vinegar dosing

Vinigar is used a lot with kalk, and i am always reading about carbon dosing trying to maintain alk at or around 7 or acropa's end up with burnt tips. Is this the case when dosing V as i have a high alk around 10-11 which has prevented me from trying this. I want to add the V to my kalk mix in an ato. I would start off very small, and see what happens, but it might help me disolve the kalk better, which is always a pain. I am using the sechem kalk product, but have considered switching to the lime at the store.
 
Bulk Reef Supply carries a good bulk kalkwasser product.
Many run alk higher than 7 or 8dkh when carbon dosing with no burnt tips.Mine does well ay 9.6dkh with undetectable nitrate and PO4 at ,.04ppm. IME avoiding swings in alk particularly to the downside of 7 is critical.
Using the vinegar in the kalkwasser mix will enable the water to hold more calcium hydroxide, ie, dissolve more kalk, up to 36% more. So , if you have undissolved kalk in your dosing vessel you may end up dosing a stronger alkalinity/calcium supplement than before the vinegar.
 
A drawback (IMO) of dosing vinegar in limewater via ATO is that you may be adding it at night, and that may help drive down O2 when you least want to, so be sure you have good aeration if you go this route. :)
 
i have a light bio load and only have 4 small fish, one clown, one carpenter wrasse and one green chromis, and a lawnmower blenny. I have never measured the o2 level in the tank but when using the chart for alk to ph i am at 1.4 times atmosphere co2, which i have found to be normal in most tanks, unless its right next to an open window. On the other side, i hear a lot of horror stories about the burn tips, so i did not know if it applied to V especialy since people have been using it in kalk forever.
 
FWIW, tank CO2 levels say little or nothing about the O2 levels. It may not be an issue, but studies on reef tanks often show less than saturation with O2 at night. :)
 
ok so im back........ :) or :(
i took the tank down to clean it out and put up a foam rock wall. i love it!! but the silicone used to secure the wall in place and the rocks among a few other things have got me back into looking at vinegar dosing. this time tho i have a much larger GEO skimmer(off a 500 gallon system) and im running cheato in my sump and wanna put a pad of sorts in my filter socks to reduce the PO4.
any input?
corey
 
also i lost that link from genetics that had the chart for dosage amounts on it, anyone got it laying around?
corey
 
biecacka,

As you requested, I have attached the unpublished dosing scheme based on the RK article for vinegar.
 

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these questions are for all, but I think TMZ would be able to answer them since he had a sulfur reactor before, and now carbon doses -

I'll explain my reasons for doing this change below, but going from a relatively low No3 and Po4 environment, and if I start dosing 70% vodka, 30% vinegar, would this be an exceptable way forward?

First, my alk is at 9.3, all reading say to drop it to 7-8. I normally dose Rand's two part, and occasionally dose kalk too/ So my plan is to drop it over the next few weeks. Everything else is within normal range for my 72 gal tank, and 40 gal sump. I'm using 75gal total water volume for easy calculations.

That would be a starting vodka of .3 ml for the first few days....
Since I want to do both V's I was thinking this .2ml vodka, and .1ml equivalent of vinegar - so that's .8ml

The wrinkle besides my Sulfur reactor being off line, is I had a sump leak and had to replace it. It was a 30gal, and had a fuge section with a DSB. The new fuge doesn't have that. I've been really watching everything to prevent a spike - or mini cycle since a change was made. I'm really nervous about this, so I'll likely half the above and do that for a whole week, then increment .5 ever week (calculating the split again)

My goal is to replace my Sulfur reactor, in addressing No3 -- Po4 in check is good too - would love to see things color up a bit too as an aside. Today, I have very little cryo in the tank, in the sump, and everything is looking as good as it has in years. I am moving to more and more SPS, but have a mixed reef today.

To keep No3 low, I have/had a sulfur reactor, and it's been offline now for about 2 weeks since I can't seem to repair it. keeps leaking once I bring the input flow way down, then bring the out put to 1 drop per second. Anyhow, I tested today and my No3 is at about 10ppm (Salifert). I run GFO, and tested .03 today.

