Another conversation about how to chemically reduce nitrates.

[mcarroll]

I don't see how it gets much better than carbon dosing.[...]

Heheh. That either sounds "too good to be true" or you'll have to define "better".

Cheaper? Keeping a lower stock level and simply relying on your live rock is cheaper. Running a skimmer or ATS is cheaper.

Safer? I never hear of people having problems with skimmers, ATS or lower stocking levels like I hear about with carbon dosing.

Cleaner water? Keeping a lower stock level is perfectly complete. It seems that not a lot of people successfully hit that kind of balance with carbon dosing....many folks that get close end up overshooting and actually stressing/harming their animals.

Easier? Well, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it "easy" considering how little we seem to know about how carbon dosing even works (theory aside), but pouring some vodka/vinegar into a measuring cup and dumping it in is at least mechanically easy to pull off. Not as easy as doing nothing and just keeping a lower stocking level, of course. But probably easier than cleaning a skimmer or ATS.

Maybe something different? I still suspect keeping a lower stock level will be the way to go when you boil it down to "better". And lower nitrates are only one of a multitude of benefits to keeping a lower stock level.

-Matt

 

[hart24601]

The cheapest easiest method of nutrient control is having no fish at all. Directly feed the corals when/if you need to and can tailor that to nutrient levels. There will always be the no or few livestock argument and it's a valid one, but moving past that.

Carbon dosing is cheap, $20 for a bottle of vodka lasts almost a year for me. If a person manually doses everyday that is the only cost. I automated mine with a dosing pump so that was $100. Still cheap for what it does. Very easy too. It is recommended to have a good skimmer, although I would like to see people experiment without using one. IMO carbon dosing is safer than ATS, if you happen to neglect the scrubber for a few weeks bad things happen, or in a poweroutage. I do like scrubbers so I am not poo-pooing them. Heck, I have heard of more people destroying their tank with skimmers than carbon dosing by having the skimmer overflow and flooding their tank with top off water.

 

[mcarroll]

[...]There will always be the no or few livestock argument and it's a valid one, but moving past that.[...]

That almost felt like being mocked, yet is the most due the idea of not overstocking has garnered from anyone so far.

I'm getting somewhere!

-Matt

 

[hart24601]

I wasn't mocking! Reduction or elimination of fish is the ultimate control but not many people like that. Especially if they already have fish. FWIW I would still dose carbon even with no fish to feed all my filter feeders and clams!

 

[mcarroll]

I wasn't mocking! Reduction or elimination of fish is the ultimate control but not many people like that. Especially if they already have fish. FWIW I would still dose carbon even with no fish to feed all my filter feeders and clams!

It really would be interesting to see some relatively controlled experiments in modestly stocked tanks to "prove" if there really seems to be any feeding going on vs non-dosed tanks.

My theory is that the fish poop is the main coral food.

Most people increase fish feedings during carbon dosing to keep the carbon cycle going, naturally increasing fish poop - the main coral food.

But that is conjecture as well - an experiment would be very enlightening.

-Matt

 

[watchguy123]

I think your points are fascinating. Not sure most reefers, or maybe just me, truly understand what "food" is really in the water to support coral life. I have presumed fish poop is the perfect food for supporting "the food chain" yet I can't describe what foods or planktons are in my tank.

 

[ChristopherKriens]

I wouldn't say that's accurate.....I've dosed vinegar in my own tank at various times. As a tool, it has a purpose. In my case to ameliorate kalk for safer and more potent dosing. I think the business about using carbon dosing to feed corals is interesting, but pure conjecture.

I just think in general (with some exceptions as above) carbon dosing is used blindly as a panacea for over-crowded tanks. If you wanna know, this is my main beef. (If your tank is not over crowded and does not accumulate nutrients, then this doesn't apply to you....and unless you are deliberately experimenting, I would question why you are using carbon dosing.) And as noted/linked earlier, every bit of research we have (we need more) indicates that bio pellets (for example) do not work the way we think they do....we have a faint understanding of carbon dosing - at best.

Overcrowding a tank seems to be a natural human tendency...maximizing one's investment I suppose. Stress level of animals is usually impossible to detect unless the situation has gotten severe, so nutrient accumulation "was" the one thing that would make for an early warning and prevent or at least limit overstocking, at least in some people's cases.

Carbon dosing is being used to eliminate this nutrient accumulation, so now more people than ever over stock their tanks and many are over stocked to a greater degree. An over stocked tank is like a house of cards anyway....carbon dosing just lets you build it even higher.

