Vodka, vinegar,biopellets and other organic carbon dosing

007Bond · Oct 11, 2014

Oh,...big difference 0.5 vs. 5.0 I assume same on your nitrates. Not to bad

Aquarist007 · Oct 11, 2014

Carbon dosing will work but slowly to bring down that nitrate level. You can certainly help the process by doing a couple of 50% water changes and limiting the input of nitrates( feed less)
Don't run any Gfo or the phosphates will limit the carbon dosing

usingthejohn · Oct 11, 2014

007Bond said:
Oh,...big difference 0.5 vs. 5.0 I assume same on your nitrates. Not to bad

Nitrates are either 40 or 60 via api. I've got to confirm via red sea.

I have vodka and vinegar but will double check before I begin dosing.

tmz · Oct 13, 2014

tmz · Oct 13, 2014

usingthejohn said:
I've been reading various links and throughout this thread over the past week and feel I have gained enough "basic" understanding of carbon dosing to attempt this.

I will be initiating vodka dosing tomorrow.

Via Hanna my phosphates are 5.
Api my nitrates are 60.

Total volume is roughly 140gal or so which equates to a dose of 0.6ml vodka as the initial dosage. (0.1ml/25gal x 6/150gal volume). Tank is 60x30x18 with a sump of 48 x 22 x 18 and an 8" waterline. Between DT and sump there is close to 175lbs lr.
Skimmer is a aquamaxx coneS Co3

Return jebao dc 6000 at 3/4 strength. Returns are positioned to promote aggressive surface agitation.

In tank circulation provided by mp40s and 1 mp60 about 2" from waterline.

I haven't found this info, so to clarify should I remove gfo till nitrates are where I want them?

Also is dosing bacteria recommended? Finally what signs of stress should one be aware of (bleaching, poor colors etc) and will corals show stress before fish?

A few comments:

PO4 at 0.5ppm with nitrate at 60 or so ppm are high enough to present problems for corals. It may take a long time for organic carbon to reduce them. I prefer to reduce high levels like that via water changes, denitrators .gfo or other reduction methods before beginning to dose organic C . It's easier and safer to find a maintenance dose to match your inputs via feeding when strating with reasonably low PO4 and NO3 without overdosing.

For 140 galllons water volume I would cap vodka dosing at around 0.06 ppm per gallon ,preferably less and take about a month to amp up to that level.Then wait a few months before tweaking . If signs of signs of trouble with stringy bacteria where you don't want them , bacterial blooms or poor coral reactions occur along the way ;cut back the dose.

At .5 ppm PO4 I'd continue to run GFO for a while .

Pre rinsing food won't make much difference in terms of PO4 levels in the aqaurium. If you do iinse or thaw in chlorinated tap water and then ro water it will help control bacteria on the food,however.

Exhausted di resin is a big deal. TDS post di should always be 0. Post di tds is much worse than post ro tds. Stuff possibly heavy metals and certainly like ammonia binds loosely to the resin and accumulates there. When the resin is exhausted, as indidcatged by more than 0 tds post di the more loosely bond molecules are bumped out of their binding site.

Aquarist007 · Oct 21, 2014

Tom since I took the pellets off and am just dosing vinegar nitrates have remained just traceable but phosphates have risen to .04.
Should I run the Gfo for a few days.
Corals look great.

tmz · Oct 21, 2014

It's up to you. .04ppm per hanah 713 as I measure it doesn't concern me. Does it increase nuisiance algae in your tank? If not significantly then I think it's ok .

Aquarist007 · Oct 21, 2014

tmz said:
It's up to you. .04ppm per hanah 713 as I measure it doesn't concern me. Does it increase nuisiance algae in your tank? If not significantly then I think it's ok .

Thanks...no algae in the tank...but great growth in refugium( which I have been able to start harvesting again)
I have a nice monti in the tank... Was really concerned about phosphate level for it and other SPs corals I am planning to add.

ultimatemj · Oct 21, 2014

+/-.04 is the measurement tolerance of the Hanna 713.
You can take multiple measurements to try and get a better confidence, but IMO your measurements are low enough that 'bio indicators' will tell you more at his point.

