Vodka dosing.... the right level?

[kenith]

So I've been trying to level out my tank in regards to carbon dosing. Nitrates were 20ppm via salifert when I started, and I slowly moved up to 10 mil 2x a day. Levels of nitrate and phosphate were down to almost undetectable. Then, the bacterial bloom starts. I stopped dosing for 2 days and water clears up. I restart the dosing to 3ml day, 2 ml night and can maintain 2ppm NO3 and 0 PO4. I still get hair algae, which leads me to suspect some levels of P04 are in the system. Problem is, I get some white slime in the sump and afraid to dose more in fear of a bacterial bloom.

Should I dose more Vodka? Possibly move to vinegar/vodka?

Tank specs
225 gal display
100 gal sump
275 gal estimated volume
running skimz sk201 skimmer with gac only.

 

[Cptn Spaulding]

i personally hate vodka dosing. in actuality, i believe theres something in vodka that inhibits things in your tank as well as causes cyano outbreaks, whereas vinegar has a compound in it that corals actually USE. i once was vodka dosing a smaller system and my RBTAs bleached out, took a year for them to get their color back. i recommend switching to vinegar, and usually its about 1 ml/g at most. go into the reef chemistry forum and check out some threads on vinegar dosing. ive used vinegar before for about a year and unwanted algal growth slowed, water became even clearer, skimmer went nuts, and certain corals grew faster/were more colorful. i dosed about 40 ml a day in my 55 with tons of rock in it.

good luck! and be careful with that vodka, one wrong move and your tank could turn into mush

 

[W8lifts]

I vodka dosed when I was curing my live rock, which worked freaking amazing, but I was dosing 5ML a day. After all the die off I started getting white film. The white film was caused by me vodka dosing to much, I lowered the vodka dosing and it went away. I no longer need to dose anymore as I have really clean rocks. Hope that helps a little

 

[W8lifts]

Ohh dont dose 5 ML I had nothing living in my tank FYI

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

One of the drawbacks to carbon dosing is that the bacteria must grow somewhere, and if they choose to grow in your display or in the water column, then that is a lot less desirable than in a sump, refugium, canister filter, on GAC, zeolites, etc.

IMO, carbon dosing is also best used with other methods. I use vinegar dosing, GAC, GFO, skimming, and growing macroalgae. That way, none of the processes need to carry the whole load and one can fairly easily tweak the amount of GFO and organic to make adjustments.

 

[creefer01]

I have challenges keeping pH levels where they should be. For this reason alone, I have stayed away from vinegar because of its reduction in pH. Are there any recommendations to maintain appropriate levels when dosing vinegar? For reference, I also run GAC, GFO, Macro, and skimming in addition to carbon dosing. I have been able to maintain pH between 7.9-8 typically yet was hoping for something more like 8.1-8.2. Currently, I'm fighting a minor dino issue and as such have ceased carbon dosing temporarily yet plan to ramp up after the battle is won...hopefully.

 

[kenith]

I've been dosing for 3 months now. I've kept upping the dose until I got a bloom (10ml vodka 2x daily). Back to 5ml the water is clear and keeping the levels pretty low via testing kit. I have just swapped to vinegar on a manual drip during lighting hours (per cptn Spaulding). Staring at 40m of vinegar and seeing how it works. My ph has not changed at all with a slow drip (40 ml in 9 hrs).

Randy- I have a rather slow moving sump and the bacteria slime definitely develops there than in display. With 5ml vodka, there is very little, if any slime. Would a slower moving (700gph via Eheim 1262 in 275 total water volume) sump be more ideal than faster? I depend on my 2 mp40's for turnover.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

For this reason alone, I have stayed away from vinegar because of its reduction in pH. Are there any recommendations to maintain appropriate levels when dosing vinegar?

Overall, vinegar does not lower pH any more than vodka or any other organics. It just does it more on the front end when first dosed and less later (when all are converted into CO2).

Dosing vinegar slow works fine pH-wise, but you can also dose lime in it or at the same time (using limewater).

I don't know what sorts of flow rates these bacteria prefer to thrive in.

 

[teamdulski]

I don't know what sorts of flow rates these bacteria prefer to thrive in.

I'm not sure either but i would only assume that if there is a bloom in excess anywhere, a higher amount of flow would keep the bloom a bit lower (don't quote me on this I'm just using logic based on other saltwater algaes and outbreaks). Dino should disappear soon, it was probably due to the vodka, I used to get all sorts of weird algal blooms in my tank when i was dosing vodka, although I might have been dosing a small bit too much. If you have any softies (zoas/palys) keep an eye on them, if they start to look stressed do a w/c. Those were the first to not look so hot after i stopped vodka dosing. Besides that, maybe some pictures of how fast the blooms disappear in your tank from the switch? I think it would be cool to see how fast it works.

 

[Cptn Spaulding]

(Above post was me, my friend and I share the same laptop, oops! Good Luck!)