Well home again, and it WAS a long night. Anyhow, herewith a quick explanation what happened to me with vodka dosing, and then some more interesting stuff from a guy with much more brains than me!
My own experience with vodka has been mostly positive, going back a few years due to lack of knowledge and poor equipment my tank was pretty much green with hair algae everywhere. Some corals wouldn’t grow as they got strangled by hair algae.
I heard about vodka & gave it a shot, the first ever dose I did was way too much & harmed some of the corals, but it sure cleaned the tank! Algae died, rocks went white, nice!
Since that time I have used vodka quite a few times on several different tanks to clean things up, always works.
Vodka has positives & negatives, and can sometimes work in unpredictable ways. IMO it can be dosed in a large quantity as a one off, but if used over the long term should be done in small doses. One of the negatives is that it gives excellent results at first, but then over time things can start to go wrong. There are several reasons for this & I’ve cut and pasted some posts below by a guy who can explain the reasons for a lot of this, good reading for someone wanting to give vodka a shot. IMO most of these problems can be avoided long term by keeping dosing low.
In the end, the reason I went zeovit is because the principle is the same as vodka dosing, but it is more “completeâ€, ie it avoids the problems of long term vodka dosing through other means, such as maintaining bacterial diversity by dosing a multi strain culture, and other things you don’t get just from vodka.
Anyhow here is the cuts & pastes.
“Hi @ all
at the end of last year I started some test series on these vodka method.
The results weren't all that nice in Lab and later on in the aquarias !
I do know arround 30 aquarists in europe that lost some big quantity of their stony corals... mostly due to
bacterial infections.
The ethanol boosts the growth of almost any bacteria in the tank, some people even reported some withe slimy film
on the aquaria glass. In some tanks the coral died because of "starvation", since PO4 and/or NO3 went down to zero in no time.
Some other ones dies because of the mysterious PO4 increase.
I did a some test in my Lab here in switzerland over period of about 2 month. I did these with some enriched bacteria cultures of my
tanks sediments. When the PO4/NO3 ration was around 1/16, there was a good decrease of PO4 and NO3. If not so, the one or the other
element was the limiting factor stopping or slowing the bacterial bloom. As soon as these happened, the PO4 went up. The answer to that
is, that the dying bacteria where releasing the Phosphorus they previously got out of the PO4.
In a normal tank the skimmer should eliminate most of the biomass resulting from the bacterial bloom. But if the skimmer is
to slow or the biomass to big, then the tank would suffer a massive PO4 peak.
In one tank I was able to measure these, the PO4 went up to 2mg in 18 houres ! If we wouldn't have been monitoring these tank
so closely, then these would have been the end of another aquarium... but we where able to bring enough PO4 Adsorber in to the System
to remove it just in time...
Some other experiments in these area where about the bacterial diversity. The diversity decreased in all cultures and aquarias after
a short while, when feeding it whit ethanol or vodka. In some closed cultures I ended up with just one bacterial strain left in the culture within a week.
Since then I used ethanol only for "jump starting" new systems, so I could get very fast a good bacterial density in a fresh tank.
I believe that ethanol is very dangerous, since its unpredictable what the bacteria growth will be in a certain tank. Ethanol will boost almost
any bacterial, even some marine pathogens. Depending on the conditions, those bacterias might take over the system.
Marc
@WASP: You're probably right, it should theoreticly be possible to remove the bacterias these way and thus the PO4 with it.
But what if your skimmer isen't 100% effective ? And even if it would be so, then you would still have deal with shift in biodiversity.
One other thing that I'm quit sure for my self is, that PO4 and NO3 should stay in a certain ration to each other. Everytime
I shift these ration in one of my tanks, I get cyanobacterias as result ! When I bring the one or the other level back to a normal state,
then these cyano films start to dissolve again...
I don't know what I'm doing differently to others, but I never had a problem with PO4 nor NO3, well in the opposite way I did. These means
I have to add PO4 and some times even NO3. But in my tanks PO4 is the limiting factor that reduces coral growth. I can see these when the
parts of corals that are in the shadow start to bleach !
To compensate these I add Phytoplankton to my tank several times a day. These seams to be a other possible source for the basic element.