DavidinGA · Oct 27, 2014

New to carbon dosing and have a question...

I have heard some people say that there is a correlation between dosing and improved sps color that is not simply because of decreased NO3/PO4 levels; true?

If so, how or what is happening to improve colors beyond simply maintaining lower NO3/PO4 levels?

I am musing the idea of trying carbon dosing myself and my levels are zero NO3 and 0.06 PO4. So I'm not looking to use carbon to lower those levels primarily but if I can improve sps color I'm game...

Also, does everyone daily dose carbon?

I came across this post:

"the goal for me was to keep Vodka's influence heavy but allow for a few days in between to allow the tank to build up nutrients again before dosing the Vodka and increasing the bacteria to remove them, i've noticed the best results when dosing only 2-3 times per week, the dosage is 1 drop per 30 gallons, thus not to overdose but to dose enough to have an effect without saturation"

Any merit to that guys idea?

Thanks

(and sorry :deadhorse: )

tmz · Oct 28, 2014

Don't know if adding organic carbon improves coloration or not beyond I have nice color with it. Corals even highly autotrophic corals like many sps do need some organic C to supplement what they produce via photosynthesis. Acetate may be helpful in this regard. The bacteria may also enrich the food web.

All the folks I know dose daily , the bacteria wax and wane quickly IME. So ,no I personally,would not start and stop as a practice; doing so would create instability in pH, bacteria populations, nutrient levels including ammonia etc.
I'd guess one drop is a small fraction of a ml and is neglible compared to usual dosing levels. So it wouldn't matter much if or when such a small amount was dosed anyway. Where is this notion posted? By whom? Some details would be helpful.

DavidinGA · Oct 28, 2014

tmz said:
Don't know if adding organic carbon improves coloration or not beyond I have nice color with it. Corals even highly autotrophic corals like many sps do need some organic C to supplement what they produce via photosynthesis. Acetate may be helpful in this regard. The bacteria may also enrich the food web.

All the folks I know dose daily , the bacteria wax and wane quickly IME. So ,no I personally,would not start and stop as a practice; doing so would create instability in pH, bacteria populations, nutrient levels including ammonia etc.
I'd guess one drop is a small fraction of a ml and is neglible compared to usual dosing levels. So it wouldn't matter much if or when such a small amount was dosed anyway. Where is this notion posted? By whom? Some details would be helpful.

It was in this thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1920910

Post number 19

I guess that was just one guys random opinion on dosing...?

trueblackpercula · Oct 28, 2014

all i can say is carbon dosing is an art

tmz · Oct 28, 2014

Thanks for the link.
That thread is 4 years old and holds little detail like nutrient levels etc. It has a good deal of opinion presented as fact and little detail in the observations ;only a few were trying it and I've not heard of it since.. Starting and stopping may have variable effects at start up along with dosing bacteria but all in all both are ill advised IMO.

If you decide to try it that way . Let us know how it turns out .

Aquarist007 · Dec 8, 2014

I'm having trouble with this explanation of the role of a pellet reactor
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=23278963&postcount=25

NovaSS · Dec 9, 2014

ive been vodka dosing since around july. My nitrates have been around 50ppm. Im at around 33ml a day, on 300 gallon total water volume. I was using seachem and api test kit and today I got salifert nitrate test kit. Its kinda hard to read 40-50ppm or 50-100. I only have a 55 brute to mix water so thats the most i can do in 24hrs so about a month ago I done 200 water change over 4 days and the nitrates fell to about 20-30 on the seachem test kit. Its back up again.

I have also been trying to figure out the best spot to set the skimmer. If i crank it up I have to clean the cup every 2-3 days and it will have brown skimmate. If I turn it down just a little it will produce dark black skimmate, but takes about week or longer to fill up.

