Vinegar dosing question

[enthb]

I have a FOWLR that I feed pretty aggressively. It’s a 120 with about 30 gallons of sump water. Nitrates got to around 60 with weekly water changes and finally started to have trouble with algae. I researched carbon dosing and started dosing with a pump Several intervals throughout the day. I’ve built it up slow for a few months and am up to 140ml per day. I do have some white bacteria growing on the glass but the nitrates are slowly climbing and have reached 72 today.

I have read several threads but just want to see what the opinion is on my current dose with no change and how high I might have to go before there is a change. I wasn’t in my hurry but now I’m wondering why Im not seeing a change with it at this level. Also my phosphates are 1.2 so I’m not limited by that. I use a Hanna checker.

One more thing. When I initially set up my doser I accidentally got the shutoff time wrong and ran way to much vinegar in at one time but I was home and was checking to see if it was working correctly and was able to shut it off. Still quite a bit got more than intended got in the tank. Only bad effect was getting white slime all over the tank. The nitrates dropped by about 15, but have slowly creeped back up since.

Do I just keep increasing the dose or Is there a stopping point where I should be concerned about harming the fish? Thanks in advance.

 

[Dan_P]

I have a FOWLR that I feed pretty aggressively. It’s a 120 with about 30 gallons of sump water. Nitrates got to around 60 with weekly water changes and finally started to have trouble with algae. I researched carbon dosing and started dosing with a pump Several intervals throughout the day. I’ve built it up slow for a few months and am up to 140ml per day. I do have some white bacteria growing on the glass but the nitrates are slowly climbing and have reached 72 today.

I have read several threads but just want to see what the opinion is on my current dose with no change and how high I might have to go before there is a change. I wasn’t in my hurry but now I’m wondering why Im not seeing a change with it at this level. Also my phosphates are 1.2 so I’m not limited by that. I use a Hanna checker.

One more thing. When I initially set up my doser I accidentally got the shutoff time wrong and ran way to much vinegar in at one time but I was home and was checking to see if it was working correctly and was able to shut it off. Still quite a bit got more than intended got in the tank. Only bad effect was getting white slime all over the tank. The nitrates dropped by about 15, but have slowly creeped back up since.

Do I just keep increasing the dose or Is there a stopping point where I should be concerned about harming the fish? Thanks in advance.

Your vinegar dosing accident gives you a clue about how much vinegar to add and the amount of bacteria growth you need to see before dosing has a
an impact. 1 mL/gal is when I saw a decline in NO3 but my system was not heavily stocked.