dosing vodka to bring down N and P

[saltyESQ]

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[kj5432]

So what would be the vodka dose on a 29 gallon tank? Also, where is the german article on this?

[Stipe]

Ok After readign all that im worried about adding vodka to my system. My ritrate is always around 20-30ppm with my phosphorus at 0.25-0.30ppm. All i have in there is a elephant ear, hammer, 2 shrooms and a torch. I wish to lower my phosporates to around 0.05 or less ppm and my nitrates to around 1-2.

I have a 80 gal system with a 20gal fug80gal with fug included) with a DSB, about 3cm of CC, 3cm of sand, and 1cm or very fine arogite (is that how u spell it?) sand.

I've herd that adding vodka to a system with a DSB can cause more problems than is can solve ( i read this in the RK mags, when old becomes new or sumthign like that).

So now im wondering which method will be great in addign carbon with the least affects on my corals and inhabinates (that includes a cucumber, hermits, tonchus snails etc), Sugar or Vodka, im not sure on the doses for my tank either, any help?

thankyou in advance, Stipe.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've herd that adding vodka to a system with a DSB can cause more problems than is can solve ( i read this in the RK mags, when old becomes new or sumthign like that).

I do not believe that the presence or absence of a DSB alters what effects vodka has, positive or negative.

Many more folks have experience dosing vodka than sugar, so unless you like experimenting, I'd use the vodka.

[Stipe]

Ok thanks, I have some Smirnoff, ''tripple distiled premium vodka'' left over from my dads birthday. It is 37.5% alc with no mension of amoutn of ethonol or methonal in the drink. Is this is suitiable to use? So im think about starting at 1ml for my 80gal. Also by how much and how often should i up the dose?, every week? Also up the dose by a ml or 1/5ml etc?

Also the reason i asked the question about which to use, sugar or vodka is because of a reply u posted a while back (there god dam 36 or so pages, took my my whole afternoon reading, lol)

Quoted from Randy Holmes-Farley
"I'm not sure that ethanol is a better choice for generating a bacterial bloom than is sugar."

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

37.5% alcohol means 37.5% ethanol. It would not contain any significant amount of methanol. That is a fine source of ethanol.

I do not have recommended doses. Check some of the earlier posts in this thread were folks gave opinions.

Also the reason i asked the question about which to use, sugar or vodka is because of a reply u posted a while back (there god dam 36 or so pages, took my my whole afternoon reading, lol)

Quoted from Randy Holmes-Farley
"I'm not sure that ethanol is a better choice for generating a bacterial bloom than is sugar."

Yes, I'm still not sure it is better, but more folks have used the ethanol recently (past 1-2 years), and while some had success and some did not, few folks seem to have had substantial negative results with vodka.

[grochmal]

Originally posted by Stipe
So im think about starting at 1ml for my 80gal. Also by how much and how often should i up the dose?, every week? Also up the dose by a ml or 1/5ml etc?

The schedule I've seen, and currently using, was to start with 0.1 ml per 100 L and up the dose by that amount every day until you start to see N and P go down.
Then cut the dose in half.
On my 150 gallon system I started with 0.4 ml and have been increasing by that much every day up to my current 7.6ml.
I haven't seen a drop in nitrate yet.

[Stipe]

o..k... i posted a reply but now im looking over this thread and dotn see it, no biggie, i'll try repost it.

Thanks guys for all the help,
Thanks Grochmal i will be taking in account your dosing amounts and use it. I like your amounts, starts of very low so you slowley build up.

ok what else am i missin g, an extra airstone, check ( plsu my skimmer so thats heaps)

So if the algae bloom does occer, daily water changes? but untill then, weekly or monthly?

[Earl45]

Question:


If it's the ethyl alchohol that is activating the anaerobic bacteria (and it seems like it is) why go with something that has less than 50% like vodka? Why not buy some everclear, that's 90% ethyl alcohol?

