[Tripod1404]

As a side note, you can (atleast in certain tanks) achieve carbon dosing-like effects by dosing amino acids.

For example, I dose amino acids to reduce nitrate levels and decrease dosing if I want it to increase nitrate. It actually sometimes cause my system to go very nitrate limited and I have to add a mixture of potassium and sodium nitrate to increase nitrate. During this period I have to stop dosing amino acids otherwise nitrate is quickly consumed. I read people who dose amino acids sometimes made similar observations.

Considering bulkier amino acids with large side chains actually have more carbon than nitrogen, it is not that surprising. For example tyrosine has 9 carbons and 1 nitrogen, tryptophan has 11 carbons and 2 nitrogen, as a comparison acetic acid and methanol has 1 carbon and ethanol has 2 carbons.

The only main difference for dosing amino acids is the technical difficulty as you would need to turn of the skimmer for 30 mins to 1 hour, otherwise the skimmer would remove most of what is dosed (at least hydrophobic amino acids).


Therefore I prefer the term "carbon" dosing rather than "carbohydrate" dosing. Amino acids are not carbohydrates but you can achieve the same outcome. From a pure organic chemistry perspective, neither are ethanol or methanol are carbohydrates (FDA sometimes classified ethanol as a carbohydrate but it is scientifically inaccurate), they are alcohols and they dont have the correct hydrogen/oxygen ratio to be classified as carbohydrates. Only alcohols that can be considered as carbohydrates are sugar-alcohols (polyols) like glycerol, sorbitol, manitol, etc. Most carbohydrates are polyhydroxyl derivatives of ketones and aldehydes and that even makes acetic/ethanoic acid a questionable carbohydrate since it is hard to argue it is polyhydroxylated (more like monohydroxylated).