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View Full Version : carbon source in reef tank, sugar?


ouling
08/19/2007, 10:41 PM
I have a BB tank with 2 pretty large skimmers. This is not a hybrid where an fuge is outsourced somewhere else with sandbed. I have No Sand, almost No Live Rocks, but Alot of corals. Therefore, I don't think my corals are getting the food they need; despite me feeding them twice a week. I also have a decent sized bioload where fish likes to poop alot. This doesn't seem like it's doing the job, and a few corals are begining to fade.

The SeaChem Calcium, the yellowish thick looking juice, is calcium gluconate, it is a carbon source but not the same composition as sugar. But whats the effect of dosing sugar directly into the system?

We all know corals need a nitrogen source, protein/amino acids, and some kind of carbon in their diet. Seafood that I feed are extremely poor in glucose and sucrose content-I can say there is almost non. So would it be a good idea to dose sugar directly into the tank and hope it gets absorbed by the corals through cell uptake? Is it just wishful thinking? I know there will be far more bacteria due to the sugar, which also kind of help feed the corals a bit when some of them die off.

Please share your knowledge with this noob.

Boomer
08/20/2007, 10:30 AM
Quite a few add sugar, not to mention other organic bond compounds i.e., Vodka, Vinegar, GRH, AA and a host of others.

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