I know this is a vinegar thread, and most only dose it - but for some reason, the logic of multiple carbon sources makes sense to me. Is that flawed?
 
Would dilssolving oolite in vinegar yeild any good results in calcium and alk? Then would the vinegar still be useful for the bacteria?
When vinegar dosing is GFO still used because the bacteria uptake ratio is skewed toward using more nitrate?
 
First, my alk is at 9.3, all reading say to drop it to 7-8. I normally dose Rand's two part, and occasionally dose kalk too/ So my plan is to drop it over the next few weeks. Everything else is within normal range for my 72 gal tank, and 40 gal sump. I'm using 75gal total water volume for easy calculations.

I run my alk at 9.6 consistently and have for years, no issue whatsoever with carbon dosing.

That would be a starting vodka of .3 ml for the first few days....
Since I want to do both V's I was thinking this .2ml vodka, and .1ml equivalent of vinegar - so that's .8ml

That sounds like an ok starting point. Optimal dosing amounts will vary from aquarium to aquaium depending on a number of variables. FWIW, I dose 26ml vodka and 64 ml vinegar daily for the 600 gallon system.

I know this is a vinegar thread, and most only dose it - but for some reason, the logic of multiple carbon sources makes sense to me. Is that flawed?

Maybe. There is no evidence to support a notion that variety in carbon sources is beneficial or that diversity in bacterial strains is either. It may be the opposite.

There is a cascade of bacterial activity with various strains and by products involved in the breakdown of organic carbons . In oversimplified terms carbohydrates(polymers) are changed to monomers(sugars) which go to ethanol( vodka) and a few other things ,moving on to acetate( acetic acid/vinegar).
Since sugar( particularly glucose) can be a coral killer .I started with ethanol( vodka) switching off to acetic acid for 25% of the dose to help abate some cyano as it seems the bacteria using the vinegar do a good job out competing the cyano. The 75%/ 25% mix has worked well for me for almost 3 years.

While vinegar contributes acetate which is directly useful to corals it has a dramatic short term effect dropping ph so it's better to dose it over a period of time during periods of photosynthesis. It may be the better choice overall but has some limits.

Ethanol will also reduce ph but does so over a longer period of time. With vodka I can dose it all at once( 18ml am, 8ml pm) without fretting a precipitous ph drop. I prefer to bolus dose as it suits my routine and affords , theoretically at least, an opportunity for a burst of heterotrophic bacterial activity which should encourage more anaerobic respiration activity in bacterial mulm and thus more NO3 reduction beyond just the N consumption as food by the bacteria .

When vinegar dosing is GFO still used because the bacteria uptake ratio is skewed toward using more nitrate?


I continue to use gfo but much less than before dosing since the bacteria take it up too but with the anaerobic digestion factored in they should take more nitrate proportionatley than is coming in in foods relative to PO4. How much PO4 is stashed and leaching from substrate or rocks may also play a role in this balance. There are porbably other variables in play too, like ph. But if PO4 is higher than you like when dosing and you've met your goals on nitrate then gfo is useful.




Optimal amounts of organic carbon for
 
Awsome, thanks Tom. I'll read more into vinegar only dosing.

Fate is pushing me in this dirrection. My Sulfur reator was curing in the garage. My wife knocked over a bike while moving another, and that knocked the reactor off the bench where it fell on the floor and poped off the base - that's not where it was leaking....
 
Tom,

What test kit are you using in getting such low results with nitrate testing? I see in your previous posts you are getting results in the tenths of a point range.
 
With the large amount of knowledgeable posters in this thread I'd also like to ask what would be the most accurate nitrate test. I know that the Hanna phosphurus is best for PO4. I'm using Salifert for nitrate. The shades of pink leave me with doubt every time. The Pinpoint probe has had issues raised about reliability but I'm still considering it. Thanks.
 
For folks at their maintenance levels - does this change how you would bring new coral or fish into the tank when the day comes? Any kind of shock observed or different acclimation process?
 
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