For the past month or so I've been working on stabilizing my nutrients. My 9-month-old tank is admittedly quite overstocked, and I also feed quite heavily, so keeping nutrients in check has been a bit of a challenge. Nitrate particularly has been difficult to bring to a more manageable level. I currently sit at 50 ppm and perform weekly 15-20% water changes to keep it there. My Phosphates have been stable for a couple of weeks since introducing PhosGuard at 0.15, which I'm mostly happy with. I also run a refugium, although my Chaeto doesn't grow as well as I had hoped.
So with all of that above, I decided to implement Carbon dosing to reduce/stabilize my nitrates without having to do such heavy water changes. I am not as much concerned with a specific number, but more want to ensure whatever that number is, that it stays relatively stable.
So far I'm dosing 35ml of Vinegar per day spread out across two hours from lights on at 10 am until about 12 pm and increasing it by about 5ml per week and testing daily to track any trends. So far I haven't noticed much change in my Nitrates, although my corals are extremely happy.
While Vinegar is being added to my system, my skimmer level immediately begins to rise and continues until the Vinegar dosing is complete, resulting in an extremely wet (almost clear) skimmate. This leads me to wonder whether or not I should be turning my skimmer off and allowing the bacteria to consume the Vinegar or is this an indication that the Skimmer is picking up that bacteria right away?
I'm curious about this as I want to make sure I'm exporting the bacteria correctly and not adding more Vinegar to the system unnecessarily. Would love to hear from some experienced folks in this area to know if what I'm observing is expected.
So with all of that above, I decided to implement Carbon dosing to reduce/stabilize my nitrates without having to do such heavy water changes. I am not as much concerned with a specific number, but more want to ensure whatever that number is, that it stays relatively stable.
So far I'm dosing 35ml of Vinegar per day spread out across two hours from lights on at 10 am until about 12 pm and increasing it by about 5ml per week and testing daily to track any trends. So far I haven't noticed much change in my Nitrates, although my corals are extremely happy.
While Vinegar is being added to my system, my skimmer level immediately begins to rise and continues until the Vinegar dosing is complete, resulting in an extremely wet (almost clear) skimmate. This leads me to wonder whether or not I should be turning my skimmer off and allowing the bacteria to consume the Vinegar or is this an indication that the Skimmer is picking up that bacteria right away?
I'm curious about this as I want to make sure I'm exporting the bacteria correctly and not adding more Vinegar to the system unnecessarily. Would love to hear from some experienced folks in this area to know if what I'm observing is expected.