Taking action thanks to my previous thread "Vodka Dosing"

I started dosing about 2 months ago. I'm now getting the white slime on the glass, so have reduced my dose to every other day (1ml) and my nitrates are now down to 5 which is the lowest they have been for absolute yonks!!!
 
catpicklesdog, did you keep increasing the dosage as weeks progressed? Or should i just stick at 2.5ML for a while?
 
I would take it very slow and easy on the vodka dose, I personally would not rush to increase.
Most of the time I see this done it's on reefs w/ heavy sps.
Many see vodka as some kind of magic bullet, but there is great risk as well.
I personally wouldn't do this on a FO system, in fact I'm hesitant to do this on my own reef w/ sps.
I would continue to seek out what is causing excessive nutrient issues.
 
Hey guys,

I was doing typical maintence on my tank today. I started thinking, i dont overfeed the fish, i switch from dry food and frozen food to help waste control and ensure the fish's health. Were is the P04 coming from??? Where is the NO3 coming from??? I always clean the sand when changing water, move the rock work around every once in a while. I clean my mechanical filter out every week. I realized what i havent cleaned. My biological media which consists of my eheim efisubstrat pro. Some random fluval bio media. Then refugium mud and plants. ALSO, i have 2 huge bio sponges to ensure no ammonia or nitrite rising. Ive never cleaned any of the sponges. SO i decided to clean the sponges today! Ive never seen so much feces come out! I feel so stupid!!!!!! I am curious to see the way the levels drop overnight. They have to drop!! In a couple of weeks when good bacteria starts building in the sponges again, i will clean the rest of the media. I dont want to clean it all at once obviously. I feel so stupid!! Its the basic things that could cause a problem.
 
Oh, well there's a big part of your problem right there, and not the fact that you didn't clean these, but rather that you even use these.
Best advice is to remove ALL mechanical media and sponges, PERIOD!
Do this slowly so you do not shock the system, but media, sponge, bio's have no place in marine aquariums.
These are all nitrate sinks.
You will notice a big change for the positive in doing so, I gaurantee it.
 
z28sseater said:
...i switch from dry food and frozen food to help waste control and ensure the fish's health. Were is the P04 coming from???
Click to expand...

Could be coming from the frozen food.

Here's an example: (a test I did some time ago)

16oz container of RO/DI water (phosphate 0.00ppm):
rodi.jpg


A single cube of frozen mysis shrimp is added to the RO/DI water. Some of (but not all) the phosphate in the frozen food begins to leach out during the thawing and soaking process:
mysisrodi.jpg


10 minutes later I test a sample of the cup water with a phosphate meter (result displayed as mg/L or ppm):
po4resultmysiscube.jpg


The 0.67ppm is how much that leached out in only in 10min, not sure what the result would be if I tested an hour later. Of course the PO4 from this single cube would be diluted down to perhaps undetectable levels by the tank's volume, but PO4 would accumulate over time if feeding is done on a daily/near-daily basis with a greater quantity of food and wasn't reduced by water changes.
 
Yeah, alot of people rinse mysis in RO for this reason.
There are nets w/ tighter mesh that work best for this.
Thats another good step in the right direction.
 
intrested in this
 
Davocean,

So i understand about removing the mechanical media and sponges and such. You mention to remove media and bio in addition?? are you meaning all of my biological media such as ehfisubstrat pro???? What is going to remove the ammonia and nitrite??? I have some good sized fish that need to eat lol. Would my live rock and sand and refugium sand really be enough to remove my ammonia and nitrite?
 
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