vodka

[puttputt]

1 part vodka, 1 part cranberry juice, 0.5 part counteau, 0.5 part lime juice, over crushed Ice.

nice recipe for getting tanked................

[cracker]

I have used it before.....just forgot to keep going...

It apparently works from the Carbon content. This carbon feed bacteria furiously as it is a highly desired food source.

Alcohol has lots of Carbon apparently.

Havent had the time to study in depth yet, but certainly does no harm to the tank as far as I can tell.

Might start again actually...

[chimera]

I have been dosing for about 6 months and to date tank is still doing well.

My Nitrates have dropped from 10ppm to zero and PO4 to below .05.

you cant use those two sentences together reef!!! i recall you managed to drop po4 significantly when also starting rowaphos. above remarks make it look like the vodka did all the work go rowaphos, its awesome stuff.

[raeh1]

Maybe I might dose myself with vodka tomorrow

As for fish, they wish

[wasp]

Results of this work also showed a number of other effects. A large "bloom" occurred which clouded the test tank, an occurrence that could and often does kill tank inhabitants

If this occurs it is a bacterial bloom, and will be the result of too much vodka at once. This would result in a possible stripping of oxygen from the water, plus drastic reduction in nutrients as bacteria consume them & are skimmed. A few days later the water will be crystal clear.

IMO vodka dosing is a useful tool if done right. One side effect most people are not aware of is it will reduce bacterial diversity in the tank over time, as it gives advantage to certain types. Can't remember the exact numbers but I read a thing on RC by a guy who through his work had the technology to examine the bacteria in his tank. He gave the number of bacteria types he found in the tank before vodka, and then after a few months of vodka it was greatly reduced. He regarded this as a bad thing.

I guess this could be counteracted by dosing bacteria, such as is done in the zeovit system, the same bacteria could no doubt be used.

[Caper]

Oh my gosh...just when you think you've seen everything...dosing a tank with vodka...personally I prefer mine with orange juice

How DOES this affect the fish? Do they act...ah...different? Does it make them sleep alot??

[reef]

you cant use those two sentences together reef!!! i recall you managed to drop po4 significantly when also starting rowaphos

That would be incorrect, I used vodka first and did a spread sheet and tested every day, po4 and nitrate dropped after 2 weeks.

I started to use rowaphos after the 3rd week just because I had it and I wanted to use my new fluidised reactor. I still use rowaphos but vodka on its own will lower nitrate and po4.

When you speak to all the experienced reef keepers in Germany and the some of the retail shops they all confirm that it works,

What do you think zeofood is?? It’s a carbon source for the bacteria. Then you have all the add ons which is good for revenue of zeovit as i wonder if they do need to use them to make the system work.

With over 100 primo pieces of coral/fish why would I take the risk?

MO vodka dosing is a useful tool if done right. One side effect most people are not aware of is it will reduce bacterial diversity in the tank over time, as it gives advantage to certain types.

I would say this is the same with zeovit as it will also reduce bacrerial diversity.

Fish could die if you overdose and don’t watch for signs of overdosing, I would not recommend vodka for inexperiance reef keepers as you do need some experience to notice any signs of stress in the tank,

In my opinion Zeovit is the same as vodka, zeofood is a carbon source like vodka and the zeolite is not required, even a few hobbisy only use zeofood,

The zeolite can be used with vodka to help with additional bactaria and to clear the water.

Once again i stress that you have to take care when using vodka as you cant just throw in a cup or so. start of with 1ml/100L AND increase by 1ml per day, maybe even split the dose when it gets up to say 1ml in the morning then 1ml in the evening and the nexty day 1ml in the morning and then 2ml at night. and so on.

The problem with vodka is that there is no instructions and all done by trial and error.

[reef]

How DOES this affect the fish? Do they act...ah...different? Does it make them sleep alot??

Does not effect the fish at all if you dont overdose, you would have to overdose by quiet a lot for it to effect fish. overdosing will cause algae bloom which will take oxygen out of the water .

just like ph buffer etc, if you overdose on it will also effect fish. so it all is by what degree you overdose.

