vodka dosing a tank

interesting sounds like it should work. the coral death and no room for error scares me the most but i guess if you are just starting a tank to get the bio filtration going in theory it should work. have you used this yet?
 
My biggest concern with trying to manipulate baterial populations is that there is no way to know or test what is actualy going on per the population levels. That and those same bacteria can turn on and attack your corals and fish. Kind of like flooding a room with bacteria to "clean" it and then make you stand in that room breathing in all that bacteria, which would most likely overwhelm your immune system and end up with a bacterial infection. Just as happens with fish when they get "pop eye" for example or when a coral's microbial coating turns on the coral and begins to eat the coral itself. I found this link to be very telling:

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SU/coral_bact_oct06.htm

My take on the subject with further links:

Dosing sugar or vodka

Chuck
 
I tried carbon dosing a few years ago, and it did not seem to make a dent in my nitrates. I eventually stopped trying because I heard too many stories of tanks crashing once you stop dosing. Biologically, the theory is sound. Bacteria seem to be limited by carbon, so add a carbon source to fuel their growth. But it seems as though you need to be very careful when dosing, as not to cause a bacterial bloom and subsequent tank crash. You also risk creating a hypoxic environment and killing everything in your tank that way.
 
i have never dosed my tank with anything and i dont think i ever will. Consistent water changes have proven to me to be the ultimate health factor (but im also not heavily stocked) so I'll stick with that until i hit a serious issue.

The thought of vodka in my tank disturbs me. The thought of vodka in my belly makes me happy.
 
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I personally have been dosing sugar for the last 2 months or so. Nitrates went from 50ppm to 0.2
Phosphate from 0.50 to 0.03 or less.
I dose smaller than I need to, just to prevent any accidental swings as described above by Biff. The first time I put in too much, and made the tank cloudy for a day. Dosed 1/2tsp 4 days later and have done every day, and the nutrients came down gradually. It's working well for me, anyway.
 
Don't get me wrong, there is no doubt that by providing a carbon source, be it sugar, vodka and even vinegar, will boost bacterial levels that are very effective for reducing dissolved nutrients. My point is, at what risk though? The idea of having to make wild guesses or uninformed judgements per dosing pretty much ensures that one day, be it a year from now or tomorrow, things could get very ugly.
That and I am also very biased in my opinion and method of what a reef aquarium actualy is. Which if set up as I believe they should be, solves any nutrient issues all on their own in a much more natural fashion while at the same time providing another habitat (and live food) that is part of the ecosystem that we should be striving for in order to use the word "reef" when describing an aquarium system.

A Philippine Fringing Reef & The Reef Aquarium (Parts one through four available)

Chuck
 
A few members of my local reefing club dose with Vodka, and with good results. One uses Grey Goose ... anyone getting Grey Goose in my house, it better be me! I'm not real comfortable adding more to the tank than nature does. I prefer the regular water changes as mentioned previously in the thread.
 
I see such things/methods along with a great deal of the equipment we use or have used as simply being attempts to do what is simply not possible. Keeping a "reef" in a single aquarium. Its impossible to have a reef ecosystem all within one tank. To create the same conditions that favor corals in a single tank, we have to exclude almost all algae through the use of herbivores and eliminating dissolved nutrients or face an algae dominated tank. So we end up doing some very strange things and of course buying ungodly amounts of various gizmos and additives (magic pills) all in an effort to fight what comes naturaly in a reef ecosystem. I see the keeping of reef tanks in a very simplified view, you either provide the various other habitats through the use of varying, connected refugiums with little more than some lights and pumps or... you drive yourself crazy trying to fight and control a single tank that wants to do what comes natural with the inputs of nutrients (life and our having to feed it).
The use of single aquariums (with maybe a sump at best) is what drives the majority of the entire hobby industry with our frustrated attempts fueling a never ending onslaught of gizmos, methods and additives while how many corals and fish die each year because we as a hobby just don't "get it" yet? And by "get it" I mean the understanding of a reef as being a combination of multiple habitats and ecosystems all within the grandest of the ecosystems, the "coral" reefs. I mean, if we are going to keep ecosystems, then lets do just that. But if you chose not to, at least understand why you are having to do such radical things while hoping you will get away with it for quite some time.

Chuck
 
their is so many different ways but i agree the best way is to do regular water changes and the rest will follow. the ro/di water made it so much easier to control.
 
