Vodka Dosing-Cloudy Water
 

I have been dosing Vodka for a little over a year. I was initially dosing a mix of vodka, vinegar and dextrose about 25ml daily in my 120g.

I have only been dosing vodka and dextrose (and as of yesterday vodka only) for a few months. I have a tiny spot of hair algae and occasionally a bit of cyano, so I know that phosphate and nitrates are present (test kits are inconclusive.

When I increased my dosage to battle the increased nutrients, I get less than clear water (slightly cloudy, and a milky film on my glass.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong. I feed moderately and have my tank stocked moderately.


Second question... I use mesh filter socks (easier to clean than felt) but I have a lot of particulates floating in my water, I am wondering why my water isn't clearer.

might be a bacterial bloom

What are your parameters?

I just did a water change yesterday. I will test today and get back to you.

I assume it is an overabundance of bacteria, but then how is there a small spot of GHA? I would have thought the bacteria would consume all of the PO4 and NO3

Are there dirt in the spots where the GHA are located? Blow on it with baster and see if anything comes out. Do you run carbon? When was the last time you change your ro/di filters?

I do run carbon, and just changed it yesterday (it was long overdue). I just recently changed all RO/DI filters (except membrane) I have a two stage TDS Meter (Before and after DI stage and all water reads 0 TDS coming out of the DI stage (unless my TDS meter is shot).

Sunds like a bacterial bloom related to the increased dose. I'd cut back . How much are you dosing now? What are the PO4 and No3 levels?

Tank params:

dKH-9.6 on Salifert
Cal- 460 on Salifert
NO3- unreadable on Salifert
PO4- 2.0 on AP test kit

So clearly there are some Phosphates in there. Maybe time to run some GFO? I would like to treat the cause, not the symptoms.

2.0ppm PO4 is very high. How much vodka/ vinegar are you dosing.How often?

25ml daily

idk anything really about this but from what i know isnt that a lot to dose?

I dose 34 vodka equivalents to 600 gallons daily and started at 1/4 of that. Most settle out at a max of.06ml per gallon which in your case would be about 7 ml of vodka per day .

If that's 25 ml of vodka it is a very high dose. Note: vodka is 8x stronger than vinegar and a solid like dextrose is 2.5 times as strong as vodka and 20x as strong as vinegar in terms of organic carbon content.

This thread may be of interest:


http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...+carbon+dosing

If you have dosed 25 ml in 120 gallon tank I do not believe the po4 number you have. Unless there is a whale growing in that tank. I would test the water with a more accurate phosphate test. Will gladly do it for you if you like.

In my opinion the 25 ml is too much for the size of tank you have and increasing the amount will result in bacteria blooms as you noted. I have a similar size tank that has been getting under 1 ml. With fair amount of fish/feeding and po4 is normally .05 without much change.