LPSpsCloWn
New member
Hi all
I wanted some advice on vodka dosing and what my options are currently.
I have a 260l tank ( this includes my sump, display is 200L appx) and have been vodka dosing for a while. Unfortunately because of a long term illness my tank was somewhat neglected and my nitrates and phosphates were on crazy level for a over a year. My nitrates were over 100 on the salifert test kits.
I started vodka dosing about 4 months ago on a very conservative dosing regime, basically I was incrementing it at 0.1ml per week and sometimes even every two weeks. I would keep the dosage at 1ml for about 1 months to give the chance to reduce the nitrates but after 4 months nothing. So i ended up doing large water change and reduced the nitrates to about 50ppm on the salifert test kits. Now my vodka dosages are on 2.4ml and my nitrates dong move unless I do water changes which I have not done for about 4 weeks. I have not been running phosphate remover during the whole time I have been vodka dosing based on reading articles on the internet and forums.
Now my problem is how much can I really keep on increasing vodka? I have noticed one of my 4 fish being little bit slower/lethargic than normal but everything else is fine. I do have some cyano but not much and actually less than when i started off with. Because of my conservative 0.1ml increases I i have not experienced a bacterial bloom and my skimmer is not taking up much skimmate from the tank, its practically empty. I have cleaned the skimmer once every 2 months and I think its working well.
Where do i go from here, keep increasing dosages and where do i stop? what is my maximum dosage for such a small water volume?should I supplement with vinegar or sugar? I was actually thinking of moving over to Bioballs but would prefer to dose liquids because of space contrition in the sump. I even tried a deep sand bed in the sump but this did not work because of the incorrect flow when I first designed the sump.
I also have about 5L of sera siporax in the sump but don't think these are working because of the strange flow in the sump when I designed it incorrectly. Originally added the seporax because I wanted more bacterial surface as I only have about 25kg of rock in the display and about 1incch deep sand bed.
I don't want to kill the fish with overdosing vodka but at the same time I have lots of corals in QT that are ready for transferring over to display but I cant get the nitrates down. I have had this tank for about 6 years now. I will next year move over to much larger tank but would like to complete this before embarking on another project.
any advice would be appreciated,
thanks you.
I wanted some advice on vodka dosing and what my options are currently.
I have a 260l tank ( this includes my sump, display is 200L appx) and have been vodka dosing for a while. Unfortunately because of a long term illness my tank was somewhat neglected and my nitrates and phosphates were on crazy level for a over a year. My nitrates were over 100 on the salifert test kits.
I started vodka dosing about 4 months ago on a very conservative dosing regime, basically I was incrementing it at 0.1ml per week and sometimes even every two weeks. I would keep the dosage at 1ml for about 1 months to give the chance to reduce the nitrates but after 4 months nothing. So i ended up doing large water change and reduced the nitrates to about 50ppm on the salifert test kits. Now my vodka dosages are on 2.4ml and my nitrates dong move unless I do water changes which I have not done for about 4 weeks. I have not been running phosphate remover during the whole time I have been vodka dosing based on reading articles on the internet and forums.
Now my problem is how much can I really keep on increasing vodka? I have noticed one of my 4 fish being little bit slower/lethargic than normal but everything else is fine. I do have some cyano but not much and actually less than when i started off with. Because of my conservative 0.1ml increases I i have not experienced a bacterial bloom and my skimmer is not taking up much skimmate from the tank, its practically empty. I have cleaned the skimmer once every 2 months and I think its working well.
Where do i go from here, keep increasing dosages and where do i stop? what is my maximum dosage for such a small water volume?should I supplement with vinegar or sugar? I was actually thinking of moving over to Bioballs but would prefer to dose liquids because of space contrition in the sump. I even tried a deep sand bed in the sump but this did not work because of the incorrect flow when I first designed the sump.
I also have about 5L of sera siporax in the sump but don't think these are working because of the strange flow in the sump when I designed it incorrectly. Originally added the seporax because I wanted more bacterial surface as I only have about 25kg of rock in the display and about 1incch deep sand bed.
I don't want to kill the fish with overdosing vodka but at the same time I have lots of corals in QT that are ready for transferring over to display but I cant get the nitrates down. I have had this tank for about 6 years now. I will next year move over to much larger tank but would like to complete this before embarking on another project.
any advice would be appreciated,
thanks you.