I have to clean the powerheads about once every two weeks. As they will be covered in white slim. I clean the glass once or twice a week as it gets cloudy. I notice when it gets cloudy it gets covered in pods.

stock list is: 1 grown cortez ray, 1 volitan lionfish 9inch, 1 foxface 5inch, 1 harlequin tusk 4-5 inch, 1 squirrel fish 3" and 1 8" coral catshark. I feed flakes once a day and 2 table shrimp a day. sometimes i change the shrimp out for squid or cut fish.

rock I have 110lbs of dry rock that is two years old and I was told it doubles in weight so around 200lbs of rock. I have a 40-50 gallon sump with 4 liters of pond matrix i added about a month ago. Connected to that is a 20 gallon refugium full of chaeto. Also change filter socks 2-3 days

I ad a small cyano out break when I first started dosing but it faded away.

Should I just stay where im at and keep dosing the 33ml a day or keep upping it? Any other advise will be great.

tmz · Dec 9, 2014

33ml of 80 proof vodka is a relatively high dose .
Personally, I would not increase it : I'd lower it.

While tanks are different and you have some large fish compared to my reef tank system; most folks find a dose in the 0.04 to 0.08ml per day range suitable. I use roughly 44ml vodka equivalents for 650 gallons and have been doing about that much for over 5.5 years, for example . More generates the unwanted slime.;less let's PO4 go up beyond 0.05 ppm in my aqauriums.

With the types of fish you are keeping a sulfur denitrator might be more effective down the road if you want to keep nitrates low,which is a less critical concern without corals .

It may take longer than 6 months to settle in for the nitrate reduction you want. If you are already seeing slime , I'd cut back some on the dosing say 20 to 30%

What is the PO4 btw? Is the chaeto growing well? How often do you harvest it?

NovaSS · Dec 9, 2014

tmz said:
33ml of 80 proof vodka is a relatively high dose .
Personally, I would not increase it : I'd lower it.

While tanks are different and you have some large fish compared to my reef tank system; most folks find a dose in the 0.04 to 0.08ml per day range suitable. I use roughly 44ml vodka equivalents for 650 gallons and have been doing about that much for over 5.5 years, for example . More generates the unwanted slime.;less let's PO4 go up beyond 0.05 ppm in my aqauriums.

With the types of fish you are keeping a sulfur denitrator might be more effective down the road if you want to keep nitrates low,which is a less critical concern without corals .

It may take longer than 6 months to settle in for the nitrate reduction you want. If you are already seeing slime , I'd cut back some on the dosing say 20 to 30%

What is the PO4 btw? Is the chaeto growing well? How often do you harvest it?

po4 is around 0.05-0.1, before i started vodka dosing it was at 5.0 The chaeto is growing ok I would say. I have never trimmed it since i added it. there is hair algae in the refugium. but it doesnt bother me as I just scrape it out once in awhile.

I do have coral 1 hand sized cabbage leather, 1 hand sized finger leather and brown polyps. They all seem to be doing fine and growing.

I done a 50 gallon water change today and I tested just a few mins ago before feeding and it only dropped a little. I wish i would have found a easier test kit for high nitrate readings.

I will cut the dose back down to about 28-30ml a day for a month and see what happens. Can i vodka dose and use a sulfur denitrator?

Im thinking about upgrading skimmer to like a sro6000 or something rated for double my tank size. But i also dont want to spend that kind of money if its not needed.

tmz · Dec 10, 2014

The ethanol might get into the sulfur or argonite media in the sufur reactor/denitrator, spurring bacterial activity depleting the O2 and NO3 which can result in anoxia( no free oxygen and no nitrate/NO3) in the slow flow of a reactor with consequent bacterial activity via sulfate reduction which produces toxic hydrogen sulfide gas as a by product.That activity would likely limit the sulfur bacteria which need oxygen from the water or the NO3. I am not aware of anyone using organic carbon dosing and sufur media concurrently on an ongiong basis.

The corals you have are usually more tolerant of high NO3 than many others are.

NovaSS · Dec 11, 2014

i would just hate to quite dosing it took a long time to get the dosing where its at and it has helped with the po4. I also notice the sulfur reactors are pricy and the homemade ones people have leaking problems. Also cant find any info on what size to build for a 300gallon.

If i was to go over to the denitrator. how slow should I drop the dose till its back down to zero dosing.

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