adding sugar to lower nitrate

[apu701]

i have been reading up on adding sugar (or vodka) to increase anareobic bacteria. i did notice some people from this forum also asking for more info on these threads.

my question is how has it worked for the people that have used it? that old thread is pretty old enough for the people that have tried it to say if it works or not?

i know there is people saying u can only keep a reef by doing waterchanges and skim like cracy. yes this works very well for many people. But if there is a way to make life a bit easier then why not try it out. increasing the bacteria that reduce nitrates and phosphates and letting them "export" the nutrients out that way seems similar to using cheato to "export" out the nutrients.

for those who have tried it, is there any bad side even if u use it properly (ie. dose it correcly and slowly). is there any good side to it? i had read many people say it does work. and others saying it killed everything when they overdosed.

k anyone care to give their input??

[seldin]

Apu,

I have tried this for a short period of time. It does work. It took about 2 weeks for the nitrates to drop to 0. Remember, you have to have extremely high water gph, or you can suffocate your fish. You are supposed to add a small amount daily, and increase the dosage. I noticed at first, it was not working for me, because my UV was on. So make sure you don't have it on, if you have a UV.

My problem is that I was not able to read about long term affects on doing this. At first, it will cloud the water, as the bacteria population starts to grow.

Another interesting concept is buying a nitrate reactor (not sure about what this is), but you are supposed to feed this thing too. The reason I like the sugar, is that it is very cheap. Some people say, corals don't like the sugar.

I stopped doing it, because I was just looking for a short term solution and was worried about the long term affects.

Hope this helps.