It is still unclear today if SPS are feeding on Phyto or not. But there are two beneficial ways that Phyto goes... one it takes up PO4, NO3 and some Silicates while it is in the tank and removes these through the skimmer, the other thing is that when it "dies" in the tank it releases some Microdoses of its basic elements, these then act as a food source for the corals.
@Poriferaphile: I don't think that ethanol contributes to a better Plankton diversity. It increases the amount of bacterias but not its diversity ! The increase in the bacterial amount could contribute to a better growth of small Zooplankton that feed on bacterias, maybe the same is true for some corals. But since I've seen so many dying corals because of Ethanol, I wouldn't realy
take these as a good way to go.... There are better ways of increasing the Plankton in a aquarium.
Like I mentioned above, the addition of Phytoplankton is one of these ways. The reduction of skimming the system might be another thing, since skimmer remove about all the Plankton in a tank there is !
Marc
@WASP: Yup I do have to "feed" my tank with Phosphate !
These was only possible after I matched the PO4/NO3 Ratio of 1/16 or so. I did these by the use of a sulfur filter and some PO4 Adsorbent. I found out that in my tank there is a thing like a critical level of 4-5mg NO3. When I get belove these 4mg NO3 I will not be able to hold it there ! It will decrease by itself without any special filtration... the same is for PO4 arround 0.02mg.
The intrusting thing is, is that above 4mg NO3 the level would slowly rise to about 12mg and stop there, but then the level is way out of its ration to PO4.
During the time I tryed these out, my corals have grown that much, that PO4 and some times NO3 have gotten the limiting factors in "my reef". Today I do not use the sulfur filter or any Adsorbent anymore and the levels have staye these way for more then 10 month now.
Most of the time I feed the PO4 in form of some F/2 Media that has not been completly deepletet by the Phytoplankton I feed.
But I must add to these, that my tanks (2 of them) are standing in the office of my Lab. So I have plenty of time and possibilities to play arround it !
@Randy: I'm on your side regarding the "low oxygen environments" ! I did the tests in Lab flasks, on a stirring and "shaking" system. So these culture have 100% not been low in oxigen ! I added some amount of PO4 to each culture, bu I would have to consult my notes to tell you how much ... I then mesured these cultures by Ion Chromatography, directly after filtering the samples or after "digesting" the Biomass and messuring the "fixated" Phospate levels. The results where absolutly clear, the bacterias deepleted the Phosphorous source quiet quickly, the same is for Nitrogen. But these works only if you have them in the right ratio for the specifiy mix of bacterias, then otherways you were lowering just one part of it !
Since there is now way of controling all these parameters at same timem there will be now possibilty to control such a methode. If one source gets depleeted to early, the bloom would crash an so would your tank !!!
Marc
@Randy: I do believe that Ethylen would not do much better than Ethanol. Rohwer and some resent ongoing Studies of Eric Borneman will show that
the composition of Bacteria on and arround corals is vital to them. Even small changes can kill some of the more delicate ones.
Because of these I would say that anything that alters the Bacterial composition will have it's negative effects.
Inducing spawning in corals would indeed be a big progress. But our systems today do not allow any planktonic Organisms to survive very long
I think one place to start is to make Plankton safer tank systems. In europe we have a lot of activities in these field since Phytoplankton is
becoming more and more important over here.
@WASP: My tank is really simple... a Berline like System, lots of live Rock an some sort of mechanical filter containing some live rocks and some
smaller filter media. A skimmer that operates only 6 hours a day and thats more or less it ! A payed a lot of attention on the flow rates in the tank and in the filter system. I do have 1000 liter tank, I have no idea how many gallons these is !? I have about 25 fish in it and a lot of LPS and SPS.
If your interested you can visit my small web page http://www.euschen.ch, it has some picures and a Webcam on one of the tanks.
One thing I'd like to mention here is something that most europeans forgot or didn't understand when they started the Vodka dosing.
Phosphorus can not be reduced the same way as Nitrogen. Nitrogen can be reduced to Oxigen and Nitrogen Gas, these way it is able to exit
the system. Phosphorus is a solid element and has to stay within the system, as soon as a Cell dyes it releases its Phosphorus, the P. will then
"regroup" with Oxigen and become PO4 again. The only way to get rid of PO4 is, to remove in a solid form or to have it built in to organic matter.
Marc"
