Quote:
Originally Posted by reeferfulton
Ok well thats good to hear . I keep being told that i should start carbon dosing now while my nitrates and phosphates are still low . With the theorey of do it now or play catch up later .
What eventually caused you to start carbon dosing ? what changed .
And did your start with the carbon dosing and then discover that you still had phosphates and then started GFO ?
thanks
Guess maybe i jumped the gun on buying a reactor and pump and pellets ..I was just under the thought of start now or regret later
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More my point was that you can successfully keep a reef quite healthy with just the fundamentals of reefing.
I went to carbon dosing (I use VSV + MB7) because:
1) I am a scientist and am constantly experimenting. I was curious. After trying a whole bunch of different things I found VSV to work the best for me.
2) Carbon dosing keeps the water on the cleaner side and gives me a bit of leeway in case I need to skip a water change. I run a business and am doing a PhD. My schedule is erratic to say the least; this lets me skip WCs if needs be.
3) I feed stupid amounts of food to my tank (like 1.5 to 2 cubes of mysis in a 50 gallon per day, plus a few krill for the mystery wrasse). I have several hungry mouths that belong to high-octane fish that need to be fed several times per day. On top of this I have a TON of coral (basically I keep the tank for the coral) and they tend to do better with higher feedings. Dosing keep water quality at top notch.
I started VSV after building a new tank a year and a half ago. I started after the transfer to keep the cycle to a minimum.
I prefer VSV (or vodka or vinegar) over biopellets, unless you add a recycle loop to your pellet reactor to control how much water you are processing. The problem with pellet reactors, especially on tanks less that ~180 gallons, is that they are essentially running at full throttle all the time. Many tanks had crashes from pellets when they first came out because no one realized this; you are basically starving the corals to death. Sure the corals looked great before they died, but you know so do human super models... and I wouldn't peg them as the epitome of health. The way to counteract this problem is to feed more. To me this seems silly as it's like driving your car with the gas pedal pinned while trying to slow down with your break pedal; not exactly efficient. The liquid carbon dosing methods let you dial in exactly how much needs to be dosed based on your tank requirements. If I feel the corals are being starved a bit, I back off; if the nitrates are climbing, I bump it up a bit. Can't do that with a pellet reactor unless you add a recycle loop to the reactor.
It's easier to start VSV when you have some nitrates so that you can watch the nitrates come down and dial in your dosing amount. You can start from the get go but you need to start with a small dose amount and then increase slightly as nitrates go up.
I'd start GFO right from the get go.
Just my two cents...
