrate is the limiting agent in the process. Phosphate is not. Currently, macroalgae and water changes are the most effective way to remove phosphates that i know of (not saying there aren't better methods, just saying i haven't personally tried them.).

Also, I've heard of people having limited success with phosphate reactors, but i've also heard some horror stories regarding their use. While it is true that they can remove phosphate from the water, the process that they use to bind that phosphate is easily reversible. So... be careful.

 

[danlu_gt]

Try increase Magnesium level. Some say it can reduce hair algae growth rate.

 

[miracles38]

When you dose sugar, are you using table sugar or buying less processed sugar from a health foods store?

 

[NATIVEVAMAN]

Are there any published article or papers about sugar being added to the tank?If anyone has one I would love to read it.

 

[Lonnie]

I'm using regular table sugar.

I just reduced my dosage to see if the nitrates will remain at 0 with a lower dose.

 

[Qcks]

Are there any published article or papers about sugar being added to the tank?If anyone has one I would love to read it.

search the forums for threads containing the word vodka. One of the members details his experience with dosing vodka therein.

Beyond that, i believe that there may be additional information offsite, but dosing vodka is a practice that originated outside the US (specifically germany), and, as such, will mostly be in non-english format.

Something that should be noted, one of the risks of carbon dosing is a decrease in oxygen levels.... so if you're looking to experiment tread lightly.

@Lonnie:

in regards to the 3 questions, which i missed... (i'm a bit of a mook sometimes)

1. Like most things i would step off slowly as it becomes less necessary. Carbon dosing, though not directly harmful, isn't without risk, and i'm a wee bit paranoyed when it comes to altering my water parameters. Like i said earlier, nitrate is the limiting factor when we're talking about carbon dosing, which is why it's not very good at phosphate reduction. In other methods, such as a RDSB, nitrate levels fluctuate. I think that fluctuating levels of nitrates correlates to the different bacterial colonies within our tanks. by building up different colonies of bacteriophage, we foster the export of phosphate.
In short it may be necessary to slow the rate of nitrate exportation if your trying to use carbon dosing as a means of phosphate removal.

2. When a person doses sugar, vodka, vinegar, or any other form of hydrated carbon, what they are doing is messing with the microfauna of their tank. As such, It's very difficult to say conclusively what the effects of dosing sugar longterm will be. Microfuana are a tricky, and even experts (Aka microbiologists with Ph.D.'s) with years of experience have problems predicting their exact behaviour over long periods of time. If you experience a problem that could be negatively influenced by a bacterial constituent (bacterial infections, anoxyic conditions....), i'd advise laying off the sugar for a bit.

3. Water changes are usually good. They'll help reduce phosphates.

 

[Zedar]

Not sure if its been proven, but adding GOOD bacteria, such as the strains that digest waste, cant hurt.

Prodibio sells them.. heres what they say about their product Bio Digest


"BIO DIGEST is a hyper-concentrated bacterial compound that satisfies two functions: Installing biological filtration and digesting aquarium waste.

Packaging the ampoules under nitrogen allows for very long conservation and makes it very economic as each ampoule is 100% effective.

Use BIO DIGEST when starting up an aquarium, during nitrate surges, after filter cleaning, in poor quality water: cloudy water, unpleasant odors, spread of algae…

BIO DIGEST digests organic waste, cleans the aquarium, reduces nitrates, phosphates, fights algae and, through a probiotic effect, reduces the risk of unexplained illness.

BIO DIGEST, when used regularly, re-establishes optimal proportions of key bacterial strains and improves water quality.

The purifying action of BIO DIGEST is enhanced when used in conjunction with Bio Trace Fresh Water and Bioptim Marine."



Most people believe that Bioptim Marine is mostly sugar/carbon. So its not needed if you dose sugar/vodka.

But their may be a benefit to using the DIGEST.

The logic behind this is:

If you dose sugar you will feed both good and bad bacteria. Bad bacteria as in pathogens that may be harmful to your fish and corals.
So by adding good bacteria they will compete with the bad for space, and reduce their numbers.

Hope this helps

GL

 

[glassbox-design]

sugar is not the same as vodka/vinegar. different bac's best utilize different carbon types. by just dosing sugar you will eventually limit yourself to the one bacteria that best ustilizes sugar. this is why it's best to use a mixed carbon cource such as kz's start 2 or prodibio's product. it's also worth adding other bacs to further prevent monocultures.

jmo.

 

[Zedar]

Thanks Flint&Eric

Prodibio isn't expensive like some of the others. Have you used Prodi ?

 

[glassbox-design]

nope, i hear it's cheap for a reason. many europeans scoff at it, and as powerful as these systems are that's reason enough for me not to use it

i have tried bac, arguable the exact same blend that's in prodibio, with my own c source and nitrogen supplement, but it was not as stable as i zeo and ultralith seem to be so a stopped...

i travel a lot and dont have time to constantly be dosing, once my schedule dies down odds are i will finally give zeo a try.

 

[Qcks]

Hmmm....
My somewhat technical explanation of why i would dose sugar before vodka or vinegar:

In regard to dosing sugar, I'm assuming that we're speaking about regular white sugar. If we are, that's mostly sucrose. Sucrose is a carbohydrate diomer comprised of two glucose molecules.

This is significant, because even we, the almighty multi-cellular eukaroyote, don't metabolize glucose directly. Our cells break it down into simpler sugars (vinegar being one of the primary constituents). Dosing Vinegar and Ethanol (the primary form of hydrated carbon in Vodka) might actually hurt the overall biodiversity of the tank because it eliminates the need for bacteria that act as primary consumers of the glucose, and preferentially supports the bacteriophage that consume the secondary and tertiary metabolic bi-products of said primary consumers.


As far dosing extra bacteria, that may have a similar effect to dosing a hydrated carbon, but it suffers from the fact that your not really providing a habitat for the bacterial constituents of that culture. Once the excess nutrients in your tank are gone, they'll turn inward and predate upon themselves and the natural microfauna of your tank, which actually diminishes the tanks ability to eliminate waste.

Beyond all that, bacterial populations aren't so simple as "bad" and "good". Just because a particular species of bacteria will cause disease in fish, doesn't mean that it's not fufilling some necessary function in our aquarium. Further, Simply because a bacteriaphage has the ability to be pathogenic, doesn't mean that it necessarily is being pathogenic. Finally, pathogenic to humans and pathogenic to fish is significantly different, and few bacteria are in both catagories.

Anywho....