Vodka dosing.. HELP!
 

I've been dosing vodka and Microbakter 7 for 4 weeks.. I started with 0.5ml in the first week then went up to 1ml in the second week and when I got to 2ml I started seeing this white film on the glass.. So I cut my dosing to 1.5ml.
I keep getting the white film and I don't know if I should cut my dose again.

My phosphates are 0.03 (Hanna Phosphate Checker) and my Nitrates around 20-25.

Before I started dosing vodka I had them around 30/40ppm :neutral:
I never had Nitrates soo high before. I used to have them at 0ppm.
I went to FL for a month (It's been like 8 months) and then to Peru (6 months ago) and my neighbour took good care of my fish, he top-off the 1st two weeks with RO/DI and the other two weeks with tap water and he probably overfeed the fish.
I came back to an amazonas and diatoms everywhere! I have no more hair algae but I'm still fighting with some diatoms on my sand bed.. I want to get my Nitrates back to 0! And I can't seem to get them under 20ppm :twised:

Any help would be greatly appreciated :mrgreen:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php
Here is a dosing schedule. Maybe you should read/do it better. Pretty sure I didn't double up at the star of week 2, & it sounds like you did see a drop in No3... so at that point you should've stopped adding mooore??? The white film is a bacterial bloom. Use the Scale for 80 proof.

Thanks! I was following that schedule, I guess I should cut the dose to get rid of the bacterial bloom. I'll see what happens :neutral: I'll start dosing 1ml.

Are you just using Vodka or are you also adding sugar and vinegar?

Only Vodka but I'm thinking of changing to Probidio, only Biotim and Bio Digest. I don't know if someone has any experience with the method :mrgreen:

how many times a week are you doing water changes? Maybe start doing 25% weekly to manually export the nitrates.

I wouldnt start switching methods all of a sudden - may end up doing more harm than good. Cut back on the vodka dosing and check your ro/di to ensure TDS is at 0.

I do about 10 to 15% of weekly water changes, I may start doing 20 to 30 :mrgreen: My ro/di it's at 0ppm I have a TDS meter, thanks! :wink:

just in case, have you calibrated your tds meter recently?

Prodibio is a good product.

As for VSV method, the recipe I was using is 750ml Vodka, 175ml White Vinegar and 3.5 Tablespoons white sugar. I would reduce the amount you add and then slowly increase it.