Vinegar/Vodka dosing

[FragIt Dan]

That's a tough one, looks like you are doing everything right. Only thing that stands out to me is the DSB, which might be a nitrate factory. I started to siphon parts of my DSB out with water changes (maybe just 5 or 10% of the sand) and washing it, then putting my clean water into the bucket with the clean sand and siphoning it back into the tank (this keeps the sand from getting all over the tank when you put it back in). The water that came out with the sand was pretty nasty, so I think this helps. I try to do this with some of my water changes now. Just be careful you don't undermine your rockwork and collapse your reef! I also only feed fish once or twice a week, corals are a bit more often though.
Dan

[rastaangel]

I VSV dosed for almost a year with amazing results. Never had any detectable nutients and I fed very heavy 2x daily. BUT it can have its down side...

An overdose can result in a crash

[daplatapus]

OUCH! Yeah that looks bad. How much did you overdose for that to happen? I read on a paper on carbon dosing that you can get bacteria buildup in unwanted areas and sometimes a bacterial bloom in the water column.

[rastaangel]

Thats what it looked like when I came home a week after the 26oz overdose even. 97% death rate

[ashr]

Ouch.. that was a huge over dose.. Im also looking at dosing.

Have you started and if so what are your results, thoughts

[daplatapus]

I never did. I got so busy with work I didn't have the time. Then I started helping a friend build their system which is still on going, although we just finished up the majority of the plumbing last night. I removed my DSB in my refugium when I took out my old sump last weekend and replaced it with a bigger newer one. I actually removed the whole refugium and plan on setting up a remote one in time.

I'm still battling dictyota algae but am really only plucking it out when I feel it's getting too big a clump. or it's looking like it's going to over run something. I purchased a used 210 gal that I plan on setting up sometime this winter and want to get a Naso tang which apparently loves this stuff so I didn't want to get rid of it now, just control it. It'll be nice to provide it with a natural food source.

[chris88]

I have carbon dosed for years off and on (mostly vinegar). It is a powerful method to control nutrients. I have never gotten cyno from dosing. The only negative side effect I have run into was a thin layer of white bacterial film on the glass and rocks. It almost looks like the green algae film you get on your glass after a day or two but instead of it being green its white. The other side effect I have notice over the years is due to over dosing. if you over dose and strip your water of all its nitrates and phosphates and your DKH is above 8 certain sps corals will get burnt tips or get pale. You can quickly resolve this when you stop dosing and feed extra. I also find adding amino acids and a few zeovit products will help with pale colors. Because of carbon dosing I do not get any algae growth in my tank and I can get away with feeding a lot and not having to worry about excess nutrients. I have to give a fair warning it is always better to dose less than suggested by most and it takes a couple of days to a few weeks to begin to work. It is very easy to over dose which can do more harm than good.

[Myka]

Cyano is expected when you do any sort of organic carbon dosing. The reason is because the water will suddenly be nutrient poor which causes the nutrients to leech from your rocks and substrate into the water column because the nutrients in the water and the nutrients in the rock always want to be the same as each other. As the nutrients are leeching out of the rocks and substrate cyano moves in and takes advantage of the suddenly high flow of nutrients moving out of the rock where it starts sucking up the nutrients before the nutrients get into the water. This is kind of handy because now you have all these nutrients bound up in this nice little cyano covering. All you have to do is daily siphoning of the cyano (use a piece of rigid airline tubing the same length as your tank height, and add some flexible airline tubing to reach down into a bucket) in the evenings before it starts to retreat. As you're siphoning the cyano out you're removing super power packs of nutrients. Eventually the rocks and substrate will quit leeching and you will not have to siphon cyano out anymore. If you don't siphon the cyano out then at night the cyano will disintegrate releasing the nutrients into the water column where algae can take advantage or the cyano will reuse it later. So if you ever see cyano you really should siphon it out!

For the record, I had poor results with vodka dosing, and won't do that again. I have heard that vinegar is a better option, but I haven't tried it.

Originally Posted by rastaangel

Thats what it looked like when I came home a week after the 26oz overdose even. 97% death rate

This has to be a typo...you didn't put 26 ounces in there did you??? Was it watered down?

[ashr]

Great info from all, thank you!! Guess what I am looking for is more colors and healthier SPS corals.