Okay so I'm keeping an sps dominant tank, it'll be 1 old year in may. Last October I started vodka dosing, because after months of not testing for no3, I tested & got a reading of 10 with an elos kit. So in dec. no3 had dropped to 2ppm with vodka & some very thorough water changes from the sump area of the tank. I followed the vodka dosing by genetics guide to the tea, & cut dose in half.
Water was crystal clear, no3 was staying at 2ppm, but at this point a bunch of my coraline started to bleach. At that point I stopped dosing vodka daily, until about mid feb when the coraline was very purple again & I started to notice a bit of green hair starting. It was likely due to a bacterial die off from lack of vodka, so I went & bought 3 turbo snails, to replace the former 3 that I think had starved from lack of algae during the 1st round of vodka, & then started vodka again at my former maintenance dose of .03 ml per day on 55 gal. & up to Everything has been good up until this week. After my last water change on the weekend, which again was very thorough & from the sump, the
water again is crystal clear & corline is starting to show white specs. I can only assume it's from the clarity of the water, & better light penetration due to the vodka dosing after the the
deep cleaning. This brings to mind a possible warning about cleaning sumps,
make sure to do it very regularly. I never thought that my water was not clear but the correlation between cleaning my sump & the water clarity is there, & I suspect the slight change in clarity due to both vodka & the water change from the sump as the reason for the onset of coraline bleaching(corals are fine though). I plan on reducing the vodka dose in half again & giving away the 3 turbo's as there is no more algae for them to eat in just a few weeks. Be careful how fast you change the clarity even if it's a slight change.
