Vodka Dosing?!?

Been doing some reading on some wierd stuff and been reading about dosing vodka in ml amounts to provide free carbon for nitrifying bacteria.

Supposedly over a number of weeks as the free carbon is available the bacteria are able to continue multiplying so that you get full potential of your bacteria life.

Has anyone tried this? Or sugar supposedly does the same thing. I'm hoping this might be another strategy for me to fight my GHA. Let me know any experiences or thoughts!

 

There are ppl on here that have done this. I haven't personally but I'd research it thoroughly before beginning. I know from what I've read it's a successful method for controlling N03 and algae but one of the cons is that prolonged use causes dependency and abrupt stopping can cause a crash.

 

The original intentions of vodka dosing were to provide a source for a better biological filter... Aka beef up your bacteria and make them more efficient at nutrient export. --> leading to a low nutrient system.
The keystone of this idea is to have a massive skimmer so it can skim out your excess bacteria in suspension. These bacteria will contain nitrates and phosphates that they are using for metabolism, thus taking the nitrates and phosphates out of your tank.
Vodka dosing is in no way a cure all for gha. The only way to cure gha is to reduce your phosphates.

 

Very well put Dingo! I've never done it because I never believed in quick fix's and magic elixir's to cure algae blooms. I learned early on to find the source of the excess nutrients and either fix or remove that.

 

Vodka dosing is like walking a 100ft razor blade will high over and over sooner or later you will slip and I see these guys talking about this and they are guessing at it at best as to how much to dose and how often I see theories on dosage amounts all over the charts . You could not pay me to apply the method I have seen what will happen to several friends in Va that would not listen..

Hell most of the guys dosing it could not even give you the name of one of the bacterium they are feeding and relying on , much less what they can do and how its being done ..

 

I have been dosing vodka for the past 4 months. I have been doing this in an attempt to be able to increase the amount I feed my tank. Vodka dosing is not a good way to eliminate nitrate or phosphate problems from the get-go. For that you need to increase liverock, live sand, and perhaps get a phosban reactor, or refugium (or both).

For me, I have lots of live rock, a fuge with deep sand bed and chaeto, and 2 phosban reactors. My nitrates and phosphates were un-measurable before I started vodka dosing. But the idea was that I wanted to feed my corals food without worrying about water quality. With the vodka increasing the bacteria population of the tank (which theoretically eat up the nutrients released by un-eaten food before algae can get them), the idea is that un-eaten food will not cause algae outbreaks. In this regard, the dosing has been working well for me.

But as I said, for basic lowering of nitrates/phosphates it is not my first choice.