Okay I have been doing some reading.......(perchance in another forum) on adding sugar to your tank to feed your bacteria. An interesting concept and from what I can tell can increase the output of your skimmer......has anyone had any experience with this? tried it and have first hand OBJECTIVE experience and/or researched this topic in depth?
Sugar???
- Thread starter Lorna
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No personal experience, but I'll one up you and suggest you do a search on "vodka" dosing on this other forum that shall remain unnamed.
no not directly. Though I have read their threads on both vodka and sugar. Actually I was reading what Randy Farley Holmes had to say about it elsewhere.......I do believe that there is some merit in the research and it behooves me to toss any idea aside without really giving it a thorough going over from more than one source.
The principle, as I understand it, is fairly simple: to grow and multiply, bacteria and plants need carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous in relatively large amounts, as well as smaller amounts of other elements. In a perfectly balanced tank, there will be enough carbon so that the bacteria and macroalgae will be able to make use of most or all of the available nitrate. If carbon is limiting, then the other elements will go unused, and nitrate will go up.
It actually seems to work. Years ago, when I first started dosing kalk with vinegar (another carbon source), my nitrate went down rapidly. It had never gone much below 20 before vinegar, but went down to about 5 with it. I would not call it a scientific finding, merely an observation consistent with the theory.
I still dose vinegar for the seagrasses, to make sure they have enough carbon for growth. Cheaper than vodka, less likely to grow fungus in the dosing reservoir than sugar.
It actually seems to work. Years ago, when I first started dosing kalk with vinegar (another carbon source), my nitrate went down rapidly. It had never gone much below 20 before vinegar, but went down to about 5 with it. I would not call it a scientific finding, merely an observation consistent with the theory.
I still dose vinegar for the seagrasses, to make sure they have enough carbon for growth. Cheaper than vodka, less likely to grow fungus in the dosing reservoir than sugar.
Thanks for the input Dave. Exactly how much vinegar are you dosing? I have read about boosting kalk using vinegar but wasn't sure how much to add. I had been dosing kalk at 2 tsp/g in my replacement water but I found that it was jacking up my ph too much. I believe that the vinegar would aleviate this wouldn't it? I am very interested in the vinegar.........do you have any suggested amounts?
A good starting amount is about 15 ml (3 tsp) per gallon. You can safely double that, but it's always good to start low. Even with vinegar, I found that dosing kalk drove my pH pretty high in my old nano. Not as much a problem with the turtle grass for some reason.
Yes and yes. Mixing with the kalk will increase the amount of dry CaOH that dissolves.Lorna said: