Vinegar Dosing
- Thread starter h2pvnus
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neddog
Community Member
how is it used exactly?
h2pvnus
Active Member
neddog
Community Member
cool thank you so Its the same as dosing with vodka just a little bit safer.
chrisfraser05
Community Member
yup that's what I use too here in the UK. Been using it for over a year now.
Vodka has a higher carbon ratio than vinegar.
But it's also more expensive...so you have to choose what you believe suits your needs the most. Because they both work similar.
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chrisfraser05
Community Member
I wouldn't still be using it if it wasn't good
I started using it in a background dose as I had been having problems with lights on my ATS.
I found that my LED's were burning out, causing nitrate spikes in the process.
I ended up relying on the Vinegar dosing and at one point had the ATS off completely.
My nitrate about 2ppm now, I run the ATS with low lighting, only harvesting about 50g of algae a fortnight, but I feed heavly.
I was up to about 50ml a day of vinegar back before christmas, I have come down to a maintanance dose of 20ml now.
marke
Active Member
I am dosing 75 mil of vinegar. I feel those with elevated nutrient levels should be carbon dosing. Vodka which I have used before is as effective but sometimes feeds cyano better at the startup. I was happier with vinager. Cost about $3 per gallon, a dosing pump $80, and a timer or attach to apex as I have done. It's cheap and very effective and safe. Vinager does lower ph a little where vodka might not but it's not enough to be concerned. If you worry about ph add kalk to your top off to offset the drop in ph, besides kalk has other benefits. Make sure you have a good skimmer if carbon dosing.
tinctorus
Active Member
That is exactly what I use for dosing in my tank right now and have been using it for over a year with amazing results
After about 4 or 5 weeks of using it I started to see a difference in my corals and now the growth rate of my corals is triple what it was before using it and the colors are incredible now from what they were
The only thing I notice is you do need really keep an eye on things because if you are dosing to much you can develop an algae growth problem
After about 4 or 5 weeks of using it I started to see a difference in my corals and now the growth rate of my corals is triple what it was before using it and the colors are incredible now from what they were
The only thing I notice is you do need really keep an eye on things because if you are dosing to much you can develop an algae growth problem
marke
Active Member
I agree carbon dosing will bring out better color and growth due to a reduction of nutrients. But how does it grow algae due to overdosing? I thought and have experienced a reduction in algae due to vinager. When overdosed on vodka (like at the bar last night) I have noticed this white strange growth but not algae. When this is seen and phos and nitrate are super low cut your dosing to a 50% maintance level.
mcarroll
10K Club member
I Get It! Wait...
We all tend to talk about carbon dosing like we understand it (me too), but we really don't. So the surprising outcomes like blooms of algae or bacteria shouldn't really be surprising - they're just a reminder that we really don't understand what's going on.
You'll have to Google the sources on this, but: The one serious look into bio-pellets found there were no bacteria populating the pellets. The one or two serious looks into carbon dosing found no increase in bacteria in the water column. Everyone who messes with carbon dosing thinks both of those things are true, more or less. (You don't have to read many how-to articles to confirm this.) We really don't understand it.
So that doesn't mean pellets, vodka, etc don't work, but what are they really doing? No bacteria in the water column from carbon = no bacteria to skim, but we all more or less presume this is what's happening...and again, skimming really does seem to increase nutrient export while carbon dosing BUT WHY?
Another "why?" is inability of folks who carbon dose to keep their tanks with high alkalinity - problems with burned tips and sometime pH issues seem related...and again WHY?
We clearly need a lot more of those serious looks into carbon dosing if we're going to eventually understand it.
Just A Thought
Dunno if I'm the first to correlate carbon dosing with garden composting, but composting is another realm where results are highly variable depending on the carbon you put in the system. Folks who compost look at the carbon ratios of what they add to their compost pile to maintain an "optimum" ratio.
For Example
If you mis-use wood chips, which are a very concentrated form of carbon, and mix them into your garden topsoil before planting instead of only covering the soil with them, you will activate bacterial (and probably other microbial) processes that will consume every speck of nitrogen in the surrounding soil until they've completely digested the carbon source (wood chips).
Any plants in that ground usually wilt, or worse. Seedlings would die from the inability to compete with the microbes for nitrogen.
I figure somehow we're seeing parallel effects when we overdose our reefs. We just need something like C:N to go by when dosing our tanks....and I think some folks may have made some progress on this front (but I can't find the link).
$0.02
-Matt
snwmnky007
Active Member
Matt interested points. Thank you
_sludgefactory
Valuable Member
The bacteria forms a mulm on the rock and other places it can grow. It's not going to overly populate the water column. That's why in the Zeovit system they use stones as a growth media for the bacteria. The bacteria then only enters the water column when you agitate the stones daily. This is one of the reasons a blast off my rocks with a Kent Marine Sea Squirt once a week.
_sludgefactory
Valuable Member
This is Dr. Randy Holmes-Farley's article on carbon dosing. As his phd is in chemistry I consider him to be one of the main authorities in reef chemistry. http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/inde...r-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium
