Carbon Dosing with IO

[digger4rc]

Has anyone here used Instant Ocean's "Natural Nitrate Reducer" in their tanks? From what I can tell it is a carbon dosing method not unlike using bio pellets.

Pros, Cons, Limericks, etc. all welcome.

[morleyz]

If it's a carbon dosing supplement, it would have the same pros and cons as other forms (sugar, vodka, etc.) They don't appear to really tell you what's in the bottle, but your guess is probably right.

[tmz]

I have not tried it. I've used vodka and vinegar for 5.5 years.

[Sk8r]

Vinegar would be cheaper.

[digger4rc]

My 55g is still fishless. (moving at a tortoise pace) Nitrates are over 80ppm due to the CUC oversupply I got from Reefcleaners. Going to give this stuff a go and will report how it works in case anyone is interested.

[FraggledRock]

Vinegar would be cheaper.

what kind of vinegar and whats the math?

i been wondering

[morleyz]

what kind of vinegar and whats the math?

i been wondering

Vinegar uses the same technique as vodka. Assuming you're using plain 5% white vinegar, you use 8x the amount of vinegar that you would for vodka.

I would suggest a lot of reading before starting down the carbon dosing road. It seems simple, there's more to it than just dumping in vodka or vinegar.

[FraggledRock]

Vinegar uses the same technique as vodka. Assuming you're using plain 5% white vinegar, you use 8x the amount of vinegar that you would for vodka.

I would suggest a lot of reading before starting down the carbon dosing road. It seems simple, there's more to it than just dumping in vodka or vinegar.

yea i am already in deep with my alkalinity problems myself. i dont want to hatch any new issues LOL

thanks!

[W1ngz]

Regular white vinegar, 5% acetic acid.
http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/images/magazine/vinegar_dosing/vinegar_lg.jpg

The brief version of the methodology is actually at the bottom of the identical Vodka dosing chart.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/images/Table1-40Proof.jpg

There's a thread here with a link to an article that describes things in more details.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2177315

[Sk8r]

Vodka, carbon, vinegar, sugar dosing are techniques employed usually on mature tanks that have a nitrate reduction issue, as I understand it: they encourage a bacterial bloom that helps remove waste and unwanted nitrate and some phosphate into the skimmer and get excess nutrient out of a tank. This is technically why when somebody comes in sobbing that a party guest has spilled a drink into his tank, we tell him it's not as bad as some things. BUT--and serious BUT here---overdo or rush the dose and you can have a serious cloudy bacterial bloom that may impact oxygenation in the tank, which is NOT SAFE for the fish.
READ UP ON THE TECHNIQUE and research thoroughly. It is not a technique for every tank or everybody, and you can do serious damage dumping in too much or going too fast.

[tmz]

The math on cost:

Store brand vinegar is about 4$ per gallon. 95% of it is water with 5% acetic acid.So its $4 for (.05 x 3785 ml ) 189 ml of acetic/ethanoic acid or approximately 2 cents per ml of carbon source.

80 proof vodka is 40% ethanol and 60% water and sells for $14 per 1.75 liters. So it's $14 for(.4x 1750) for 700 ml of ethanol or approximately 2cents per ml of carbon source.

Typically , for a well fed tank folks settle in on a daily maintenance dose from 0.4ml to 0.8ml of 5% vinegar per gallon or 1/8 that amount or a portion of it in vodka.

I don't know how that dosing level compares to the product you are using and don't know the contents of it but you can compare your per dose cost per the manufacturer's recommendations vs vodka and /or vinegar.
FWIW, I've dosed a combination of vodka and vinegar for over 5years a@ 36ml of 80- proof vokda and 80 ml of 5% acetic acid vinegar daily to my 650 gallon system at a total cost of about 5 cents for the vinegar plus 29cents for the vodka. This holds PO4 in the 0.2ppm to 0.04 range and NO3 at < 1ppm in a very heavily fed system.

For your 60 gallon system the cost would be around 3 cents per day for both at a level of dosing equivalent to mine..

This thread of mine on carbon dosing may be of interest if you are considering it:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2134105

[digger4rc]

So the Instant Ocean dosing comes to $0.02 per gallon per week.

