Little Sugar dosing experiment.

[Kryten]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

I would encourage people to try dosing sugar but start with much lower doses eg. 1/8 teaspoon per 100 gallons

And is that every day?

[Farrmanchu]

Everyday, you want to be consistent, so the organisms can always feed off the Carbon. Start low, I found that as I increased the dosage, I ended up with too little Nitrate, my Macroalgae started to shrink. I like my system to have around 5ppm Nitrate, so I stopped dosing. If I get an algae bloom, or Nitrate problems, I'll start again, and slowly ramp up the dosage until I get the results I'm looking for.

[i have crabs]

what about tanks with no skimmer?

[andresont]

Originally Posted by michika

Andresont,

Did you take any before or after photos? I know you said you stopped dosing in your original post, but how did you do it? Did you just dump it into a high flow area? How did you decide how much to dose? Is there a calculator out there, like there is say for alkalinity, or calcium?

I must apologize , I did not make any photos and started dosing acting on the hunch and no particular calculator. yes in the high flow area
However I wanted to try and see the effect on small dose versus a large one so I was dosing a ½ of tea spoon in cup of RO/DI water and then half a cup went in 6 gal and second half in 60 gal so there is 10 times deference in water volume.

First time I just dropped sugar in my Nano skimmer out flow and it (Sugar) end up right on top of my SPS frag, I was a little upset with my own stupidity but, this sps frag was the one that displayed better polyp expansion 3 days later.
Neon green open brain coral in the same 6 gal Nano tank shriveled and even though I discontinued dosing still not opening now (5 days after)
Some red slime was immediately gone .
That was all I could see in the small 6 gal tank.

In 60 gal tank was even less effect (obviously), all I noticed was disappearance of the red slime (I had very little, tiny spot on one of the pipes) and that’s it did not see any reaction from corals and or other live stock.

[kadaytar]

Dosing sugar works but else than starting from very little amounts there are some other things that you should pay attention. After consuming nitrates and phosphates bacteria dies and establishes a film on the surface. If you remove this film phosphates and nitrates will be removed. To be able achive this you need a good surface skimming and a realy realy good protein skimmer. High bacteria population depletes the oxygen level so a good PS helps you out . Photesynthetic microalgae provides 40-50 % of coral's nutritional need. When you reach zero nitrates and phosphates corals will starve to death if you don't feed them with appropriate food. Also you should take the power outages into consideration. If you don't have a supplemantal solution for power outages oxygen level will go down very fast because of the high bacteria population and your animals will saphocate. If the reason for high nitrates and phostphates is your equipment or system i don't recommend you to dose any types of carbon source including Zeovit. I think Italian Blue coral method is safer than dosing only sugar. Since it is a homemade recipe that contains sugar as well else than reducing nitrates and phosphates it provides a good food source for the corals.

[andresont]

Good point about O2.
yes ! my ORP dropped about 60 points, i just realised that!

[Snappy]

I've have heard of the vodka thing before but I figured after dosing yourself with vodka, just like women at the bar all the tanks look better too.

[michika]

Originally Posted by Snappy

I've have heard of the vodka thing before but I figured after dosing yourself with vodka, just like women at the bar all the tanks look better too.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

This is nothing new.

Why not try to fix the problem in a "safer" way than adding a carbon source. You are playing with fire. I have never dosed sugar myself but my brother had for years. He had tried it twice and both times, ended up with tank crashes. Long term, I think after about a year and a half, in one of his tanks, most corals began to get quite brown. I have read about why this happens when you dose sugar but I forget why. I think it was also most soft corals turning brown. IMO, adding a carbon source makes a tank very unstable over the long term. Why not just do things right, get the right equipment and forget dosing carbon all together! Add a refugium if your nitrates are high, get a better skimmer if your skimmer doesnt pull out thick brown skimmate, skim wet if needed, feed less, ect., ect.

Another interesting thing is, I read an article a while ago about how in a few spots in the caribbean, corals were bleaching from from waste being pumped into the ocean. Traced it back to very high simple sugars...same as what your putting in your tank. I think the levels were off the charts and nothing like what people are dosing but still doesnt make sense to add.

Personally, I think you need to find the source of the problem.