View Full Version : does anyone dose with sugar ?
SpilledSalt
04/13/2011, 09:40 PM
I am considering carbon dosing using sugar, but there is not much info out there. I need details, can anyone help me out?
bertoni
04/13/2011, 09:47 PM
Some people have tried it. A number of people reported coral problems with it, more than the report rate for vinegar and vodka. All forms of carbon dosing seem to have some risk, though.
Randy Holmes-Farley
04/14/2011, 06:12 AM
Why did you select sugar over ethanol (vodka) or acetate (vinegar)?
m2434
04/14/2011, 06:44 AM
I found corals to be sensitive to sugar. When i tried with sugar, I found most of my corals and even clam started expelling their zoox within a week. I've been using Vodka for a while now without issue. I just started adding vinegar to the mix and it seems good so far but it's only been about 2 weeks.
SpilledSalt
04/14/2011, 07:48 AM
Why did you select sugar over ethanol (vodka) or acetate (vinegar)?
From what I have found in my research so far, dosing with sugar has the least harmful effects when used in proper portions, wich seems to be 1/10 tsp. Per 25 gallons. This morning I dosed with 1/16 tsp. For 40 actual gallons water(55 gallon tank). IF ANYONE HAS INFO ON THIS LET ME KNOW, DON'T WANT TO CRASH MY TANK!
Randy Holmes-Farley
04/14/2011, 08:02 AM
Well, I'm not sure where you read what, but I wouldn't agree that sugar has less harmful effects. It may be fine, but I've never seen any evidence that it is a better choice than vinegar or vodka. :)
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 08:10 AM
I have dosed sugar to control nitrate in my tank in the past. It did work to reduce nitrate, but the amount you use is very touchy and can be easily overdosed. I switched back to vinegar and see better coral growth results IMHO using vinegar. Vinegar also has a much more tolerant dosing level, where I was able to dose vinegar at quite high levels without any noticable problems in coral. ;)
Some tests have shown that coral are very sensitive to the simple sugars especally glucose which I tried with very quick noticable negative results.
i've just been introduced to the concept of carbon dosing and am currently in the process of considering all the options
(including lanthanum chloride as an alternative to carbon dosing) in order to regulate a po4 problem i'm currently managing (all be it not all that well) with water changes
my personal reservation regarding the dosing of alcohol would be the potential for oxadative stress, as alcohol metabolism is known to produce ROS in organisms which are not conditioned to metabolise it, and i don't think there's much potential for any of the animals to adapt to routine ingestion in just a few months (or even generations)
i understand the quantities going into large bodies of water we're talking about here are pretty small, but depending on your fluid dynamics, i wondering if small concentrations of alcohol (which relative to the size of some of the tank inhabitants wouldn't need to be big at all) could cause the inhabitants of your tank harm, perhaps not immediately, but eventually (like turning picasso clowns back into occellaris clowns......or otters :wildone:)
i like the idea of lantanum chloride a lot, and noted randy advised elsewhere that using a GFO was also a good way to go about po4 busting when you already had no3 in check (i have a dsb). but am not too sure about the lanthanum phosphate sediment aspect. however, also noted another member addressed this by adding the lanthanum chloride to the skimmer chamber. i wonder would this allow the chemical to take effect before it was removed by the skimmer, or will only lanthanum phosphate adhere to the bubble column?
in general i'm not really keen on adding checmicals which don't already occur in the natural environment to the tank, so i might also be looking at using chaetomorpha algae in the sumb but am niot sure if this is going to be a sufficient long term solution
all things told i enjoy discussing this stuff anyway, so am keen to hear what you guys think :)
kiel
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 08:50 AM
Kiel,
http://www.reefcentral.com/images/welcome.gif
To Reef Central
I'm not sure how effective a skimmer is in removing all the lanthanum phosphate crystals formed. It is best to use lanthanum chloride in a side loop with a small pore size filter. Diatom filters seem better for this purpose IMHO. ;)
Lanthanum chloride or lanthanum carboxylate for orthophosphate
removal in seawater aquarium - a feasibility study
YING ZHANG; KAR SONG WONG
http://aalso.org/2009presentations/Z...movalPaper.pdf
Can you define this: ROS
"alcohol metabolism is known to produce ROS in organisms which are not conditioned to metabolise it"
thanks Cliff :)
reactive oxygen species
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 09:10 AM
You're welcome. ;)
Perhaps you can detail what you are referring to in regards to alcohol effects on coral and how reactive oxygen species effects either the symbionts or coral tissue itself? :)
Randy Holmes-Farley
04/14/2011, 09:22 AM
I don't see why one would worry appreciably about that. Fish foods contain all sorts of organics in them whose metabolism can lead to ROS, but if that concerns you, you might just use acetate (vinegar) instead.
kzooreefer
04/14/2011, 09:26 AM
I am considering carbon dosing using sugar, but there is not much info out there. I need details, can anyone help me out?