-Matt

P.S. In spite of my tangent/explanation, this isn't a thread about overcrowding, BTW. But it is a thread about using one of a pellet rector's theoretical features - feeding corals. So this line of discussion is still relevant here. There's no research to show that pellet reactors work in this manner. There is research that shows they do not work in this manner. (This isn't to say that nothing is happening, or that pellets can't work somehow.....just that we have little or no idea what's going on or how it's happening.)

Just moving in from another thread

Your assumption is that overstocking always precedes overcrowding. This may be true for you, but people have different ideas about when overcrowding occurs and overstocking is defined differently for every system. There have been and will be more advancements in nutrient exportation and eventually there may be no nutrient-based limit to how many fish we can put in our tanks. To put it simply, carbon dosing doesn't overcrowd tanks; people do.

Carbon dosing works for my particular system because it's acropora-dominate and I like how these corals look in low nutrient environments. I could get rid of half my fish to achieve this, but if they're thriving why would I? I keep a lot of anthias which don't particularly mind being in large groups, and in fact seek it out in nature. Carbon dosing also allows me to feed them often and graciously and maintain excellent water quality. Your broad strokes imply that carbon dosers are people who overcrowd and may not care for their livestock, and people may take a little offense.

In past posts, you've referred to carbon as a "band-aid" and here a "house of cards". My temporary band-aid has been processing nutrients for two years with no end in site. Certainly if my pellet reactor pump stopped working, I'd need to go back to water changes until I got it figured out. Such is the case with any nutrient-export mechanism.

Of course, this really is inconsequential because it doesn't at all address the efficacy of carbon dosing. Bacterial populations in most tanks are carbon limited. We add carbon, they proliferate and in doing so take up undesirable nutrients. To say that we have no idea what's happening at a high level is a stretch, but like you say there really is a lot to learn about the details. But I don't think there's a case to be made against the fact that it does or why.

As for feeding corals, I can't say much as I go to lengths to capture all of the reactor effluent with a skimmer and filter socks and get rid of it. It would be unfair of me to speak of something about which I don't have any experience.

 

[hart24601]

I haven't brought this up before, but I hope everyone realizes that aquarium carbon dosing is based off results obtained from research done with wastewater. If you really want to know lots about carbon dosing just do some searches in google scholar with denitrification of wastewater and carbon or methanol. It, of course, wont describe exactly what is going on in our systems, but the concept and science behind it is pretty well known for a few decades now. Here is just 1 paper, but there are many out there. Carbon treatment of wastewater is well accepted.

JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

Not related to carbon dosing, but since I frequently hear of fish poo for coral food this might be of interest. Advanced aquarist reported this article, but I can't access their site atm so here is the article. But they found that even SPS are pretty voracious carnivores and increase growth dramatically when fed food (live food in this paper). It wasn't everyone's favorite acro, but is still interesting and relevant to SPS as it deals with aquaculture of SPS.

PLOS ONE: Augmenting the Post-Transplantation Growth and Survivorship of Juvenile Scleractinian Corals via Nutritional Enhancement

 

[Reefing Madness]

Heheh. That either sounds "too good to be true" or you'll have to define "better".

Cheaper? Keeping a lower stock level and simply relying on your live rock is cheaper. Running a skimmer or ATS is cheaper.

Safer? I never hear of people having problems with skimmers, ATS or lower stocking levels like I hear about with carbon dosing.

Cleaner water? Keeping a lower stock level is perfectly complete. It seems that not a lot of people successfully hit that kind of balance with carbon dosing....many folks that get close end up overshooting and actually stressing/harming their animals.

Easier? Well, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it "easy" considering how little we seem to know about how carbon dosing even works (theory aside), but pouring some vodka/vinegar into a measuring cup and dumping it in is at least mechanically easy to pull off. Not as easy as doing nothing and just keeping a lower stocking level, of course. But probably easier than cleaning a skimmer or ATS.

Maybe something different? I still suspect keeping a lower stock level will be the way to go when you boil it down to "better". And lower nitrates are only one of a multitude of benefits to keeping a lower stock level.

-Matt

You have to run a skimmer while dosing.
Thats the great thing with carbon dosing, you keep the levels where you want them, and not have to keep chasing expensive water changes. You keep the fish you want to keep. And overshooting carbon dosing, is pretty tough to do, in order to stress out anything you'd have to practically dump in the bottle. I've dosed some pretty heavy amounts, to the point of bacterial cloud build up for a couple of weeks, didnt' lose a fish, nor a coral for that matter.
As long as I've been dosing, its no different or stressful to the inhabitants than anyone else dosing alk or cal, its unnoticed by them.
No as far as it being a theory??? It works, no theory about it, I've been at this to long to call it a theory.
Its fast, simple and does not harm, unless the person doing the dosing is drinking it while putting it in the tank also.
Its cheap. You change out water when you feel its needed for trace elements.
Only thing that would beat it, is if you had a large enough ATS to support your tank, then yes, that would be actually cheaper than dosing, in the long run.

