Vodka, vinegar,biopellets and other organic carbon dosing

Ok. So its been a few weeks now since my almost tank meltdown triggered by a HOB skimmer breaking. new one still isn't working reliably and still overflows. One thing I can say now that I stopped carbon dosing is that several corals are now coloring up. A PC Rainbow which has been brownish since I bought it in Jan is now turning green and reddish. A rainbow table which has been a dull pink is now showing other colors, etc. Most corals had good color but the ones that didn't are now looking better. So even though I was adding some extra coral food to the tank looks like it wasn't enough.
 
Hi tom
There is a switch up in my area to running pellets in a bag in the sump with an air stone. This is instead of externally in a reactor. I'm not too convinced of the advantage of this over a reactor but users state it works great. What are your thoughts?
 
Hi All, I've been struggling to get my nitrates down for some time, but I do feed a little heavy with mysis, krill, brine shrimp etc, and spot feed corals, along with amino acids. I'd like to get some nice SPS in the tank so decided to sort the nitrates.

I'm now on month 2 of vodka dosing ( 2ml a day of "Absolute" vodka in a trigon 190 with a 60 litre sump ), everything in the tank looks great ( although it always does look pretty good ), I have a small patch of hair algae, which i'm working on but it's not causing a probelm at the moment but would be nice to be rid of it before it decides to move about.

My skimmer ( Bubble Magus 5.5 - I love this skimmer ) has started pulling some nice dark ( Almost black ) skim mate, is the darker skim mate a precursor to the nitrate levels dropping?
 
Jay_R said:
Hi All, I've been struggling to get my nitrates down for some time, but I do feed a little heavy with mysis, krill, brine shrimp etc, and spot feed corals, along with amino acids. I'd like to get some nice SPS in the tank so decided to sort the nitrates.

I'm now on month 2 of vodka dosing ( 2ml a day of "Absolute" vodka in a trigon 190 with a 60 litre sump ), everything in the tank looks great ( although it always does look pretty good ), I have a small patch of hair algae, which i'm working on but it's not causing a probelm at the moment but would be nice to be rid of it before it decides to move about.

My skimmer ( Bubble Magus 5.5 - I love this skimmer ) has started pulling some nice dark ( Almost black ) skim mate, is the darker skim mate a precursor to the nitrate levels dropping?
Click to expand...

What level are your phosphates at now? The algae could be phosphate driven. You can either pull it out weekly or run some Gfo. When you harvest algae you remove phosphates from your system
 
Hi 007 - I have a Red Sea Algae control Test kit and the phos is barely visible on that.. The nitrates are through the roof though. I do have a GFO reactor in the sump so this may be helping with the Phos.. The Nitrates are my biggest concern.. Which I can only attribute to stocking levels and feeding.

My maintenance regime is pretty good, I use RO/DI and change the water volume in the the sump ( Circa 60 litres ) bi-monthly. The sand gets a good stir up, and the rock gets blasted with the baster. The sump is bare bottom also so all the crap that settles in the middle section gets sucked out, along with a change of the filter sock that's on the end of the flow pipe.

Do you think a does of NoPox help speed things up along side the Vodka? My gut feel is the bacteria balance is out of sync and needs a boost.
 
AugustWest said:
PO4 tests 0.02ppm on the Hanna ULR ( 5ppb) Nitrate undetectable on Red Sea Pro and NYOS Nitrate kits.

Only reason I've continued the GFO is the presence of hair algae. Would prefer to take it off line but not sure if I should.

GFO may be helping in your case

I've always felt that my tank is Nitrate limited as I've never tested with any Nitrate on 3 different kits. Phosphate has risen before but not to real high levels, at most 0.05 ppm and it hasn't been that high in months. It's been at or below recommended levels. Yet I still have algae...

Some types of algae get enough phosphate in low nutrient water. Some accesses inorganic phosphate. Some feeds off phosphate leaching back from the rock or substrate. Some off detritus accumulation degradation.

I've considered dosing nitrate, even mixed up a Potassium Nitrate solution but have never dosed it in fear of feeding the hair algae. I have been dosing amino acids ( Elos Omega ) 5 times a week so as not to starve my SPS Which appear healthy with good color for the most part, decent growth also.

Nitrate dosing does bump algae growht in my experience. it may or may not help PO4 uptake if the bacteria are N limitied. Ammino acids may as well . The amminos do carry in nitrogen.
Click to expand...
 
Aquarist007 said:
Hi tom
There is a switch up in my area to running pellets in a bag in the sump with an air stone. This is instead of externally in a reactor. I'm not too convinced of the advantage of this over a reactor but users state it works great. What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

Not much to say about it . Don't see an advantage per se. Seems low exposure of the pellets to nutrient water in a bag from low flow would be greater in a reactor; though the airstone might accomplish the same thing in terms of flow at least for the outer layers.
 
is the darker skim mate a precursor to the nitrate levels dropping?

I think it's bacteria and by products. They take up nitrogen along with other nutrients. They seem to prefer ammonia to nitrate .The ammonia uptake reduces nitrate production since the early ammonia uptake precludes oxidation to nitrate. It might still take a long time for baseline levels to go down.
 
Is it best to dose at night, day or does it matter? I am having some Cyano and if Cyano can live off of carbon I was thinking it might make more sense to dose at night with lights out.

