so how do i go about getting a carbon dosing system? what is that for and im confused as hell, i already run carbon in a reactor to pull impurities out of the water, now ur saying i need another carbon?
im very new to this so please excuse my stupidity.. coral color is great even before i started dosing the coral supplements, but the growth is very stagnant, yes i want a sps tank that has explosive growth, color, and health. So all ur saying i need to add is zeo start3? is this another food for the coral?
oh no no, dont feel stupid
and your questions are great way of understanding the bacterioplankton system.
so lets get some words correct first, you are running GAC in a reactor, Activated CArbon, which removes organics from water.
CArbon dosing, is refered to dosing of Vodka, Vinegar, or Sugar, solid pellets, or many other forms which after addition to water would break down, and its CARBON source can be used by bacteria to grow, the bacteria that grow, consume no3 as food, and use po4 to build their cell structure and so on ! this way, we have bacteria lowering and taking care of systems N and Ps ! we just promote their growth by adding the missign piece, a carbon source.
carbon source of Zeovit system is Start3. Carbon source of pellets for example, is the solid pellets which break down in water over time !
Zeolith, is the media on which bacteria are allowed tyo grow, same way they grow and colonize rocks and sand and glass and so on.
so that is how Zeovit system lowers system nutrition to make your cheato stop growing ! you put Zeoliths in a filter, add start3 [carbon source] to feed bacteria, and bacteria eat N and P in water, and then they get removed by being eaten by corals, or by being skimmed out !
this method, has ability to clean your tank to ULNS levels, but before that, yuou need to lower your alk to 7.0 . higher would give you problems with lower nutritions.
now, since there aer no more N or P left in water, your SPS will starve ! their only food becomes the bacteria, they fade in color a bit too. other additives like Xtra are ment to FEED these bacteria, so they contain better nutritions in them, so when corals eat them they can use those nutritions to color up as we want.
think of Zeovit as stripping water of all dirty stuff, and adding what we need as much as we need later on.
BAK . since you are promoting growth of bacteria, it is possible for one group to become dominant, and take over other groups of bacteria, which wont be good fro your system, thats why we dose BAK from zeovit to provide variety of bacteria...
that's it for lowering nutritions. now lets look at additives you dose :
Coral Snow (dosing 5ml every other day)
dose this once a week. it is magnesium and calcium carbonate basically, size of 2 micro. it would bond with bacteria, or organics, and make skimmer able to remove them, or make corals able to consume them. overdose can make corals look white.
Pohl's Xtra (5ml daily)
Explained above, in case coral color is pale add this, my fav additive, gives 3d effect to color of coralan dsome flourecence.
Pohl's B-Balance (5ml daily)
STrontinum plus other stuff, brightens color of corals and makes reds better.
Amino Acid concentrate (5 drops daily)
its used for systems with REALLY LOW nutrition,stop dosing this, and if needed after try AA [not concentrate] concentrate is used for low nutritions system, with LPS, not showing any polyp in which case the nutritions have gone too low and you need this for. its short chained AA.
Pohl's coral vitalizer (5 drops daily)
coral food, increases growth,. but onlyu if po4 is already low.
Sponge Power (5 drops daily)
food for sponges, which in turn filter water, and polish it !sponges can eat extra carbon in water, or extra bacteria
so as you see,, its a whole system, you first need to dose start3, and bak and Sponge power, to lower nutritions [you can do without Zeoliths],
after your cheato stops growing, remove the cheato an light from fuge.
then according to color of SPS, you can start different additives, to increase growth of coloration as you want it.
another good additive is biomate, which eats detritus and mulm from rocks and sand, and would lower po4, but I would only add this to line up, after yu have lowered the N and P with start3 and bak.
HTH, any questions, let me know
A MUST read :
http://www.coralmagazine-us.com/content/probiotics-demystified
for your system, Id advice .5 ml two times a day of start3.
bak, 5 drops, 3 times a week.
SP, 5 drops, with bak.
for a couple of weeks till nutritons lower, and cheato stops growing, then add other stuff to make things what u want them to be.