 

[3Twinklets]

Overstocking my wrinkle! Just take a look at Mike & Terry's tank. I am pretty positive that they do not carbon dose. They are very heavy feeders too.

 

[Reefing Madness]

Overstocking my wrinkle! Just take a look at Mike & Terry's tank. I am pretty positive that they do not carbon dose. They are very heavy feeders too.

Pretty sure your right. But thats not fair, they gots one of those DIY Skimmers, and that thing is HUGE!! :wink:

 

[3Twinklets]

What do you mean DIY? They have 2 skimmers. And yes one is huge. I have the next size smaller and its huge also. SRO5000

Pretty sure your right. But thats not fair, they gots one of those DIY Skimmers, and that thing is HUGE!! :wink:

 

[Reefing Madness]

Ah, must have thought of another huge build that they did their own. I read, and their set up was in the Reef magazine, so were a few others. My bad.

 

[mcarroll]

You have to run a skimmer while dosing.
Thats the great thing with carbon dosing, you keep the levels where you want them, and not have to keep chasing expensive water changes. You keep the fish you want to keep. And overshooting carbon dosing, is pretty tough to do, in order to stress out anything you'd have to practically dump in the bottle. I've dosed some pretty heavy amounts, to the point of bacterial cloud build up for a couple of weeks, didnt' lose a fish, nor a coral for that matter.
As long as I've been dosing, its no different or stressful to the inhabitants than anyone else dosing alk or cal, its unnoticed by them.
No as far as it being a theory??? It works, no theory about it, I've been at this to long to call it a theory.
Its fast, simple and does not harm, unless the person doing the dosing is drinking it while putting it in the tank also.
Its cheap. You change out water when you feel its needed for trace elements.
Only thing that would beat it, is if you had a large enough ATS to support your tank, then yes, that would be actually cheaper than dosing, in the long run.

Reading that, one could walk away thinking tank size and type of fish don't matter to their stocking decision and that carbon dosing is a well-understood, fool-proof husbandry tool.

Don't let me put words in your mouth if that's not what you meant (definitely how it sounded), but I would say that summary is exactly why I'm not a fan of "everyone" carbon dosing - I disagree on every count.

WATER CHANGES
If you think water changes are "too expensive" I think it may be possible you're too cheap for the hobby....or are keeping tanks beyond your means. Either is understandable...I've been in both positions at various times.

FISH
Fish selection is (or should be) entirely dictated by their disposition and the size tank. Not what filtration you run.

Carbon dosing certainly doesn't enable you simply to "keep the fish you want to keep".

THEORY
Check out the links and references posted earlier if you haven't....you're welcome to comment on the same research or even conduct some of your own. The matter is far from settled...that's the point, really.

To be clear, the "theory" part is of how you and I think carbon dosing works - but which doesn't match up with research. Also of side-effects which are almost always not spoken about by carbon dosing proponents.

It's not a question of whether it can work. It's just poorly understood...to such an extent that it feels like a stunt or curiosity (wow - it totally cleaned my foul, stinking water!) rather than a strategy for husbandry. But I'm admittedly more conservative in practice than many when it comes to keeping wild animals.

One "theory" part of carbon dosing that I do have a problem with is that I don't see reefs anywhere in nature being carbon dosed. There are natural parallels for pretty much every other husbandry tool we like to apply - skimmers, algae, etc. I may discover I'm mistaken on this count and there are indeed some parallels, but to me the lack of a parallel in nature serves as mark against it for general use.

CARBON DOSING PROBLEMS
In case there's any denial about the problems associated with carbon dosing...it's not a "point-and-shoot" technology as it's frequently portrayed and there ARE issues:

• vinegar dosing cyano
• carbon dosing cyano
• Vodka Dosing by 'Genetics' and 'Stony_Corals' - Reefkeeping.com - first time I've seen this article, but it covers almost every issue I've theorized about here, inlcuding O2 depletion.
• kalkwasser - focuses more on vinegar, but generally applies to carbon dosing

-Matt

 

[Reefing Madness]

Put words where ever you wish to put them.
You have access to my tank pictures. I suggest you look at them. If i'm to cheap for the hobby, my tank looks pretty darn good then......
O2 depletion, only happens with an underrated skimmer.
I can get tank size and call what the MLS per day for maintenance will be, in any tank, thats how much I know about dosing Vodka, and I've done it enough on here that we can ask several of the happy aquarists that are doing it, and have established also that it works, without all the hoops supposedly to jump through. I give my own routine on how to bring them down, and I'm afraid I can do it in 2-4 weeks, and not in 9 months. Yes, its that easy.