$10 / 500ml = $0.02
Weekly dose 1ml per gallon

If I understand tmz's post, you are around $0.006 per gallon per week on vinegar maintenance dosing.

$4.00 per gallon vinegar / 3785ml per gallon = $0.001 per ml
.8ml daily * 7 days = 5.6 ml weekly per gallon
5.6ml weekly * $0.001 = $0.006 weekly per gallon

So assuming equal Nitrate removal (big assumption) the Instant Ocean product is about 4x the cost of 5% vinegar dosing. Not so painful at 50-100g, but would hurt quite a bit at 650g.

[tmz]

Ok I've read the product description. It's polymer bio degradeable plastics., like mini bio pellets without a reactor. Not sure I'd wan't bits of it throughout the tank.

I personally prefer soluble organics for the ability to control the consistency of the dose day to day and because they have a short pathway to acetate vs the more complex polymer compounds. Though they recommend a start at 1ml per gallon ;it is also suggested that the dose be doubled after a week if necessary.

I agree for a small tank even 8x the cost of vinegar isn't that much if you prefer that product.

[digger4rc]

Quick update: I have already noticed a reduction in Nitrate as measured via an API test. (insert API comments here) I think my baseline of 80ppm was low. By day 3 it was clearly 80ppm and today, day 5 it is closer to 60ppm. It made quite a bit of skimmate on days 2-4. If you use it watch your collection cup and adjust as needed.

I may have also impacted the test today. I re-scaped the LR in prep for a Yellow Watchman. I needed to push the LR deeper into the sand bed. In doing so the sand bed got stirred quite a bit. Will take another reading on Monday before the next dose.

[Sk8r]

I personally have a 2 year old tank with a seven-year-old sump/fuge, and the fuge, while prolific, is fairly mucky, and causes some problems. I'm primarily interested in hyping up the skimmer to take care of the matter, and I AM in the early stages of carbon dosing.

People should realize that something like vinegar dosing for a 100 gallon tank is in quantities measurable, say, with a test syringe, and for a tank under that size, a very small test syringe.

The quantity as per the table above increases over time.
And you do NOT want to shoot vinegar into your system without diluting it, be it only to dip up water in a small container and pour vinegared water slowly into the system. Lifeforms that get a gulp of undilute or not-enough-dilute vinegar may suffer damage and may die.

What I have observed is much more efficient skimmer action---from barely tinted skimmate to nearly black skimmate without any adjustment of the skimmer. This says to me that something (they say increased bacterial action: ie, more bacteria) is producing a lot of breakdown which is being sucked up by the skimmer.

Ergo, something biologic (and a skimmer removes amino acids: that's the foam) is increasing in the tank, and I'm not unhappy to have that crud come out. I suspect there's increased activity within the sandbed, which is a good thing. Corals were at first 'confused,' and hammer was expanded but had a curious chaotic orientation of its tentacles. Now it seems to have adjusted.

Note that there is a sizeable portion of your system you normally don't see: the pipes, hoses, and downflow areas, and in all of these, crud builds up. This may form part of what's being cleaned.

As with most things of this ilk, I strongly advise caution. Vinegar is fairly safe if amply diluted, is fairly cheap, especially if you buy it by the gallon at a discount place (use white vinegar) and always err on the side of caution---better a shade too little than a bit too much.

Most of all, measure. Those little syringes you always have left after you've used a Salifert test kit are ideal for measurement of this sort. Shoot it into a shot glass or the like, and dispense it very, very carefully via dilution in tank water. If you don't have a sump, dip up half a gallon of water and pour the dose into that and give it a brief stir before returning to your tank.

[digger4rc]

Day 7 - Reading 40ppm Nitrate. Adding second dose. My results are definitely tempered by the fact that my tank is fallow. I feed the CUC a little from time to time but the bio-load is certainly minimal. This does however make me want to seriously consider some type of carbon based nutrient export moving forward. The recirculating bio pellet reactors are interesting, but they seem to be oversized for my small system.

[digger4rc]

Day 21 - 10ppm Nitrates. This stuff definitely works. I don't think I will keep using it long term though. Seems like fish / corals might try to eat the little "pellets" when they are first put in the tank. I have found where some people do use this long term for years, but I'm thinking more about a bio-pellet reactor.