Vodka dosing to reduce nitrates/phosphates?

I do it all the time, doing it on both my tanks right now. Follow the directions and it really does work wonders IMO. Just don't overdose because your not seeing immediate results. It takes about a month before levels really start to drop.

Here is how I do it on my 75G tank.
Day 1-3 = .25ml
Day 4-7 = .35ml
Day 7-14 = .5ml
Day 14=21 = .75ml

I just keep sloooowly raising the amount I put in until I get the white film on the glass, once that happens I don't raise the dosing levels anymore, actually I drop them just a tad and then maintain that level of dosing.
 
White film is the bacteria bloom. When carbon (Vodka, VitaminC, etc) dosing what your doing is providing food for bacteria to grow and multiply. You keep raising the dosing levels until you reach the "bloom" where you know your tank/bacteria levels are saturated. Then you just maintain the dosing levels to keep the bacteria population at that point so the bacteria can clean the water for you instead of other more undesirable things like hair algae.
 
great stuff! Ace, do you manually add the alcohol or have you setup a dosing system?

Also, if I understand correctly, you now dose on a 21 day cycle, always using this system:

Here is how I do it on my 75G tank.
Day 1-3 = .25ml
Day 4-7 = .35ml
Day 7-14 = .5ml
Day 14=21 = .75ml
Click to expand...


Or was that what you started off with, and now that you found that .75 works, you use that daily?
 
I have seen it done but im afraid of overdosing and killing the livestock. the most predominate danger is that the bacteria removes oxygen from the tank and if you dose too much it will suffocate your fish.
 
Reefscape said:
Hmmmm...poses a question....Some have an RO unit because of high nitrates / phosphates....One wonders if using dechlored tap and dose vodka is an alternative.....?
Click to expand...

You'd have intermittent spikes of nitrate and phosphate this way.

I actually tried organic carbon dosing about 6-7 years ago in the form of sugar and vinegar. I'll say that I liked some results, whereas others somewhat worried me. There were too many uncontrolled variables and problems that arose under otherwise preferable conditions. Some of the background assumptions made aren't necessarily correct, either (i.e. organic carbon limitation). I won't be doing it again, myself, for my own reasons, at least.

On another note, it is interesting how trends resurface. When I first got in the hobby, there was actually some vodka dosing going on, though the proponents were fewer when compared to now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom