carbon dosing?

badfinger · Nov 17, 2014

How can you tell when to up the amount you are carbon dosing or leave it the same. Right now i have been dosing vodka in a 150gall/ w 40 sump for i would say 2-3 months. With great results. My po4 is .06, i would really like it at .04. Or under

Do i up my dose? I am dosing 2ml every other day

Reefing Madness · Nov 17, 2014

Yea, up your dose. Must have a clean system already, because your not having to dose every day.

badfinger · Nov 17, 2014

Up my dose as in dose every day or up my dose by dosing 2.5ml each day?

Reefing Madness · Nov 17, 2014

I'd start dosing evey day with the same, you should see results doing that.

EW_Fish · Nov 17, 2014

Reefing Madness said:
I'd start dosing evey day with the same, you should see results doing that.

I agree

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 17, 2014

Do you know the current nitrate level?

If it is very low, you may need to look to other methods to lower phosphate.

badfinger · Nov 17, 2014

Every time i measure it, it has been 0 but i dont know if thats true

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 17, 2014

So it may be that something like GFO might be needed to push phosphate lower.

badfinger · Nov 17, 2014

K i started that yesterday..... what about going every day with 2ml of vodka?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 18, 2014

It may help, but if nitrate is already limiting, it wont.

Nitrate kits aren't accurate enough to know with certainty, but having residual phosphate and not nitrate that persists over time is a suggestion that it may be the case.

badfinger · Nov 18, 2014

So how would i up nitrates?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 18, 2014

You can dose a nitrate source, or you can bind the phosphate with something like GFO

badfinger · Nov 18, 2014

I dont know what a nitrate source is. Food? Additive?..... and i just started using gfo

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 18, 2014

Potassium nitrate, which some people get as a stump remover.

Seachem also sells a product that likely works:

Seachem. Flourish Nitrogen

badfinger · Nov 19, 2014

So my only hesitation with uping my vodka dose is right now i have around 8.7-9.0 dkh and i am also not running a ULNS since i can pull a full cereal bowl of cheato/caluerpa out of my sump every week.

Would adding a little nitrate and uping my vodka dose help with growth and color ( which they are not bad right now, but could still be better)

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 20, 2014

I wouldn't assume they will help with growth and color.

billwill · Dec 11, 2014

With a thriving refugium of algae, it sounds like it's taking care of your nitrates and you don't need carbon dosing. I have just a refugium with no carbon dosing and my nitrates don't register on my salifert test kit. I still run gfo for phosphate