[miwoodar]

Very interesting thread (hopefully you guys are still subscribing)! I have browsed almost everything and I'm not ready to start daily dosing of vodka, ethanol, sugar, or any other carbon source; however, I think I might try throwing in a pinch of something once a week just to help give the bacteria a little edge. I don't have high nitrates or phosphates but I am interested in getting them a little lower anyways. From what I've read a pinch might be a good maintenance approach to ensure they stay low. Can anyone tell me if I've overlooked anything with this approach?

Also, as an FYI, my company specializes in hazardous waste remediation. We inject carbon (in MANY forms) into the ground on a daily basis to clean up contaminated groundwater. It works! But we don't need to find a 'balance' when we are trying to eliminate hazardous waste. We strive to drive values to zero - makes it easier.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If it's the ethyl alchohol that is activating the anaerobic bacteria (and it seems like it is) why go with something that has less than 50% like vodka? Why not buy some everclear, that's 90% ethyl alcohol?

Any source is OK as long as it is reasonably pure and inexpensive. I don't know, however, where it is activating anaerobic bacteria, or just driving aerobic ones.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Can anyone tell me if I've overlooked anything with this approach?


I don't believe that you can irreversibly hurt anything to try it that way. if corals brown up or anything else bad seems to happen, just stop.

[miwoodar]

Thanks Randy!

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Good luck.

[miwoodar]

Does anyone want to discuss the idea of adding a small amount of a dissolved organic carbon (DOC) source rather than massive daily dosing? It seems that if you added much smaller doses you could keep the DOC the limiting factor in the growth of the bacteria. This way the nitrates/phosphates could never be driven to absolute zero (and crashing the tank).

Also, something else I have not seen in this thread - a discussion about the exponential reproduction strategy used by bacteria. 1 turns into 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64 to 128, 256, etc (like my aptasia! Berghia are on the way). You get the idea. Anyways, heavy daily dosing might leave a large backlog of unused DOC in the tank until the bacteria populations catch up (at lightning speed when they do!). With their reproductive strategy they would blow right though any unused DOC currently in the tank and the nitrates and phosphates would become the limiting factor almost immediately. So again, lower DOC dosing might be better than heavy dosing to keep DOC the limiting factor. I am reminded of the best advice I have ever received in reefing - "only bad things happen fast in a reef tank".

Can anyone comment on these ideas?

[TwistedTiger]

When using vodka or vinegar as a carbon source, how soon should you see a bloom and what exactly will the bloom look like. I have added vinegar to my tank before but have never seen anything visable I could call a bloom.

[miwoodar]

Twisted Tiger - That is a question I am not able to answer. Anyone? I'm trying to find out if we could avoid a significant bloom and simply raise bacteria populations to a slightly higher level.

Let's say a tank is accumulating 5ppm per month of nitrates. That's not a lot to remove. Fostering a bacteria population capable of handling a 200ppm per month load may be what has caused problems in some of the tanks discussed earlier in this thread.

I just realized I mistated something in my earlier post. "With their repro strategy they (the bacteria) would blow right through any unused DOC currently in the tank and the nitrates and phosphates would become the limiting factor almost immediately." I tried to say this 'The tank would have enough unused DOC that when the bacteria numbers caught up it could not become the limiting factor. The limiting factor would immediately become the nitrates and phosphates.' Apologies for any confusion.

I reviewed this thread earlier today. Crap, you guys are wordy. I was not able to resolve my question though. Conflicting views appeared to be the norm. Has anyone had long term success with a low dosing regiment?

[grochmal]

I don't know that anyone can say you need to dose x ml to get a bloom, or how long it will take.
Every tank will be different.
The blooms I've experienced have just looked like cloudy water.

[Bob the (Reef)]

I have always stuggled with PO4. None of the removers really worked for me.

