Vit C dosing

[Snaz]

Originally Posted by toytech

i use the vit c tablets from walmart (no name brand) 500mg daily for my 15 gal frag tank thats mostly zoas . Any frag ive gotten that has looked sad or starting to get fungus has cleared up quickly and im getting good growth from almost all my zoas , and my duncan is doubling in size every 2 months.

Wow. This all sounds great. How do you prepare the tablets? Crush and dissolve in tank water?

[Proteus]

I had a partial crash due to a light going. And had a few Sps get really ****ed. Was hoping to try this to see if it would help rejuvenate them

[daniella3d]

I have been dosing for many months now, but I don't dose a lot. I have seen improvement in the general health of my zoanthids. I was dosing more but if you dose too much you will start to see a white bacteria film on everything. This is detrimental to most gorgonian that just close up and do molt after molt.

I had to reduce to a very minimal dose so that my gorgonians would stay open. All of them are photosynthetic. No other coral have any adverse reaction to vitamin C. I think what the gorgonians don't like it's not the vitamin C but rather the biofilm that build up on them so they then need to molt to get clean again, and it's alot of energy wasted to molt all the time. Since I reduced the dose they rarely molt.

I now dose NoPoX and I see no adverse effect on dosing NoPoX and vitamin C together. I dose around 1 gram of sodium ascorbate in my 70 gallons per day.

[toytech]

Im lazy and just drop the tablets in a low flow area and let them dissolve , i dont have any fish so i dont have to worry about them eating the chunks.

[Proteus]

I put 1000 mg into system yesterday and skimmer went crazy. But I'll have to check ph today and see if that is y

[daniella3d]

sodium ascorbate never affect my skimmer.

[RuGlu6]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

I have been dosing for many months now, but I don't dose a lot. I have seen improvement in the general health of my zoanthids. I was dosing more but if you dose too much you will start to see a white bacteria film on everything. This is detrimental to most gorgonian that just close up and do molt after molt.

I had to reduce to a very minimal dose so that my gorgonians would stay open. All of them are photosynthetic. No other coral have any adverse reaction to vitamin C. I think what the gorgonians don't like it's not the vitamin C but rather the biofilm that build up on them so they then need to molt to get clean again, and it's alot of energy wasted to molt all the time. Since I reduced the dose they rarely molt.
.

Have you considered increasing or changing the flow patterns to help get rid of the bio film?
I find that pointing my tunzies up towards the surface creates a lot of gentle swirl kind of flow that corals like a lot

[daniella3d]

It's not even a question of flow, as the biofilm also build up on the pumps where the flow is highest. It's just a matter of carefull adjustment of dosing until things stabilize.

Originally Posted by RuGlu6

Have you considered increasing or changing the flow patterns to help get rid of the bio film?
I find that pointing my tunzies up towards the surface creates a lot of gentle swirl kind of flow that corals like a lot

[ScubaSteve]

I used to use Vit C dosing for a while with great success. I now only use it if the zoas seem to be unhappy as I already use other forms of carbon dosing.

Now, because vit c is a carbon source, you have to be careful adding it to your system. You need to take a similar approach to vit c dosing as you would with any other sort of carbon dosing: start low and slowly increase. Adding too much right off the bat will cause a bacterial bloom with can crash your tank. It can also strip nutrients really quickly from the water which can often trigger STN in acros. There is an old post I think on RC that said how much to use per tank volume and gave a dosing regimen (can't exactly remember where... maybe check with ZoaElite. He might remember.).

Titus99, if your skimmer is going nuts, you added too much. Give your tank a few days to mellow out they try again but GO SLOW!

[Proteus]

My thought exactly about overdosing. I will wait a week then start 1/4 dose

Thanks for the input from everyone