Treating with Vitamin C

It increases the strength of the KW as it allow more calcium hydroxide to dissolve. You take the powder first, add the vinegar, mix to what looks like a paste and then top off to 1 gallon with RO/DI or Distilled water. I use 45 ml per gallon I prepare.
 
i am thinking about dosing vitamin c. since i am already running a biopellet reactor, should i stop carbon dosing while dosing vitamin c?
 
Puff,
This needed a bump! I just read the entire thread over the past month. I am puzzled on what happened to Puff and Jeff?? Does anybody know??

I am ordering some IHerb tonight and will start dosing for improved color and growth. I have a 180gal w/65gal sump/fuge. Mostly LPS and softies. I have seen zoas melt on a couple of occasions but right now mine look good but I don't see any growth and colors don't pop.
 
I tried dosing vitamin C a while ago since I had some palys that were looking weird and will say this. I never, ever had zoa pox dosing vodka. Years and years and years. Within 3 days of vitamin C I had zoa pox. No new additions, no changes to the tank, nothing. After two weeks of vitamin C, which I kept trying since I figured it helps zoanthids, I'd lost most of my nicest zoanthids. I stopped dosing vitamin C, and within a week and a half the zoa pox went away.

The thing is vodka and every other carbon source is clear with its dosage. There's no "you kinda want this many ppm and can raise it to such and such", it's dosed just for your bacteria population to keep your water clean. The more you add the more they affect the bacteria populations in your tank and that has very direct reflections on your water quality and corals. Whether your zoas are helped by 5-20ppm of vitamin C doesn't matter if they skyrocket your bacteria and strip your water quality too fast, conversely your tank may never do well with 15ppm vitamin C bacteria because the live rock won't support it and dosing that much is a recipe for disaster. Way too many variables are glossed over with vitamin C dosing imo.
 
Even reading over this thread half the questions are "how much should I dose?" That should never be asked with a carbon source imo, and if you look at vodka or other carbon dosing there are plenty of guides that are really, really detailed and specific as far as how to do so. With all the things we keep track of in our tank the "just kinda wing it" vitamin C is pretty haphazard...

Another thing is that most people dosing vitamin C have never dosed a carbon source in their tank before, so even though any carbon source will make your coral colors look better they've attributed to the vitamin C instead of boosted bacteria populations. Honestly it's always seemed like the worst carbon dosing to try, but I wanted to see if its magical/anecdotal soft coral effects had any merit and imo they don't.
 
Only problem with dosing with VC is, you may lose your snails from lack of food! My tank has never looked so clean. Five days without cleaning glass, no algae anywhere, zoos finally starting to open up, leathers looking plump, BTA never looked better and water looks like air. I am sold! Only been a week but looking forward to having a much nicer tank with less work. Thanks to whoever discovered this.
 
I just started, so about six days at 1/8th tsp 2x a day and just went to nearly a 1/4 tsp. I have a 24 gallon Aquapod. One other thing I've noticed, my system is an open top, so I will usually give my tank a good sniff to see how she's doing. It's smelled like light sewage to seaweed most of the time. Now it doesn't smell of ANYTHING. Also, my skimmer is very foamy and my Ph seems to have gone down just a hair. All my zoas that were closed (just a cluster of 10 since I always kill them) are now open! Yea for VC! :dance::dance::dance:

sreefs said:
wowser how much VC are you dosing?
What size is your system?
Click to expand...
 
I started the Vit C up again. I always had good results and it produced lots of skimate for my skimmer. I only do about half a teaspoon in my 90 gallon every night. There were times when I would forget to dose which probably leads to a dosage of 5 times a week. I never did the 2x a day.
 
I have been using Vit C for about a month now and am EXTREMELY pleased with the growth. For example i have had some rastas for 6-7 months started with 4 polyps and only grew 1. After dosing Vit C i have doubled in size i have around 8-10 polyps
 
I guess I spoke too soon. After about a week my tank is cloudy. I cut back on the VC but it's still cloudy. Not terrible, but not crystal clear like before. Plus my skimmer is pulling a tea colored slime and very frothy. Any advice? I want clear water again!
 
Pufferpunk said:
Each type of carbon dosing encourages different bacteria to multiply. I feel that VC works better than other carbon dosing for several reasons:
-you cannot overdose. As long as you ramp up the dosage slowly & use a skimmer to remove the excess waste, you can dose as high as 100ppm without harm to your inhabitants.
-Unlike other carbon dosing products, VC has been thought to help boost collagen in cells. This means, healthier corals & fish, better growth & color.

I find it extremely easy to dump in a tsp every morning & evening into my sump.

The VC I use (sodium ascorbate) has a pH of 7.1. That's pretty close to neutral.
Click to expand...

I see several asks about dosing VC via a doser but no replies that I could find. Would someone mind confirming?
 
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