After the main vodka thread, there seems to be some question as to how much to start with, a lot of FUD around causing a bloom, etc. So lets get some anecdotal experiences of users. I was interested as I saw a user that was dosing over 3x more vodka on half the size of tank. So lets hear about your detail dosing of vodka/sugar
I have a display system, it's about 120 gallons net. It's all sps, a mix of frags and colonies, 5 Tridacna clams, 7 green chromis, 4 anthias, 1 purple tang. Lit by pure T5s. I started by dosing by following the protocol set forth in the original vodka thread
here. I didn't see any drop of NO3 and PO4 ( initially 10 ppm and 0 ppm respectively using LaMotte and Merck test kits) after 3 weeks. I started increasing the dosage per the article by .5ml daily. At 22ml/day, I achieved the bacteria bloom. The system was white, not to impressive for people to see! This seemed to last a couple of days. During this time both the redox and the pH decreased by 70 mv and .2 points. After the bloom cleared, I found I didn't lose anything, and started to reduce my dosing by half. Within 3 days after the bloom, my NO3 was 0ppm by lamotte. Sps lightened considerably, and I started dosing KZ aminos, and feed a lot more to my fish. All algae disappeared, with the exception of coralline. Though the coralline growth has slowed significantly. (Again, maintaining all other params consistently via a calcium reactor). I now dose a maintenance dosage of 8 ml of 80 proof vodka (Karkorov - the cheap stuff in the plastic bottle) and NO3 and PO4 are 0ppm, despite heavy feeding twice daily, and amino dosage daily. I have a BK mini 200 currently running on this.
I did notice after the dosage was getting close to the peak, that there were a lot of strands in the tank and sump. I assumed this was bacteria. Now I do dose a source of bacteria to maintain bacterial diversity in the tank.
10/10/2007, 02:59 PM
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