Vodka Dosing - The Hit List!

[lvsuckerfish]

how many still use GFO while dosing vodka? if I could get away without having to use GFo I would be a happy camper.

 

[Paul_N]

Can someone give me a crash course in dosing? I want to dose my 250g. How much should I start with, do I need to run the skimmer, etc.??

PS. Does dosing help with bubble algae?

Rev here is a great place to start: Vodka Dosing by 'Genetics' and 'Stony_Corals' - Reefkeeping.com

I have never had bubble algae so I am not sure. <knocking on wood>

 

[dakotasreef]

how many still use GFO while dosing vodka? if I could get away without having to use GFo I would be a happy camper.

I still run phosguard in a reactor, but only change it every 2 months. I just keep it there as a back up. I would guess that if I removed it though, I would have to ween it off to avoid a spike in nutrients.

 

[Paul_N]

how many still use GFO while dosing vodka? if I could get away without having to use GFo I would be a happy camper.

It took me about year and a half but I am GFO free for a little over 6 months...:bigsmile:

 

[aharrow]

I have done both vodka dosing and MB7 plus vodka dosing. I would highly recommend the MB7 and vodka together. You start with MB7 for two weeks then after you drop down to a maintenence level you introduce vodka at your maintenance levels. You will understand the maintenance levels after reading those articles others posted and what they mean.

good : Zero Phos and zero Nitrates. Some people never achieve zero levels some do. Hanna is the only way to confirm Phos as we all know the other test kits just can't get there. Crystal clear water
Bad : cyano bloom on sand bed. mostly a reddish purple for me. At the height of vodka dosing it would form a mat. Horribly annoying to me.
colors for me looked faded. SPS browned, some chalices looked dull, some looked great, Zoanthids hated it, polyps wouldn't open fully. Monti's didn't have great color, looked faded. I dosed amino acids to try and offset faded colors. Used Zeo sponge power, zeo amino acid concentrate, brightwell aminos. I tried them all.

Once I stopped dosing colors took off on my SPS, chalices, and zoas. But let me say most people have great success with the Vodka dosing. I just didn't get the results I wanted. It crushed my phos and nitrate levels and mostly took care of the algae situation in my tank. So would I do it again? Sure I would run a three month cycle to drop nutrients in the tank.

 

[Fragged_it]

I don't want to derail this thread, but this sounds like more effort than it's worth? You move from GFO changing once a month to a daily regime. I run a sulphur denitrator and GFO, which effortlessly maintains untestable amounts of nitrates and phosphates.....

 

[m and m]

Alot of people get GREAT color, one of the over looked keys i think is you NEED the MB7 to be dosed properly almost all the posts in here i could find what they where most likly doing wrong just be reading what they wrote. I think you need to up your feeding a little bit, dose the MB7 and Quality Amino acides for vodka to work properly, when you have it all in tune it works right. Like the cyno prob people are having is simply they are not dosing enough MB7 daily. If your gonna do vodka you can't be half done you need to go full fledged from the start like. Quilty test, hanna meter Large amount of MB7 and some high end Amino acid.

 

[SDguy]

My reef started out great. Acros grew like weeds. I could buy half dead ones for pennies on the dollar and drop them in my tank. They would heal and grow and color up. Then I started to add fish.....

Just prior to vodka dosing, my acros were all brown, many receeding, and I couldn't even keep montis alive at all. I've now been vodka dosing for over two years, have WAY too many fish (more than I care to mention) and my acros and montis have never looked better. I had a very specific known problem with my tank (high fish load) and began vodka doing because of it. I didn't just do it thinking it was a fix all for any unknown issue...

I don't have cyano, and I never use bacterial additives, FWIW.

 

[CoralBandit]

Carbon dosing hinges totally on skimming so yes, you need to run the skimmer. You are encouraging the growth of bacteria that need nitrates, phosphates, and organic carbon. Normally they are limited by the amount of carbon and cannot reproduce and take up all the nitrate and phosphate. By adding that third piece of organic carbon, the bacteria increase and subsequently take up the nitrate and phosphate. The important part is skimming out these bacteria, as that is where the export comes from.

This article would be a good place to start.

All this + ethanol is a carbon which is a neat one because it is slightly amphipathic meaning it has (+) charge characteristics from the carbons and (-) charge characteristics from the alcohol group (OH-). The + charges allow it to bind to other carbon molecules (lipids) that are smaller or similar sized and thus "flocculation" occurs, the - charge characteristics from the OH group bind the larger over all molecule to water and thus allow the skimmer to pull out otherwise very hard to pull out organics. This IMO is the major reason for the added skimming effect.

Bad - None if used correctly, Rev The alcohol we ingest is not actually too bad for us its the acetaldehyde which our livers enzymes turn ethanol into. Acetaldehyde is the poison which causes the most damaging effects so as long as you dont go throwing human liver enzymes into your tank you should be golden and your talking about minuscule amounts.

 

[CoralBandit]

Can anyone actually prove to me why you would need to add bacteria to a tank with bacteria in it.... Bacteria grow at ridiculous rates and die off at an equal rate relative to their food source.... So if you add the food (Carbon, NO3, and PO4) then they will grow accordingly.... Why would you throw your money away? I have always just dosed vodka and had great success.