Vodka or vinegar dosing?

[Lampkindd]

Who here is dosing with vodka or vinegar and if so what is the pros and cons that you've seen as a direct result in the health and coloration in your system afterwards. Also what size dose do you use?

[OldSalty]

Always wondered about this subject as well, Someone please enlighten us!

[Zack]

I tried it on my 8 gallon a few years ago but with such a small water volume it gave me a ton of fits. I ended up stopping after a few weeks and just going back to weekly 50% water changes.

[OrionN]

In order to dose vodka or vinegar, you got to have very good skimmer. The reason why you dose these energy rich carbon sources is to provide energy and carbon for bacterial in the water to grow. The bacterial then get skim off with a very good skimmer. As Bacterial grow, Nitrogen and phosphate and a lot of the nutrients will be incorporated into the bacterial mass and exported with the skimmer. The vodka or vinegar dose tanks are very nutrient poor. Corals, due to lack of nutrients, will not have high population of zooxanthellae and will look pale, pastel color.

[FarmerTy]

I've vinegar dosed and vodka dosed over the years. I currently use biopellets which are a polymer form of carbon. Orion summed it up well, basically our tanks are carbon limited. Most tanks have plenty of nitrates and phosphates for bacteria to grow but not enough carbon.

So you add a carbon source in the form of vodka, vinegar, sugar, or biopellets and give bacteria the last piece of the puzzle needed to grow in our tanks. The bacteria will mutiply very rapidly and uptake the carbon you gave it, nitrates, and phosphates. A quick note here, it will uptake much more nitrates to phosphates which is why I only effectively use it to keep my nitrates in check while I still run GFO to remove phosphates. You can always unnaturally add more nitrates (Spectracide Stump remover is potassium nitrate) to your system to allow it to pull out even more phosphates but I find it easier and safer to just run GFO.

You then combine this with a skimmer to pull out the resultant bacteria growth, thereby, removing the bacteria and the nutrients they uptook entirely from your system.

I will say I do prefer biopellets to vodka or vinegar dosing. 1) The bacterial growth is contained in a separate container (the reactor) and not within the system itself 2) I can run the effluent of the reactor directly to the skimmer using a simple PVC plumbing tee allowing me to completely keep the growth and removal of the bacteria separate from my system 3) I don't have to dose daily like vodka or vinegar, I just refill my pellets every 6 months when it's lower.

The downsides to running biopellets is the cost of a reactor and the inability to adjust your dosing as easily as you would with vodka or vinegar dosing, where you can just change the amount you add on a daily basis.

I aim to keep my nitrates around 5-10 ppm and phosphates at 0.03 ppm. I know that initially when carbon dosing came about, it was so efficient at reducing nitrates that everyone's corals started to fade from the lack of nutrients. That's why you started seeing posts about dosing the stump remover to add nitrates back in the system. I find it easier to just adjust your carbon dosing to allow for around 5-10 ppm of nitrates and you'll still have plenty of colorful corals.

If I had a heavily stocked tank of clams like Orion, I wouldn't even think of carbon dosing as clams love nitrates! Most commercial clam farms even add nitrates to their system to boost growth!

[FarmerTy]

For those that want to nerd it up even more, denitrification is the process of breaking down nitrates into nitrogen gas in an oxygen-free environment (anaerobic), simply put. Nitrification is the conversion of ammonia/nitrite to nitrates in an oxygen-rich environment (aerobic), again, simply put. A chemist could probably break it down much further than that but for the sake of discussion, I'll leave it simple.

In freshwater systems and FOWLR systems, the main concern is nitrification, turning the ammonia and nitrite into something much less harmful to life, nitrates. That's why bioballs/trickle filters became so popular as they aided in nitrification by allowing the nitrifying bacteria a place to grow with plenty of oxygen. Enter in corals, which much prefer a lower nitrate environment. Or really I should say, WE much prefer a lower nitrate environment for them as the higher nitrates allows for more prolific growth of zooxanthallae, which are mostly brown, and with this increased zooxanthallae growth within our corals, turns everything into a brown and ugly coral.

So with reef systems that have corals, we would be much more appreciative of more spots for denitrification to remove nitrates, as generally reef tanks don't have much of an issue of nitrification because of the use of live rock. Other than the initial cycling of a tank to produce nitrifying bacteria, we almost forget about ammonia and nitrites from that point on.

Again, denitrification occurs in anoxic zones (lacking oxygen) and mainly occur in a normal reef system either in deep sand beds (DSBs) which are really needing to be deeper than 4-6" to really be effective and in the deep cores of live rock. This is our only weapon to remove nitrates from the system other than your standard water changes. That's why a steady regiment of water changes was usually the success to most tanks, it kept nitrates and phosphates low and also replaced foundation and trace elements as well. Just a quick FYI, nitrate removal is directly proportional to the percentage of water removed. If you have 20 ppm of nitrates in your system, you remove and replace 50% of your water, then you essentially have 10 ppm of nitrates in your system after the water change.

So getting back to denitrification and the removal of nitrates, besides deep in the cores of live rock, DSBs, and water changes, those were our only weapons against nitrates. Enter in carbon dosing. You grow bacteria by adding carbon, they grow, uptake a ton of nitrates and just a little phosphates, and then get skimmed out. Hooray, no more nitrates! Oops, we got too efficient at it, ease up on the carbon dosing a bit a viola, beautiful corals. I will say just for thoroughness that sulfur denitrators also are greatly efficient at removing nitrates as well.

Hope everyone enjoyed the nerd session. Back to our regularly scheduled events.

[rrasco]

Good summation guys.

[klwheat]

Here is some more good info and the table I used to dose when I started. Have had no issues with coral colors in the year since I started it.
http://reefkeeping.com/joomla/index.php/current-issue/article/116-vinegar-dosing-methodology-for-the-marine-aquarium

[leliataylor]

I started vodka dosing in November of last year (or there abouts) with the help of a friend in Oregon. I have 8 different systems and a total of 13 tanks. The smallest system is a 45 gallon cube with a 29 gallon sump. It house a single pair of seahorses whose activity and feeding response has increased dramatically. One of the systems has been running since 2009 (58 gallon tank and 29 gallon sump) and was developing a lot of GHA. Vodka dosing dosing has virtually eliminated the GHA. Another system which is a DSA 65 tank and a 29 gallon sump and developed cyano, which is now slowly clearing up. A occupied seahorse nursery system has maintained pristine water conditions, a increase in fry growth rate and no loses since last year. Overall I have seen improvements in all my systems, however keep in mind I monitor NH3, NO2, NO3, PO4, dKH, Ca, Mg, pH, SG, etc. on a regular basis. Each system has responded a little differently to the vodka dosing and one unoccupied system developed a massive bacterial bloom. If you decide to vodka or vinegar dose start very slowly, meticulously test your water parameter and run a good skimmer because dosing can send them into hyper drive.

[Frogman]

Excellent information


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