Vodka Automatic Dosing Question

chaoticreefer · Oct 9, 2020

Hmm I did a real biggie tonight. I flushed out my DOS and DDR tonight thinking I was going to use them for automatic carbon dosing with vodka. After about a hour after setting it up and got it programmed it hit me, I better make sure vodka is safe in the DDR container. So...I did some googling, it took some time to finally find the answer. It said don't do it, so I hurried up and went to get it out, by then it was too late, my DDR was practically shatter and leaking before I could drain the vodka back out with an air tube. I saved more than half of the vodka. I now know alcohol is bad for acrylic. I went ahead and put the vodka back in the orginal bottle and drilled a hole in the cap so I can insert rigid tubing. But...now, I am wondering about rigid tubing and the DOS tubing? Does the vodka break those down too?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

WIReefer · Oct 10, 2020

I’m sorry to hear about this I am unsure but I will give this a bump for you!

Tastee · Oct 11, 2020

I don’t use Vodka but I do use NoPoX which I believe is going to produce identical results to what you will get. I use rigid black Poly tubing into the NoPoX bottle - the same rigid tubing you use in garden drip/spray systems. That has no issues with the alcohol. I use the standard Neptune supplied flexible line to the DOS and it has turned opaque, but apart from that has had no issues - has not got any harder etc. The outlet line from the DOS is ADA Aqua flexible tubing - much more flexible than the Neptune tubing so easier to work with. I am not sure of it’s chemical composition however, think it may be silicon based. The DOS itself has had no issues with the NoPox. I only dose this occasionally when I need to reduce Nitrates and it has been off for months currently, but there has been NoPoX in all those lines for over 2 years now.

I think that Acrylic is definitely an issue, but the other compounds we use in this hobby appear to be fine.

flampton · Oct 11, 2020

Pretty much anything used in the hobby will have some resistance to ethanol except acrylic. Now for sure some of the plastics will become 'cloudy' but they will remain structurally sound. For further info you can check out plastic manufacturers websites but unfortunately their charts can be a little hard to understand. You'll be looking for either ethanol or ethyl alcohol. With something like NoPox you'll also want to consider methanol and acetic acid