After reading about this method in the new Delbeek Sprung vol 3 and reading through this thread, I started dosing Vodka and vinigar, as suggested by one of the originators of the theory 3/1 vod/vin. I had no no3 readable so I dosed it up to +- 3ppm so that this would not be a limiting factor. I dosed 0.1mm per 100liters for three days. After which NO3 vanished again completelty (Vodka or dsb?) PO4 gone from .07 to 011. Very smelly skimmate, and a lot.

Days 4 - 6 dosed double. After these days Po4 dropped significantly to 0.05 No3 dropped a little.

I seem to be having positive results in a short time, I think that this method should be ramped up much slower than the original articles recomend and possibly should have a more clear end point. ie. the point at which you stop increasing dosage should be defined at a fairly low point. Zeovit for instance does not keep increasing the dose, it waits for a result for as long as it takes.

Thats why you never see a crazy milky bacterial bloom in their system.

While saying this I changed over from a fairly hybridised Zeo system after six weeks or so, but mainly to find a less expensive solution to PO4 probs, as I will be getting a much bigger tank next year.

The quick reaction may be due to the Zeobac bacteria additive that was already in the system, and also to dosing NO3.

I hope to continue with a relatively controlled lowering of the PO4 in the system and then find a maintenance dose, which should be a very economical way to maintain the PO4s.

[miwoodar]

The removers scare me - I've heard a lot of scary stories about crazy crashes and others discussing utter uselessness. Fortunately I've never had to use them but there was a time maybe 10 years ago when I moved cities and had been getting away with tap water no sweat in the 1st but the 2nd city had terrible water that grew algae as if it were laced with Miracle Grow. This thread would have helped me a ton back then because by the time I figured out what was going on my tank had enough algae to feed me (let alone my tangs). It was over a year before things were back on track.

[Redfish]

I used vodka for a long time. I am sure that it works in reducing N & P. I experienced some other problems, however. I lost a couple of fish that I had no other explanation for. Was it bacterial problems driven by the addition of vodka? Who knows.

I am also sure that you can drive N & P to be limiting fairly quickly. I believe that N becomes limiting much quicker than P.

In a relatively clean tank, it will be hard to have a substantial bacterial bloom. If it does occur it will be just a milky haze. I have had several with no damage. The tanks that do have damage during a bloom are probably poorly oxygenated.

[Bob the (Reef)]

My Po4 is now 0 according to my Merke test kit better than Iv'e ever read it. BVut still 0.05 on the Hanna photometer, still dose No3 as it keeps dropping to zero. I got a little bit of recession in two shadded corals, so I cut it off and fed more and added vitamins. So far so good.

[Bob the (Reef)]

Now adding 3ml vodka and 1ml vinigar to my 230g system. The PO4 level had stopped falling and hung around 0.06 (Hanna) so I added a little more to the dosing schedule. Immediately it started to drop, now 0.04. Still dosing small quants of No3 so this dosn't become limiting. Seems that doing things slowly is working OK, as I start to enter acceptable limits for PO4. Corals seem a little lighter, problem algae looking unhealthy. So at day 31 it seems to be helping me.

[miwoodar]

I added a 1/4 tspn of sugar to my 65 gallon every Monday for a month. The following is TOTALLY anedoctal. I noticed some white stringy growths on one tip of my mille two weeks ago. It had been healthy and growing since I got it in the spring. Last night I went ahead and broke off about 10 affected tips that had started to loose some flesh. Sorry, don't know what the disease was but the tips first went brown, then started to look skinny, then started to develop the strings. PE is down only on that coral, everything else in the tank looks to be in good shape.

During this time I also had some brief unrelated low alk problems (2.0 meq/l, 5.6 DKH). This stress may have weakened the mille.

I'm stopping DOC additions. I can see the purpose and I adhere to the concept; however, I already had non-detectable nitrates and phosphates anyways. I won't be investigating DOC additons any further unless I have a nitrate/phosphate spike or I develop an algae problem.

In the mean time I'm going to focus on tuning up my new calcium reactor!

[Bob the (Reef)]

Sounds like a good idea, especially if you didn't have No3 or Po4.