Cyano is active night and day . It may/ ,may not benefit from the extra organic carbon . the idea is for the bacteria that need organic carbon to have it so they can outcompete the cyano for scarce phospahte primarily.Cyano is photosynthetic; can makes it's own organic carbon for the most part just like corals and plants do.

Daytime dosing is better since the bacterial activity uses some oxygen and adds some CO2. Photosynthesis as occurs during the day helps offset these effects , Note cyano uses CO2 for most of it's carbon needs.

Personally, I dose about 80% of the daily total in the am with another 20% about 12hours later to provide some food for the bacteria during the night.
 
Jay_R said:
Hi 007 - I have a Red Sea Algae control Test kit and the phos is barely visible on that.. The nitrates are through the roof though. I do have a GFO reactor in the sump so this may be helping with the Phos.. The Nitrates are my biggest concern.. Which I can only attribute to stocking levels and feeding.

My maintenance regime is pretty good, I use RO/DI and change the water volume in the the sump ( Circa 60 litres ) bi-monthly. The sand gets a good stir up, and the rock gets blasted with the baster. The sump is bare bottom also so all the crap that settles in the middle section gets sucked out, along with a change of the filter sock that's on the end of the flow pipe.

Do you think a does of NoPox help speed things up along side the Vodka? My gut feel is the bacteria balance is out of sync and needs a boost.
Click to expand...

NO POX is a mix of ethanol and acetic acid( vodka and vinegar) with just a tad of methanol to make it non taxble as a liquor; so you are just increasing the carbon dose if you add it.
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tmz said:
NO POX is a mix of ethanol and acetic acid( vodka and vinegar) with just a tad of methanol to make it non taxble as a liquor; so you are just increasing the carbon dose if you add it.
<iframe style="border: 2px inset; width: 540px; height: 250px;" tabindex="1" id="vB_Editor_001_iframe"></iframe>
Click to expand...

Thought as much.. I guess i'll just continue with the water changes and vodka dosing until the nitrate starts to come down.. I'm battling with Hair algae now too, so had a 3rd of my live rock out in a bucket for a scrub at the weekend. It's a war of attrition at the moment, but i'm determined to beat the nitrates without putting the livestock on a crash diet!
 
Also new to carbon dosing...

My tank is quite new...90 gallon with 40 gallon sump. It has about 120 lbs of live rock with a 2" aragonite sand substrate. I did "the package" at TB Saltwater and it has been great. 2 anemones, several gorgonians, lots of sponges, a sea urchin, 3 cucs, a clean-up crew, and a few brittle stars. I have an EM200 skimmer and an APEX Pro control system.

My ammonia and nitrite have been zero for almost 10 days (tank is 5 weeks old). I did a 25 gallon water change yesterday and my nitrates went from 50 to around 35. My phosphate is sitting around 0.7 ppm. I have been feeding it some aqua-vert, reef-energy A&B, as well as a little bit of shrimp here and there. (for the cleanup crew)

I know my tank has not reached full equilibrium and won't for 6 - 12 months. Can carbon dosing be used as a way to get my nitrates below 10? I wouldn't want to use it continuously but more as a means to get it down to see where things settle out. I can continue to do water changes but at this rate it seems like that will waste a lot of water. I have some Chaeto in my sump but this will be more for the longterm.

Ideas? If dosing can be used in this way, sugar, vinegar, vodka? How much?

Also, what happens when you stop dosing? Is there an adverse effect?

Thanks for the help.

-Jeff
 
I'd wait . At five weeks the ammonia and/or nitrite oxidizing bacteria may not be up to speed. Anerobic activity for dentrification takes a little longer as well. Dosing carbon now would likely enocourage heterotrophic bacteria which can outcompete the others.

When you stop dosing the bacteria wane an there is often an increase in nusiance aolge,IMe.
 
I'd agree with waiting. I've seen some new tanks here on RC where people start dosing carbon right away. They always have some type of problem rather quickly that seems to be bacterial in nature. Then they go on a rant about the evils of carbon dosing Ext.....
Let your system balance out naturally for several months.....
Daniel. :bigeyes:
 
Thank. I suspected that I should be patient. In the meantime, I will double check my testing kits. I use the RedSea kit and it is a pain in the butt to read the difference in colors between levels. I will get a Saifert test to validate my readings.

-Jeff
 
Update - Nitrates are now super low around 4ppm, no idea what the PO4 is at, it shows up as 0ppm but probably tied up in the algae I had.

I've now reduced my Vodka dose to 4ml per day.. I noticed my algae was starting to fade in colour so hoped it had sucked the rubbish out of the rock.. Took that as my marker to tackle the algae.

So took all my rock out, cleaned it with a nail brush, rinsed in RO, sprayed with 3% peroxide solution and now its back in the tank looking great.

Time will now tell.. but i'm using a maintenance dose of API AlgaeFix once a week just to be sure ;)

Clean tank pic..
 
Hi tom
Recently switched from dosing 10 ml vodka to 160 ml vinegar. Tank was always clean with stable parameters. Noticing some reddish brown powdery stuff on substrate which disappears at night and comes back the next day
My gut tells me it's a flow issue rather then excess carbon/ acetate but I thought I should check with you
 
? 160 ml of 5% acetic acid is twice as much organic carbon as 10ml of 80proof vodka. Did you actually double the dose? Are you dosing the vinegar slowly?
 
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