Curious about Dosing vinegar to remove excess waste

[superclown]

I have been fighting the same issue since day one with my reef tank and that is the removal of excess nutrients.

I can't figure out what it is and something somewhere is amiss

I have hair algae/ bryopsis I have done everything I can think of in the past 6 months to get rid of it and I just can't seem to shake it. Its pretty consistant and forms on my glass about every 3 days. I have brown hair algae growing on my over flows and a couple of rocks on bottom have the green algae on it.

I just changed my RO/DI filters, running GFO in a reactor, rox carbon in a filter sock. I change gfo about every 2 weeks and carbon ocne a month, I also have cheato growing in sump,checking water with tds meter, run a mrc skimmer which is constantly pulling out sludge.

I do bi weekly 5 gallon water changes.

I have cut my feedings back to every other day mainly feeding a low phosphate pellet food, about once a week i alternate to frozen brine shrimp which i feed with a baster but only a little at a time to make sure it don't over feed the tank.

Most of my rock is covered in good coraline algae and it started really taking off about a month ago growing on the glass of the tank as well and then it seemed to slow down and thats when the algae started growing more.

I tried checking my water for p04 of course i figured I would get a low reading due to its all bound up in the algae growth

Salinity is a 1.025 ph tested at 8.5 on elos kit

temp 77 at night 79 during day

I was trying to check my calcium and other leves to find my test kits have dryed up so thats all I can test atm.

my only thoughts at this point is maybe something is leaching waste from my tank.

My bioload is not too large in my opinion I have approx 50g system with tank and sump and I have 2 clowns, tang, cleaner shrimp and fire shrimp, hermit crabs and snails

Im thinking about vinegar dosing but im not sure at this point what would be the best way to go about it and could def use some input

 

[heathlindner25]

when I had hair algae I did 2 five gal. water changes a week. and thats in a 36 gallon tank, plus changing carbon and gfo every week

 

[kilralpine]

I wouldn't dose vinegar firstly, if anything use vodka first. Regardless, I think that you would be much better off doing double water changes for a month or two. Look not for an easy solution, rather for one that actually fixes the root of the problem. The solution is dilution.

Edit: Also is that chaeto THRIVING? If not take it out as it will cause more issues than it will fix if its not actually growing. What kind of mechanical filtration are you running? You said "rox carbon in a filter sock. I change gfo about every 2 weeks and carbon ocne a month" does this imply you change a filter sock once a month?

 

[eagle9252]

i have been told a min of 10% a week. if you go to bi-weekly i would assume you would need to do say 25% as it has had an extra week on the first one. i would choose a good salt (ie: salinity) if it were me cut the lights for a couple of days and do about 3 or 4 water changes at about 10g every 3 days. this should help.

what do you have in the tank other than fish? what kind of tang? you said your test kits are dried up. you need to get a sample to your lfs and do a full set of test. you can get an api test real cheap on line and it's better than nothing but has been real close to the others when double checked.

 

[kilralpine]

+1 on checking your water/getting newer test kits as they have short shelf lives and are easy to mess up. If you do go the darkness route just remember what you kill off has to come out or it will only serve to fuel itself.

 

[ralph atl]

heathlindner25;814457 wrote: when I had hair algae I did 2 five gal. water changes a week. and thats in a 36 gallon tank, plus changing carbon and gfo every week

I agree here!

however, nothing wrong with dosing vinegar, I have been dosing carbon for over 6 years (about) with no ill effect.

in order to dose a carbon, you will need a decent Nitrate Kit, (Tropic Marin is the one I use), because you need to find out howmuch you need to dose. Dosing is based on how much carbon you are dosing daily & still getting a consistent <1.0 reading of nitrates. PM me for more info, or posed questions here......

What I recommend you do, is get a decent sized media reactor (like the Sea one that had a group buy not to long ago), a decent pump & 2L of Seachem Matrix.....that helps pretty good!

Larger weekly water changes (25% or more), weekly changes of GFO & Carbon right away.....(GFO & Carbon are rendered useless after 2 weeks anyway from bacteria coating)...USE less, change more often.

 

[heathlindner25]

hell , I still do 2 -5 gallon water changes week...lol I don't want it coming back. and well I do have a secret weapon

 

[superclown]

I wouldn't dose vinegar firstly, if anything use vodka first. Regardless, I think that you would be much better off doing double water changes for a month or two. Look not for an easy solution, rather for one that actually fixes the root of the problem. The solution is dilution.

I would drink the vodka, not the vinegar and its cheaper with less chance of cyano yess my cheato is thriving i may step up the water changes to 5g weekly
yes gfo changed bi weekly carbon changed monthly

i have been told a min of 10% a week. if you go to bi-weekly i would assume you would need to do say 25% as it has had an extra week on the first one. i would choose a good salt (ie: salinity) if it were me cut the lights for a couple of days and do about 3 or 4 water changes at about 10g every 3 days. this should help.

what do you have in the tank other than fish? what kind of tang? you said your test kits are dried up. you need to get a sample to your lfs and do a full set of test. you can get an api test real cheap on line and it's better than nothing but has been real close to the others when double checked.

I have fish and coral sand live rock and water and shrimp tank is a yellow tang algae grazer. I don't have a lfs there is one near me but I wouldn't go to them if my fish were drowning. I will pass on the api those are horrible in my opinion. I would rather spend good money on a accurate test kit

in order to dose a carbon, you will need a decent Nitrate Kit, (Tropic Marin is the one I use), because you need to find out howmuch you need to dose. Dosing is based on how much carbon you are dosing daily & still getting a consistent <1.0 reading of nitrates. PM me for more info, or posed questions here......

Sounds like solide advice to me I will look into doing this and start changing my gfo more reguarly and carbon as well

 

[kilralpine]

I like seachem and redsea test kits for trates/phates. Would like to get my hands on a few hannas.

 

[ichthyoid]

To the OP-

Yes, carbon dosing works, and vinegar is a fine choice.

Vodka/ethanol also work well, there's just an extra step involved to convert it to vinegar/acetic acid first.

Additionally, I have used methanol, and sugar successfully. Also, acetone and several other forms of organic carbon have been used as well.

Older established tanks, and/or tanks with a lot of live rock or substrate will take longer for results to appear. Why?

There will be a significant amount of phosphate bound to those substrates in established tanks. You must allow time for that old phosphate to go back into solution and get metabolized, then you will begin to see your phosphate begin to drop.

 

[superclown]

At this point I think I am going to have to eye ball the tank in terms of p04 because i think its bound up by all the algae's growing in my tank. I will keep you guys updated with any changes i do or do not get from increasing water changes.