when and how should I carbon dosing?

[Eeels]

I have a 29-gallon freshwater tank that I got bored of about 4 years ago. I've taken care of it well for the last 8 years but now I'm finally ready to jump into saltwater.

I've researched a ton and I have a general idea of what I want to do.

However, one of the new things I've seen is actually having to control nitrates to a much greater degree. I got away with having 10-30 ppm but corals especially SPS tend to require <2 ppm, no?

So then I figured I perform weekly 10 percent water changes but even that would be about 4 ppm (estimating my bioload). So then I looked into carbon dosing since that's more reasonable than a sump with a refugium considering this is only a 29-gallon tank.

When could I theoretically start dosing vodka into my tank? After the first couple of fish?

I've also seen that I could flatten the nitrate and phosphorous so low I create some devil spawn algae?

Again just general questions on carbon dosing or if carbon dosing would even be the right thing.

 

[Rmckoy]

I would personally avoid carbon dosing as long as possible .
once water changes are no longer effective at exporting nutrients I would consider to start carbon dosing .

as for parameters . Generally I keep my nitrates between 5-10 ppm and phosphates 0.03 to 0.1 ppm
Anything lower is welcoming as you called it “ the devils spawn ( Dino )

 

[Nano sapiens]

^^ follow that advice.

Nitrate is the near end-product of the nitrogen cycle (the final end product is nitrogen gas that mostly vents into the atmosphere from denitrification). A low level is all that's really needed (~1-2 ppm), but having levels a bit elevated at 5-10 ppm gives the aquarist time to react/correct if levels should dip too low. Having said that, there are quite a few healthy systems that run 20, 30 or even more NO3 (welcome to the ambiguous world of reef keeping!).

So nitrate is actually one of the least constrained parameters. Basically, you don't want extremely low and you don't want very high levels. It can also usually be controlled by the type and amount of food offered (assuming that the aquarium has a relatively balanced bio load for the volume and has sufficient substrate for the denitrifying bacteria).

 

[Eeels]

I would personally avoid carbon dosing as long as possible .
once water changes are no longer effective at exporting nutrients I would consider to start carbon dosing .

as for parameters . Generally I keep my nitrates between 5-10 ppm and phosphates 0.03 to 0.1 ppm
Anything lower is welcoming as you called it “ the devils spawn ( Dino )

thank you for the advice. I can certainly maintain 5-10ppm with weekly water changes.

 

[stovenut]

5-10ppm of nitrate is actually desirable IMO. Especially if you keep chaeto in a refugium. You need nitrates in order to feed your chaeto. As the chaeto take in nitrates they also take in phosphates. Reefers need to stop shooting for 0.0 nitrates.

 

[Rmckoy]

5-10ppm of nitrate is actually desirable IMO. Especially if you keep chaeto in a refugium. You need nitrates in order to feed your chaeto. As the chaeto take in nitrates they also take in phosphates. Reefers need to stop shooting for 0.0 nitrates.

I’m currently sitting at 0 nitrate and starred dosing to bring it back up above 5