Vinegar Dosing Question

So, I made it through 5 weeks of progressively increased dosing. I had a bacteria bloom (clouded water) last week, so decided not to continue with my dosing last Sunday.

My nitrates are undetectable (Seachem) and my phosphates are at .003 ppm (Hanna ULR), they are both EXTREMELY low. I run a phosphate media a nitrate media, a skimmer and chaeto.

Should I continue dosing vinegar, but remain dosing what I was the week before I had the bacteria bloom or should I stop altogether? I am not sure if the dosing was the reason for my low nutrients or not and if it was, I would really like to continue it.

Any thoughts on my random drivel?

 

I really like vinegar dosing, as I have been doing it for quite some time. Personally, I would continue but back off the dosage a bit..

 

True, you can continue but lower the dosage slightly. If you want to stop, wean the tank slowly and keep a close eye on nutrient levels. With everything else you're using, you may not need to continue.

 

One thing you need to know about vinegar dosing though. You need one heck of a skimmer for it to be effective. If you don't have a large enough skimmer, you will not be able to dose enough vinegar to make a difference because those bacteria blooms will continue. The skimmer is supposed to remove that bacteria. FWIW, I dose 70 ML/Day on a 160 gallon total volume system.

 

I was up to 17.6 ml a week in my 20 gallon (30 total). My skimmer is rated over 3 times my water volume, but it's still a crap skimmer (free Seaclone). It was modded to increase its effectiveness, however.

 

With the mods, I believe it should work a lot better. I really didn't have much issue with mine pulling crud out of my tank. My problems were:

1) It was difficult to keep the air adjusted until I realized the venturi was clogging with salt; feeding a few drops of freshwater through the air tubing every few days remedied that.

2) Sludge built up around the top of the reaction chamber; Periodic GHA blooms indicated that the skimmer was actually producing more DOCs than it could remove. It was also a PITA to disassemble for cleaning.

3) (not SeaClone related): I learned that what is gross or disgusting to us humans is irrelevant; what a skimmer takes from our tanks is food for something, and I've never had an issue with not running one at all. However, one most certainly needs a skimmer when carbon dosing, so I digress.

 

I haven't had that issue yet, but I think I may need to seal the tube still. I have slim coat on the inner tube of the collection cup that I clean periodically. I really don't have a lot of junk for it to remove with how clean my tank is and how little I feed (only 1 fish). Plus, I have several other filtration methods.

But anyways, I dosed 17.6 ml today and I will stick with that weakly for now.

Thanks Bill and Daniel!

 

where have you been daniel? Haven't seen many posts by you lately ...enjoying life in the outside world?