Vodka

[ETORRES477]

Ive heard of people dosing their tanks with vodka to help keep their nitrates down. Does anyone know if their is any truth to this? And if so what are the dosing parameters?

 

[Jakef150]

Yes but very careful!! Do search and you ll find tons of info

Jake

 

[Reefing Madness]

I have a daily routine of vodka dosing. I keep my trates under 5. Yes it does work. Ive been doing it for a couple years now. It allows me to feed my fat fish everyday.

 

[Gamble]

Start very slow if you do it. There are lots of good articles that will help you out!

 

[ETORRES477]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the advice. Now that I know it works I can start to research which type dosing parameter will work for my tank. Thanks again!

 

[Reefing Madness]

No such thing as dosing parameters. You start out at a certain rate, and dosing goes up every week Trates don't come down. once they've come down to the levels you want, then you cut that dose in half, that is your daily routine then.

 

[ETORRES477]

what kind of rate would you start at for a 150 gallon tank, do you know of an article that might helpful for this?

 

[Reefing Madness]

Melevsreef.com - Dosing Vodka to Lower Nitrate & Phosphate
This is the way its explained, in order to get an exact dose per day.
You can however start out at 1ml, for a couple days, then got to 5mls. After the first week add 5 mls a week until they start to come down. Once they start to come down, wait until they have reached the point where you want to keep them, then cut the dose in half. That will be your daily dosage thereafter.

 

[ETORRES477]

Thanks for the help madness!

 

[ifarmer]

dosing vinegar also helps lowering nitrate just so you know

 

[GHill762]

any carbon source will work (vodka, vinegar, biopellets, etc..) some are more effective than others. be very careful, it's easy to crash a tank with cabon dosing. not to be confused with active carbon, that's an entirely different thing and somehow people always get them confused.

 

[Reefing Madness]

I dont know enough about pellets to say, but its difficult to crash a system with vodka or vinegar, youd almost have to drop in the bottles to the tanks to crash. Being as you need a skimmer first off, that and you can switch out a ton of water all at once, its quite safe carbon dosing.

 

[lars]

Does anyone dose vodka with a dosing pump?

 

[GHill762]

I dont know enough about pellets to say, but its difficult to crash a system with vodka or vinegar, youd almost have to drop in the bottles to the tanks to crash. Being as you need a skimmer first off, that and you can switch out a ton of water all at once, its quite safe carbon dosing.

that's not my understanding, but I could be wrong.

 

[Reefing Madness]

If I hadnt been doing it so long and both ways I wouldnt be able to say. But ive dosed quite a bit, and have a better understanding of quantity. Proceedure for the dosing came up long ago, and was basically dealt with that way to give you a precise dosage, going mill by mill. Ige refined the treatment so it doesnt take a year to bring down those Trates, and have a bunch of people on here followed that proceedure and have had trates come down within 3 weeks time frame, with no ill affects to the tank. My proceedure goes up 5mls a week instead of 1ml. Big jump but doesnt hurt anything. Ive got it down by water volume and where a normal daily dose will be at the end. Vinegar is used in huge amounts anyways to even start to bring down trates, so that one is even harder to overdose than vodka, but does mess with ph, of which corrects itself quickly.

 

[Connie]

Maddness: Starting on the second week, is this adding 5 mls a week to the daily dose?

Melevsreef.com - Dosing Vodka to Lower Nitrate & Phosphate
This is the way its explained, in order to get an exact dose per day.
You can however start out at 1ml, for a couple days, then got to 5mls. After the first week add 5 mls a week until they start to come down. Once they start to come down, wait until they have reached the point where you want to keep them, then cut the dose in half. That will be your daily dosage thereafter.

 

[Reefing Madness]

No Melev only adds 1mls a week, thats why it took him 9 months to get his trates down. But it was an experiment. I advise going up 5mls a week so it doesn't take forever to get them down, and it will not harm anything.

 

[Connie]

Thanks!