Skimmate when carbon dosing

Alex T. · Mar 18, 2011

I've been dosing vodka for a few years now in my 150 sps reef. I recently decided to use MB7 due to some periodic spurts of Cyano bacteria that I fight. I only dose the low nutrient amount....5 ml per 50 gallons volume = 15 ml. once per week 2 days before a water change. My corals were slightly more pale so I upped the feeding.

My question is why am I producing much less skimmate than I use to? I use to skim 3 times more with vodka alone, and now have seen a serious drop in skimmate production. I run a very large ETSS skimmer with a heavy bioload of fish. Is this normal?

Perplexed. Help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

patent · Mar 25, 2011

I can't tell you what is normal, but when I went from just plain vodka dosing to dosing+MB7, my skimmate went down a little. Not nearly as much as yours though, it was only a small reduction.

Aquaph8 · Mar 25, 2011

I never really noticed any decrease in skimmate. It got really dark for a while though. I would switch dosing to the daily drops instead of weekly ML if your time will allow, it just keeps things a little more stable and theres no big changes in a short period of time. (I do the same with my carbon dosing) Try and make everything happen as slowly as possible to allow the tank and its livestock to adjust. I went real slow with my dosing and maybe thats why I didn't notice any difference, who knows. Just to be sure check and make sure everything is clean and working properly but I would expect everything to go back to normal pretty soon.

Paul_N · Mar 25, 2011

When I dosed vodka my skimmate got darker and really pungent.

SDguy · Mar 25, 2011

Have you tried cleaning your skimmer? I mean really cleaned it, and the pumps too? Sometimes bacterial buildup on pumps, venturis, etc during vodka dosing can hamper skimmer performance. Maybe the MB7 caused a change/increase in bacteria causing this? I often need to clean my pump impellers with bleach to remove the sludge of bacteria that builds up.