+2 Charles.
I just had a situation where my nutrients went haywire due to some deaths I couldn't remove from behind the rockwork, and tried sugar and it worked. I have toned down the dosing since the levels dropped.
A good place to do some research on sugar/vodka dosing is reefcentral.
I think that adding sugar is a much better alternative (for me) than spending hundreds of dollars on snake oil products if it gets me to the same place.
All natural is obviously the best way to go. However, I doubt any natural reef has as much life in such a small space as our stocked tanks, so all natural is probably not always going to work out. How many "water changes" does a reef in the wild go through compared to our paltry 10 or 20% weekly?
 
Actualy, the same area of our tanks on a wild reef holds a HUGE amount of life, more than we will ever see in our tanks, and with greater numbers and diversity of life forms. The reason we will never see those numbers and diversity in our tanks is simply due to their being enclosed systems. Within that diversity there are of course predators and on a small section of a reef, they find, catch and eat their prey, which are then restocked by the prey species migrating back into that predators small territory. Given all the sessile and mobile predators, be it corals, filter feeders, shrimp, crabs and on and on that are found in such small areas, The vast majority of life on the reef reproduce by broadcasting their spawn out and up into the currents to get them away from the reef to where they can grow up in the relative safety of open ocean and then return to the reef when they are large enough to have a chance. Were it not so, a few predators in a few square feet would easily wipe out their prey species, just as happens in our tanks. So do we just give up ?

No way! It is still very possible to have a functional reef ecosystem if we understand a few things and accept the fact that our tank's diversity is going to have limitations. The beauty (and fun) of it all, is being able to play God if you will, and by that I mean we get to decide who gets in the pool or not.

Since this is a post and not an article, I will try to throw the basics out there per a reef set up.

Sump with ATS or a dedicated ATS = Control of nitrates and phosphates while providing a habitat that generates a great deal of life that becomes not only live food for the main tank, but also use and recycle many nutrients on their own, an unseen, microscopic clean up crew, that... feeds your corals and other inverts. Below are just a few examples of the life that lives in such algal mats. All taken from my algae scrubber.

temp50.jpg


See THIS ARTICLE for complete details

Also note that 80% of zooplanton in the wild is comprised of copepds, so if you have good "pod" numbers, you are 80% of the way there already.

Seagrass Refugium and/or a MacroAlgae Refugium (links are detailed articles) - Yet more habitats that contain ungodly amounts of life forms while....clearing the water of even more nutrients, that and such a planted tank simply looks great all unto itself. Due to space limitations I opted for the macroalgae refugium which at lights off proves to me every night just how much "food" is being made available to my corals and other "pets".

The main display tank - Now that the water is cleaned of dissolved nutrients at NSW levels and is full of live food swimming around, a live DSB (deep sandbed) is yet another wonderfull habitat, not only in providing even more food but the nutrient dynamics that take place in and on the sand is another benefit. Live Rock & Sand

So getting back to the problem of enclosed spaces. This is where having a quarantine tank to keep and inspect live rock comes in handy, allowing you to identify and remove potential problem species, which are usualy obvious as crabs and such. Stocking all of the tanks is critical per species selection. In the coral display tank, you want a good assortment of herbivores that include both snail and fish species, which on a wild reef is critical because without that variety, the coral reefs would quickly become algae reefs regardless of nutrients or not. A Reef Aquarium Clean up Crew. Per fish species, I hate to say it, but for this type of ecosystem, only herbivore and planktivore species should be allowed. A single wrasse for example can and will devastate your live food production as well as consume a lot of the sessile life that makes live rock that much more alive and interesting. You of course do not want many herbivores (if any) in the algaes tanks for obvious reasons. Such refugiums do however make great places to keep a something like a cuttlefish which is not going to consume your zooplankton. Also, since all food chains/loops depend upon algae, most notably phytoplankton, drip dosing your tank throughout the day and night will feed all of that zooplankton and spur them to reproduce even more. Thus enabling you to cut back on dead food inputs into the system.
So... given the above, all you actualy need are the tanks, a way to stimulate photosynthesis (lights) and a means to move water around (pumps and overflows). Supplement calcium, carbonates and magnesium and you have yourself a reef ecosystem without having to fund the hobby industry that has been trying to get us to keep single tanks alive for 50 years now and are still failing at it, at our exspense and the lives of our pets, all the while we are stuck looking at some corals sitting on top of some rocks and telling our friends " Look at my reef tank"....lol, when it can all be so very much more. IF we take the time to do it right.
Oh, and a skimmer is optional, I have one rigged up and ready to run but never use it unless there is a water emergency such as when all the snails decide to breed and make a milky mess out of everything. Other than that, it sits there collecting dust. I also only do water changes maybe once every 3 to 4 months now at about 15 percent and only do so probably just out of habit or unwarranted fears as I know it could all probably go much longer if I ever got the nerve up to do so.

Chuck
 
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