[lduncan]

Interesting point about bacterial diversity.

How diverse bacterial life do you need in a tank?

There is always going to be nitrifying bacteria to sequester ammonia. Which is important.

Denitrification - many of the common bacteria in tanks performing this can actively use ethanoate salts (I suspect this is one ingredient in zeofood from the smell), which are quite closely related to alcohols, ethanol especially.

I just don't know whether lower diversity is necessarily a bad thing, as long as all the processes you need to happen are happening, which they must be if it reduces nitrate and phosphate. What other bacteria do you need?

To me the effect and method behind dosing vodka is similar to the longer term effects seen with zeovit.

Layton

[wasp]

I just don't know whether lower diversity is necessarily a bad thing

Layton

True statement.

Much to learn about this.

[Feelers]

Im helping a friends parents sort out their murky green pond, just wondering if a bottle of vodka could be a possability?

the pond is 1800L wrong section I know........ just wondering what would happen. Also does this react with all the nitrate at once? Is this good for directly fixing algae problems, or just the high nitrates?

[lduncan]

Some sort of chemical phosphate remover like rowaphos is going to be a better solution for a pond.

[wasp]

Vodka will not help the pond. Because vodka works by assisting the production of large numbers of bacteria, which consume the nutrients, and are removed from the tank by the skimmer, along with whatever nutrients they have absorbed.

With no skimmer on the pond, the bacteria & nutrients will stay in the system.

I'm no expert on ponds, but I'd say phosphate removing resin is going to be hugely expensive with the type of nutrient levels we are talking about in a typical garden pond.

However, a year or so ago I saw one at a house, that struck me by the clarity of the water, and this made the pond really beautiful, fish easy to see, and nice plants. I asked the lady and once she saw I had a genuine interest she launched into explaining it all to me. They had planned the pond carefully & spent money to ensure it would be done right. The pond had a UV unit installed, and this killed all green algae and kept the water clear. There was also a plastic bin type thing with a biomedia in it (bacterial). As a result of this there was excellent plant growth and the plants were harvested periodically when getting crowded, and thrown on the compost heap. Although she did not say so, no doubt this would have assisted with nutrient removal.

Interestingly, she told me that at one time the UV unit stopped working, and it was several months before they replaced it. During this time the pond went green and looked terrible. When they replaced the UV the pond came right.

Not 100% certain but I think Jansens sell UV units for ponds.

[lduncan]

Yeah, UV is the other option. But expensive.

ROWA products if I remember correctly were developed to clean up lakes and ponds that had gone eutrophic, and algae had taken over. They do a phosphate remover specifically for ponds.

If the pond has plants in it, like water lillies, i'd go for UV. But keep in mind that using UV will only reduce water borne algae, not algae attached to the bottom of the pond. So it will clarify the water, but not reduce algae on the bottom of the pond.

If there are no plants, then go for a chemical phosphate remover. It will eventually rid, or limit, most plant life in the water.

Layton

[wasp]

chemical phosphate remover like rowaphos is going to be a better solution for a pond.

OK you win then, just as long as I don't have to bankroll it :lol:

Just my humble, I'm no millionaire, opinion

[reef]

Rowaphos can be used in ponds. it will also go further as it will do twice the amount in fresh water,

you should also buffer the pond when using rowaphos as it will reduce the ph of the water so if used follw the instructions.

i read that you can also use hay or something like that as this removes nutrients etc,

i think hollywood has some.

[lduncan]

OK you win then, just as long as I don't have to bankroll it :lol:

Just my humble, I'm no millionaire, opinion

I meant better than vodka. Like you said, you still need to mechanically remove the nutrients.

UV is a common solution to the problem, but still not cheap either.

Layton

[Feelers]

Yeah I convinced them to go with UV, altho being a student, I was more excitied about the vodka.