I suppose you didn't do a search of this site as there was a very large thread about it quite some time ago, 2006-2007. I dosed it when I first got into the hobby in 2006 and we had quite a lively discussion about it here and on 2 other reef forums I was a member of at the time. It has been the only carbon source I've dosed that actually created a bacterial bloom that turned the tank cloudy. Neither vodka nor the current NP biopellets I use ever did this. I myself prefer the biopellets as I don't have to dose anything manually.
Here is the sugar thread the first post gives dosing instructions
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=898931
sanchoy
04/14/2011, 09:29 AM
what is the recommended dosage for vinegar highlander?
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 09:34 AM
15 ml clear distilled vinegar per 100 gallons seems to be a safe starting point to me. ;)
If you see any kinds of bacterial blooms you can cut it in half. :)
franklypre
04/14/2011, 09:35 AM
i use sugar in my DIY coral food, pappone. I occasionally add raw sugar to my tanks, about a tsp in a baster of water. Just start slow and test as you increase the dose. I've heard the ratio of reduction in ammonia-phos is about 16:1, so I would use these tests to determine the amount of sugar to use. Good luck
no worries Cliff, didn't want to go on a tangent until i was asked :spin2:
as randy said, ROS are a naturally occuring byproduct of the metabolic pathways which occur in organisms on this planet ranging from bacteria to mammals, and are generally harmless as they are managed by naturally occuring anti-oxidants also produced within the organism
however alcohol has a unique affect. as most organisms are not conditioned to metabolise alcohol it is absorbed and metabolised a lot faster than the proteins/carbohdrates these organisms are conditioned to metabolise
the result of this is rapid production of ROS which not only overwhelms the natural response to ROS, it actually inhibits it, altering the chemical pathways by which anti-oxidants are produced
this then leads to exponential cell damage on account of these ROS (aka free radicals) damaging cellular strucres such as fats, protein, and the big one, dna by way of altering their chemical structure, leading to problems such as disease
in the sense of the aquarium, acute alcohol exposure caused by small concentrations of alcohol drifting through the water could potentially lead to such problems in the long term. remembering that in only needs to be "big" relative to the animal ingesting it
sanchoy
04/14/2011, 10:28 AM
15 ml clear distilled vinegar per 100 gallons seems to be a safe starting point to me. ;)
If you see any kinds of bacterial blooms you can cut it in half. :)
:beer: thanks
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 05:27 PM
no worries Cliff, didn't want to go on a tangent until i was asked :spin2:
as randy said, ROS are a naturally occuring byproduct of the metabolic pathways which occur in organisms on this planet ranging from bacteria to mammals, and are generally harmless as they are managed by naturally occuring anti-oxidants also produced within the organism
however alcohol has a unique affect. as most organisms are not conditioned to metabolise alcohol it is absorbed and metabolised a lot faster than the proteins/carbohdrates these organisms are conditioned to metabolise
the result of this is rapid production of ROS which not only overwhelms the natural response to ROS, it actually inhibits it, altering the chemical pathways by which anti-oxidants are produced
this then leads to exponential cell damage on account of these ROS (aka free radicals) damaging cellular strucres such as fats, protein, and the big one, dna by way of altering their chemical structure, leading to problems such as disease
in the sense of the aquarium, acute alcohol exposure caused by small concentrations of alcohol drifting through the water could potentially lead to such problems in the long term. remembering that in only needs to be "big" relative to the animal ingesting it
Thanks for the explanation. ;)
This is the first I have heard this brought up & that is the reason I asked. :)
Another possible reason to use vinegar per what Randy has stated if indeed it is a concern. Perhaps this is a reason that corals react negatively to vodka at lower carbon equivalent doses than to vinegar. FWIW, Randy has tested vinegar at quite high doses with no negative effects he could detect. Many hobbyists including Randy & myself have found that cyano seems to be less of a problem when dosing vinegar as opposed to vodka. I have searched for possible reasons but have not found anything concrete except that perhaps vinegar works better with anaerobic bacteria than aerobic bacteria, which I did find some evidence in research to this effect (this was comparing methanol to acetate). Perhaps this is the reason why very few bacterial blooms are reported using vinegar in the water column, where as the use of vodka and some of the solid carbon source polymers frequently have complaints of water column bacterial blooms. Also the overdose level of vodka seem to occur at fairly low doses especially when nitrate is undetectable. I'll stick with vinegar. :lol:
One theory I have some how come to a possible conclusion to is if vinegar (acetate) does incourage better anaerobic bacterial growth instead of anaerobic like perhaps vodka does, then this leads me to believe that perhaps the anaerobic bacteria can better compete with cyano. Who knows. ;)
Sorry for all my edits to get my thoughts accross. ;)
HighlandReefer
04/14/2011, 05:28 PM
:beer: thanks
You're welcome. ;)
no problem Cliff....information exchange is what makes these places such an invaluable resource i think :beer:
no problem Cliff....information exchange is what makes these places such an invaluable resource i think :beer:
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