- Joined
- Feb 26, 2017
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I've been in the reefing hobby for decades and I've never had a better looking or thriving aquarium than the early years. I attribute that to knowing very little at the time (the less you know, the less you change), starting out with live rock, 3" aragonite sand bed, a crappy skimmer that basically didn't pull out much of anything, and very few fish.
Fast forward to my current system that’s 5 years old. It started out with dry rock, a sprinkling of aragonite gravel (I don't like the look of bare bottom), an ATS and an oversized skimmer. I had issues initially with "the ugly stage" seemingly lasting forever. The system at the time was running sterile and I had a heck of a time trying to get nutrients up. So I added a lot more fish, turned my skimmer and ATS lights off for half the day and things turned for the better.
A few years later, the nutrients climbed to where my nitrates where running around 30ppm and phosphates around 0.4ppm. I increased run time on my skimmer and ATS to 18hrs a day and started carbon dosing. I used vinegar and gfo to slowly get nutrients back in check (no3 <2 and po4 <0.1), and today use those same methods to keep them there.
This brings me to the reason for this thread: should I continue to carbon dose?
I’ve read on more than one occasion, in this forum, that Randy Holmes-Farley would dose vinegar (even if dosing nitrates was required) because of the increased bacteria as a food source to filter feeders and other organisms. This is one of the main reasons I continue to dose vinegar, even though my nutrients are in check.
Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of adding amino acids to my vinegar dosing container to reduce po4 without the use of gfo. In doing so, I started to wonder, should I still be carbon dosing? And if so, what should i dose (amino and vinegar)? How does carbon dosing affect the macros in my ATS? How does my ATS affect carbon dosing?
Hoping those for and against carbon dosing can chime in to share your views to help me answer some of the questions above.
Thank You
Fast forward to my current system that’s 5 years old. It started out with dry rock, a sprinkling of aragonite gravel (I don't like the look of bare bottom), an ATS and an oversized skimmer. I had issues initially with "the ugly stage" seemingly lasting forever. The system at the time was running sterile and I had a heck of a time trying to get nutrients up. So I added a lot more fish, turned my skimmer and ATS lights off for half the day and things turned for the better.
A few years later, the nutrients climbed to where my nitrates where running around 30ppm and phosphates around 0.4ppm. I increased run time on my skimmer and ATS to 18hrs a day and started carbon dosing. I used vinegar and gfo to slowly get nutrients back in check (no3 <2 and po4 <0.1), and today use those same methods to keep them there.
This brings me to the reason for this thread: should I continue to carbon dose?
I’ve read on more than one occasion, in this forum, that Randy Holmes-Farley would dose vinegar (even if dosing nitrates was required) because of the increased bacteria as a food source to filter feeders and other organisms. This is one of the main reasons I continue to dose vinegar, even though my nutrients are in check.
Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of adding amino acids to my vinegar dosing container to reduce po4 without the use of gfo. In doing so, I started to wonder, should I still be carbon dosing? And if so, what should i dose (amino and vinegar)? How does carbon dosing affect the macros in my ATS? How does my ATS affect carbon dosing?
Hoping those for and against carbon dosing can chime in to share your views to help me answer some of the questions above.
Thank You