Reef Discussion
I've heard of people doing it, I dosed vodka until just giving up and adding bio pellets. I found that I couldn't trust myself to dose with perfect frequency and biopellets just sorted all that out.
What I'm thinking is to dissolve the sugar in RO water and dose it at regular intervals with the dosing pump to keep a static amount of food in the tank for the bacteria. I don't want a HUGE bloom of bacteria all at once, nothing good can come of that.
Why the change methodology?
What's worked in the past for you .... Or are you in experimental curious mode?
Try vinegar instead of sugar perhaps.
Randy Holmes Farley had a good article on Reefcentral why carbon dosing via sugar had some drawbacks. I can't remember the details (one of them is an increase in cyano from memory) but he's a big fan of dosing vinegar.
Randy Holmes Farley had a good article on Reefcentral why carbon dosing via sugar had some drawbacks. I can't remember the details (one of them is an increase in cyano from memory) but he's a big fan of dosing vinegar.
From what I've been reading the crashes have occurred due to overdosing which is why I would stay on the low side and do 1/2 dose just to be safe. I don't think dumping your nitrates all at once would be a good thing either.
I'm not paying for bio pellets if they're just a carbon source and another carbon source can be had at 1/10 the price. I see a lot of cyano here in tanks running bio pellets as well. Dosing vodka scares the hell out of me and it's not cheap either.
I'm not paying for bio pellets if they're just a carbon source and another carbon source can be had at 1/10 the price. I see a lot of cyano here in tanks running bio pellets as well. Dosing vodka scares the hell out of me and it's not cheap either.
OK, I've done some more research and got a reply back from a friend who said that I should use vinegar instead of sugar. He thinks that the carbon chain length is what causes the cyano outbreaks with sugar dosing. It takes too long to break down and it feeds the cyano since they can make their own sugars through photosynthesis and already have enzymes in place for saccharide utilization. I've also found a few people that have been dosing vinegar into an anaerobic dentrification filtre with great results. I'll start a journal entry this week for all the tanks just to see how it progresses. I'm going to use Dr. Farley's chart at 1/2 dose and slowly ramp it up to full dose and finally get the damn denitra filtre into operation since I'll have a few weeks until harvest time when I'm busier than a 1 legged man at an ass kickin' contest. Until I get that up and running I'll drip it through powdered substrate to help keep the pH up. I'll just have to watch my alkalinity like a hawk since this tends to send your alkalinity through the roof if you're not careful.
I was mainly looking for people who had some experience here with this. I did some research on RC and it gets tiring to wade through all of the useless posts there to get to the core of the information you're seeking. My main motivation for this is to save money, face it, this hobby is quite expensive. Not as expensive as my other hobbies, cars and guns, but expensive none the less. Here, biopellets for our 3 tanks would be $80/ month as opposed to $1.50/month with vinegar dosing, quite a bit cheaper to see the same end result.
I was mainly looking for people who had some experience here with this. I did some research on RC and it gets tiring to wade through all of the useless posts there to get to the core of the information you're seeking. My main motivation for this is to save money, face it, this hobby is quite expensive. Not as expensive as my other hobbies, cars and guns, but expensive none the less. Here, biopellets for our 3 tanks would be $80/ month as opposed to $1.50/month with vinegar dosing, quite a bit cheaper to see the same end result.
+1 for Vinegar and no go for sugar alone.
Sugar in a Vodka+Vinegar+Sugar (VSF) is also popular, as theoretically it helps to prevent bacteria monoculture, which can happen with a single carbon source.
I have been dosing 60ml/day of Vinegar, in a 200l tank, for the past 2 years and I couldn't be happier with the results.
Zero nitrates, cheap, rarely any green algae on the glass and fish and coral love the bacterial film when I clean it.
In addition, carbon dosing with Vinegar dates back to 2002-2003, so there is plenty of information on what works.
Sugar in a Vodka+Vinegar+Sugar (VSF) is also popular, as theoretically it helps to prevent bacteria monoculture, which can happen with a single carbon source.
I have been dosing 60ml/day of Vinegar, in a 200l tank, for the past 2 years and I couldn't be happier with the results.
Zero nitrates, cheap, rarely any green algae on the glass and fish and coral love the bacterial film when I clean it.
In addition, carbon dosing with Vinegar dates back to 2002-2003, so there is plenty of information on what works.
What I'm thinking about doing is a static amount of 15ml for a month to see what happens. Then increase 5ml per week until I get to where I want to be. My nitrates have been hovering in the low 20s for a while now and I want to take them down, but VERY slowly.
[Broken External Image]:http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/images/Table1-40Proof.jpg
Yes, straight from the bottle.
Yes and no. In the previous tank I ramped up according to the link below. Current tank I went straight to 40ml, 50ml, 60ml is less than 2 weeks.
http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index...ar-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium
Members online
No members online now.