Vinegar observations and comments from others dosing

[Nanook]

Hi,

I've been dosing vinegar for a couple months and I have a few observations and wanted to see if you guys/gals see the same stuff.

My dose is 400cc/daily for 1100 gallons of water. My sponges and overflow pipes (Stockman) tend to clog up with milm/slimy material pretty quickly. My glass gets a coating of light green algae almost daily.

My nitrate was in the high 20's and is currently down to 13.2 by Lamotte. So, it is gradually fixing my nitrate problem. Thing is, the clogging of GFO sponge and milm/slime in the overflow and in the powerheads is creating more work with cleaning Tunze pumps and keeping overflow pipes washed out (about every week).

Any thoughts, or is this pretty normal stuff?

Thanks!

[bertoni]

The slime buildup is a bit worrying. I might back off a bit. I think that amount of growth is a bit excessive.

[reefgeezer]

I've been dosing 30 ml a day in my ~90 gallon system until today. I'm at 0 PPM nitrate (Salifert) but still haven't settled on a maintenance dose. For quite a while now, anytime I put a 200 micron filter sock in the system it would clog in less than 24 hours. Today I noticed some stringy bacterial growth in the sump and low flow areas in the DT. I cut the rate to 20 ml/day.

I think I would remove mechanical filters except for maintenance activities. That way the bacteria might be more likely to be exported by the skimmer. I also use a powerhead or turkey baster to blow the stringy stuff loose so that the skimmer might get it.

[Stolireef]

I'm tagging along on this thread because the dosing seems high. I dose a combination of vinegar and vodka at a total of 2 cc's in a 110 and have 0 nitrates, unmeasurable phosphates, and a medium bioload. In light of my readings, I don't plan to increase dosing but I am curious about how much vinegar to dose. I gather it's not even close to the 'recommended' vodka dosing in light of how high your doses are.

[tmz]

Dave,

Those bacteria create a lot of biomass relative to ammonia oxidizers for example.

FWIW, I've bolus dosed vodka and vinegar: 40ml of vodka( equivalent to 320 ml vinegar in organic carbon content ) and 80 ml vinegar split into two doses per day for over 4 years. The system water volume is 650 gallons.
Nitrates were reduced to less than 5ppm at the start up via a sulfur denitrator which was taken off line when carbon dosing was implemented fully.. They ultimately fell to <0.2 and have been there for years ; PO4 hangs at< .03ppm even without gfo.

There were periods of time when the visible bacterial mass was more than it has been for the last few years( it's not much at all now). It clogged reactor sponges and sometimes trailed off power head outputs.. Now there is very little of that. I don't know why it grew like that or why it stopped. Perhaps , the bacteria have spread out more over the substantial surface area in the system( live rock cryptic and ambient light refugia, sand , etc). Sponge growth is much higher than before dosing; so maybe the sponges are eating it or maybe corals like zoanthids are consuming some of it.Maybe other micro fuana are growing and using the bacteria . I know fish ,particularly my Fox face eat it if there is a bit of it in the water column. I have upgraded skimming along the way a bit as well
I never got green glass though. Did have some patchy cyano during the early months . I speculate that the competitive balances among organisms in the tank for nutrients are upset by the new heavy consumers, ie the facultative heterotrophic bacteria encouraged by organic carbon dosing which may give one existing organism an edge over the other for the more limited overall supply of phosphorus and nitrogen or the increased supply of acetate, at least in the early stages.For example phytoplankton and diatoms might be reduced and cyano might increased in the short run.
I think when organic carbon is added ,the activity of the organisms it encourages directly and indirectly changes the make up of organics in the tank and it can take a while for things to settle out. Wish I had a better explanation. There is still a lot to learn about this technique and organics in the reef and aquariums are very complex with much unknown. It's best to go slowly with amping it up ,imo . The tank may handle more later on than it can in the early months.

