NEW Vodka and Vinegar Dosing Charts

[Miami Reef]

My nitrates haven’t went down yet. Been dosing vodka for a few weeks now and at 6ml for around a 100-110 gal system.

Ive dosed 6 ml for 5 days now and still haven’t budged.

How high is the NO3? Can your test kit accurately detect a few ppm NO3 drop?

 

[doubleshot00]

How high is the NO3? Can your test kit accurately detect a few ppm NO3 drop?

Using hanna Nitrate HR. It went down to 15.9 then went right back up just a few days later. Just weird. I have kept the feeding constant.

 

[Miami Reef]

Using hanna Nitrate HR. It went down to 15.9 then went right back up just a few days later. Just weird. I have kept the feeding constant.

You can increase the dose to 10mL per day if everything continues to look good.

 

[Garf]

Using hanna Nitrate HR. It went down to 15.9 then went right back up just a few days later. Just weird. I have kept the feeding constant.

I'd ignore the 15.9 reading. What are you trying to get it down to? I doubt mid 20's are causing any grief.

 

[doubleshot00]

I'd ignore the 15.9 reading. What are you trying to get it down to? I doubt mid 20's are causing any grief.

10-12 is my target but its also not going up either and I haven’t been doing WCs to.

 

[Asthix]

I can't find any Vinegar that is specified as "distilled" in the EU.
I only find clear, white vinegar called "alcohol white vinegar 8%", is it the same ?

I've dosed it in the past, but quickly found that my acropora tissue was bubbling, like bubble of water under the tissue that would pop and cause a necrosis.
Stopped immediately when I stopped dosing it.

Now just put back Vodka but I have to say that Vinegar is much cheaper if working the same way.

 

[Miami Reef]

@Randy Holmes-Farley

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I expect any white food vinegar is a fine choice.

 

[Asthix]

I expect any white food vinegar is a fine choice.

Thanks,
I'll make a mix of vinegar and vodka in case vinegar go wrong for me

Any idea about the bubbly tissue on healthy acropora? I need to find pictures I took few years ago but it was completely correlated with the vinegar dosing at the recommended amount.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks,
I'll make a mix of vinegar and vodka in case vinegar go wrong for me

Any idea about the bubbly tissue on healthy acropora? I need to find pictures I took few years ago but it was completely correlated with the vinegar dosing at the recommended amount.

Sorry, I don’t know what that is and haven’t heard of it before.

 

[Miami Reef]

Thanks,
I'll make a mix of vinegar and vodka in case vinegar go wrong for me

Any idea about the bubbly tissue on healthy acropora? I need to find pictures I took few years ago but it was completely correlated with the vinegar dosing at the recommended amount.

Use your own intuition. If you believe the issue stems from vinegar but goes away with vodka, use the vodka. The price difference isn’t worth the health of your corals.

 

[doubleshot00]

You can increase the dose to 10mL per day if everything continues to look good.

Raised it to 8 ml for 5 days and my no3 dropped to 14 and the po4 went to .02

I definitely dont understand reef tanks. LOL

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Raised it to 8 ml for 5 days and my no3 dropped to 14 and the po4 went to .02

I definitely dont understand reef tanks. LOL

There is a lot of testing variability, but those numbers seem fine to me.

 

[mikst]

I want to thank all of the contributors to this thread. I'm only about page 6 reading thru the 11 pages, but I've learned a lot I feel. I decided I learned enough to try out a little. We always have a gallon jug of WWV at the house so I chose to dose that. Got a small container for the vinegar and using a pharmacy kids oral syringe (new from package, not used ) to dose.
I've been dosing for 5 days now. Corals seem happy. I see a couple new stalks on my palys and they're getting their color back. Part of this could of course be from stability since I moved them into the house from the garage that was getting warmer than I'd like. I'll test water parameters tomorrow and see where they are.

Here are pics of my sw and FW quarantine tanks side by side. Yes, that's a pirate skeleton on a toilet in the FW qt.

Yes, the sw qt is very full of rock. It's cycling and curing and stuff while I get my display tank set up.

 

[mikst]

For my ten gallon, I did 2.5ml vinegar for 7 days. No adverse reaction. So I upped to 5ml. This may sound weird but I swear the water clarity improved, not that it was bad it just want from clear to more clear.

Anyway, I tested this evening. Api master kit and I'm still getting used to reading the colors on nitrate and phosphate. I feel pretty confident that in reading nitrates accurately at 40 and it hasn't come down. Phosphate is pretty hit and miss for some reason. It went from 2 to 1.0. I'll call that an anomaly in me not knowing how to test properly.
Anyway, with no change in nitrates, I upped vinegar to 10 ml today.

It's very interesting this concept of giving carbon to the tank in order to feed bacterium in the water column. I like the idea of that bacteria consuming nitrate and phosphate in ratio, the bacteria is then consumed by successively greater order creatures to complete the food web.
I am accustomed in freshwater world to have so much filter media surface area that the nitrifying bacteria vastly out compete the free floating heterotrophic bacteria that eat DOCs and make the water column appear hazy. The idea is to keep the water bacteria free to avoid overwhelming fish immune systems and make them susceptible to disease.
Just pontificating.

 

[Brad Wilkins]

Hi! I'm new to reefing and have been reading this thread with much interest.
Im slowly getting the gist of whats required as far as carbon dosing is concerned.
My system is a 198g/750L and i've just started dosing to lower my Nitrates with AF Nitrophos minus 20ml per day and thats lowered Nitrates form 50+ppm to a stable 20ppm and Phosphates to 0.11ppm. Cant seem to lower it more than that over 2 week. but due to limited space and a sudden decline in in Alk and Cal i've started using Kalkwasser and vinegar 4% acidity ( all i could get for the moment) 960ml per day so thats around 20ml a day of vinegar.
Is there any foreseeable adverse effects of dossing 20ml vinegar Kalkwasser mix and 20ml Nitrophos minus ?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Hi! I'm new to reefing and have been reading this thread with much interest.
Im slowly getting the gist of whats required as far as carbon dosing is concerned.
My system is a 198g/750L and i've just started dosing to lower my Nitrates with AF Nitrophos minus 20ml per day and thats lowered Nitrates form 50+ppm to a stable 20ppm and Phosphates to 0.11ppm. Cant seem to lower it more than that over 2 week. but due to limited space and a sudden decline in in Alk and Cal i've started using Kalkwasser and vinegar 4% acidity ( all i could get for the moment) 960ml per day so thats around 20ml a day of vinegar.
Is there any foreseeable adverse effects of dossing 20ml vinegar Kalkwasser mix and 20ml Nitrophos minus ?

I don't know what's in that product.

The vinegar may well lower nitrate faster when both are used, and I'd start cutting back on the nitrophos minus if that happens.

 

[Brad Wilkins]

Awsome! Thanks Randy

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Awsome! Thanks Randy

You're welcome.

Let us know what happens.

 

[Brad Wilkins]

Can anyone tell me why Fermented White Vinegar isn't recommended? It seems that's what most shops sell here in Australia.