On the vodka note I distill my own alcohol, and I will sell it to you guys cheap as, maybe for favours or just for your help.

It comes off the distiller at 92%, and is just real strong vodka - tastes like fire tho I filter it through carbon, and it has no odor or flavour, just straight ethanol.

[reef]

I got some pure ethanol at $25 /20L it is really cheap. will see if it is better than using vodka. Great stuff for parties.

[wasp]

Good choice Feelers. Unless you can find the bulk source of cheap P removing resin that Layton referred too, ( I can't ), you'd be burning money.

Doubt there would be one pond in NZ running Rowaphos as a primary nutrient export method.

Let's know how the UV goes

[gregb]

Would it give the fish a reading of more than .05?

[Feelers]

Hey reef, where did you get your ethanol from?

I cant even make it that cheap, I sometimes sell to my friends, midori, fancy spirit copys, tastes great.

So there was no meths in it ?

So it was 96% around?

[klaymann]

I got some pure ethanol at $25 /20L it is really cheap. will see if it is better than using vodka. Great stuff for parties.

must be able run this in our cars too ... cheaper than petrol

[cracker]

found this on a site....interesting.

Posted by: mojoreef

The concept is kind of funny actually. In a mature reef or aquarium the poppulations of the different bacterial strains balance to the amount of food that they consume. When a tank is first cycling we add dead things (either a dead shrimp or LR with dead stuff in it) So a mass introduction of a food source so that the bacterial population explodes to meet the input. After that initcal cycle thier is always a big die off of bacteria as the population reduces to meet what would be the standard food input for it. The result is all the organics tied up in the bacteria are released and the person goes through an algae cycle (algae goes after the food put out by the bacteria death) . Anyway at some time in the early life of our tanks the bacteria/algae populations become more static. As is the bacteria population matches the food input with out the large blooms in bacteria population or what we tend to call a mature tank.

So now come the concept of dosing a carbon soure, in this case vodka. What folks do is dose the vodka, the extra carbon in the tank cuases another bacterial bloom in population. The concept being is that if you have a larger population of bacteria you will have more bacteria to do the job of nitrification, because of thier population enlargment it would create more of thier biproduct which in turn would increase the population of the bacteria behind them, denitrifing. So the bottom line is what folks are trying to do is to create and artifical population which it turn will give the tank more reduction power.

Problems: It would be almost inpossible to manually keep this population static. As in over populate and keep that colony in tacked with no excessive loss to the population. Miss once of the perfect dose and you allow all the extra bacteria to die, when they do they release (make inorganic) all of the nutrients they have bound in thier matrix. The result is algae being johny on the spot and taking up the nutrient and having a bloom in your tank.

Second problem is as Mikes says, vodka is only 40% so when you dose with it you are getting 60% of that mix being something else. Ie carbs, sugars and so on. Or as we like to call algae food??

Biological filtration is not that effective to begin with, what folks are trying to do is to make up for that shortfall by hyperizing the bacterial component of the filtration. Can be done but not with out the pitfalls or riding the edge.

[wasp]

Well I'm not going to second guess Mojo because he has a tank that I couldn't even dream about.

However, while his reasoning is sound, there is a point he has omited. He refers to the extra bacteria population being created by the addition of vodka, as being useful for nitrate reduction. While this is true, in fact, the main benefit from these bacteria will be the reduction of phosphate. This is because the vodka adds food for them, minus the phosphate. In order to utilize the food, the bacteria have to consume a certain amount of phosphate, and this will have to be drawn from elsewhere in the tank. The bacteria are then (hopefully) skimmed, and voila! we have phosphate reduction.

However on another note about vodka, it has been apparent for some time that it's use can lead to a bacterial monoculture, or at least something getting close to that. Now I've been told the reason for that is that vodka contains ingredients that will favour certain bacteria, over others.

In fact I have noticed when I have used vodka, that at first there will be a dramatic effect, but then it seems to tail off after a few months. It could be that this is due to this "bacterial monoculturing" tendency.