 

[watchguy123]

You have to run a skimmer while dosing.
Thats the great thing with carbon dosing, you keep the levels where you want them, and not have to keep chasing expensive water changes. You keep the fish you want to keep. And overshooting carbon dosing, is pretty tough to do, in order to stress out anything you'd have to practically dump in the bottle. I've dosed some pretty heavy amounts, to the point of bacterial cloud build up for a couple of weeks, didnt' lose a fish, nor a coral for that matter.
As long as I've been dosing, its no different or stressful to the inhabitants than anyone else dosing alk or cal, its unnoticed by them.
No as far as it being a theory??? It works, no theory about it, I've been at this to long to call it a theory.
Its fast, simple and does not harm, unless the person doing the dosing is drinking it while putting it in the tank also.
Its cheap. You change out water when you feel its needed for trace elements.
Only thing that would beat it, is if you had a large enough ATS to support your tank, then yes, that would be actually cheaper than dosing, in the long run.

I enjoyed looking at your tank photographs and your comments from above . I don't carbon dose so i don't have the experience that you do with this technique. But I have a few questions for you. I assumed with a bacterial bloom and white cloudy water for weeks that there would be severe low level oxygen, how do you think the livestock managed through that or do you think the skimmer oxygenated enough of the water even with a bloom. I also noticed that you don't have a great deal of coral so what do you think the impact of an extended bacterial bloom would have on an sps dominant tank. This is the picture thread I looked at: TheReefingMadness's Library | Photobucket. The reason for the question is probably obvious but I really am surprised that you did not have any negative sequalae

I so much enjoy these threads and this forum to share and exchange information. It's so nice to be able to glean information from those experienced with different techniques from my routine

I appreciate your sharing and input.

 

[mcarroll]

Put words where ever you wish to put them.
You have access to my tank pictures. I suggest you look at them. If i'm to cheap for the hobby, my tank looks pretty darn good then......
O2 depletion, only happens with an underrated skimmer.
I can get tank size and call what the MLS per day for maintenance will be, in any tank, thats how much I know about dosing Vodka, and I've done it enough on here that we can ask several of the happy aquarists that are doing it, and have established also that it works, without all the hoops supposedly to jump through. I give my own routine on how to bring them down, and I'm afraid I can do it in 2-4 weeks, and not in 9 months. Yes, its that easy.

I didn't mean to imply that you don't have an awesome method....just that given the problems people have (see links), not everyone seems to be aware of it (have you written it into an article yet? We talked about doing that before, didn't we?), and that despite formulas that apparently work, we all don't really understand HOW CARBON DOSING WORKS. We have (some) good outcomes, but the evidence so far does not support our hypothesis of what's going on in the tank. The research that's been done (nothing to do with me) indicates that IT DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK LIKE WE THINK.

And FWIW, it's still easier (and cheaper, if you do it right) to keep a bigger or less-stocked tank (same thing) and/or run an ATS.
(The building of an ATS is somewhat less easy than the running of one though!)

-Matt

 

[ChristopherKriens]

One "theory" part of carbon dosing that I do have a problem with is that I don't see reefs anywhere in nature being carbon dosed. There are natural parallels for pretty much every other husbandry tool we like to apply - skimmers, algae, etc. I may discover I'm mistaken on this count and there are indeed some parallels, but to me the lack of a parallel in nature serves as mark against it for general use.

Here's another link to Wikipedia.

 

[mcarroll]

Here's another link to Wikipedia.

The link does snot help by itself. Could you elaborate what you think is relevant about that or how that applies?

Are you saying nature is not a perfect subject to model? I'm not sure what your point is, but I was a Phil. minor once, so I'll bite.

-Matt

 

[jt17]

I am currently using biopellets and prefer them over other bacteria food (vodka, vinegar, etc) in that the bacteria is within the reactor (were the food stays) versus dosing the food (vodka, vinegar, etc) to the water column, which will end up feeding other bacteria and algae, that is not wanted.


I am seriously looking at the NatuReef and trying to find out information about how it works. Their website is useless and I've found out more information on the RC site then on the NaturReef. I still need to understand how it works, especially the phosphate side of export.

The reason you still battle phosphates is due to the biopellets. When I ran BP for a year and a half I always had 0 nitrates and .12-.3 phosphates. No algae but also no coral growth. It's hard to dial in BP without creating a nitrogen deprived system. Since going to vinegar I have less issues with phosphates. I prefer to keep the bacteria in the DT on the live rock instead of a remote reactor that is succeptible to spoiling during power outages or cycling whenever the reactor needs cleaning.