[tmz]

Originally Posted by Stolireef

I'm tagging along on this thread because the dosing seems high. I dose a combination of vinegar and vodka at a total of 2 cc's in a 110 and have 0 nitrates, unmeasurable phosphates, and a medium bioload. In light of my readings, I don't plan to increase dosing but I am curious about how much vinegar to dose. I gather it's not even close to the 'recommended' vodka dosing in light of how high your doses are.

2ml/ccs of vodka is a very low dose in any case. but if NO3 and PO4 are low I wouldn't increase it . Typically foks settle in around .4 to .7 ml of vinegar pr gallon which is equal to .05 to .09 ml per gallon of vodka.

To figure vinegar and vodka just multiply vokda by 8 to get an approximately equal vinegar dose and divide vinegar by 8 to get an approximately equivalent vodka dose. This accounts for the dilution. Vodka is 40% ethanol,the carbon source, and 60% water. Standard white vinegar is 5% acetic acid, the carbon source, and 95% water.

[Stolireef]

Originally Posted by tmz

2ml/ccs of vodka is a very low dose in any case. but if NO3 and PO4 are low I wouldn't increase it . Typically foks settle in around .4 to .7 ml of vinegar pr gallon which is equal to .05 to .09 ml per gallon of vodka.

To figure vinegar and vodka just multiply vokda by 8 to get an approximately equal vinegar dose and divide vinegar by 8 to get an approximately equivalent vodka dose. This accounts for the dilution. Vodka is 40% ethanol,the carbon source, and 60% water. Standard white vinegar is 5% acetic acid, the carbon source, and 95% water.

That's exactly what I was looking for. I thanks.

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[tfp]

I got up to 50ml a day in about 420g water volume. Didnt experience any media clogging but my my tangs seemed a little stressed out. Many of them appeared lethargic and not as vibrant?

[Sparkpaul]

i have a 200 gallon tank and i dose 3ml of vsv a day. Vinegar 200ml + Vodka 50ml sugar 2 tables spoon of sugar. once i got my glass all filmy with greenish things and i had to clean the glass almost daily. i think that happened when i was over feeding the fish too much because i just added a several new fish into the tank thus increase nutrients.

i observed some browning on sps, so i dumped some bacterias from prodibio and upped my carbon dosage from 2ml to 3ml. for 2 weeks my glass were filmy with stuff. so i cut back on my feeding but continued with my dosing because my no3 and po4 were not optimal.

[kissman]

is any of it a pinkish color? I had the same problem and started cutting back on my vinegar dosing and what I found out was that I was overdosing.

[jg93]

I had media clogging problems as I increase my vinegar dosage - it totally clogged my BRS GFO reactor.

I then cleaned it, replaced the media and STN's some of my acro's at the bases. I also had this running through a small refugium and noticed white growth on my chaeto - removed this promptly. So, in the end, I lost my Red Planet acro but everything else seems to have recovered. Just my personal observations and words to the wise.

I cut my vinegar back and I'm re-boosting. I never did hit the point where my nitrates started lowering. I'm still not sure if the STN was caused from the GFO or the chaeto. Regardless, now everything is happy and growing again. I'm already running 1/2 the does of GFO, and when I change it out again I'll probably 1/2 the amount again.

[tmz]

Originally Posted by Stolireef

That's exactly what I was looking for. I thanks.

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You are welcome.

[Yogre]

I think I've been dosing vinegar for the better part of three years now, I'd have to look at my log book to be sure and I'm not at home right now.

I got up to a dose of 100 ml/day for a system volume of about 200 gallons. I've struggled to find test kits I trust, so I'm not sure how NO3 and PO4 levels tracked along the way, but I know my hair algae infestation went away a couple of years ago.

Within the last 6 months, I've noticed a problem with pinkish snotty buildup in my sump, and had a problem with the sponge in my Geo media reactor clogging to the point of being unusable.

I've since cut my vinegar dose back to 70 ml/day. The sponges in my filtration don't seem to be clogging as quickly, and the snotty pink goop in my sump has abated somewhat.

I have no idea what caused this clogging problem after a couple of years of dosing. Interestingly enough, about when the clogging problem started I noticed the growth of sponges (purple and white) in the display really took off.