well guys Ive been putting vodka in my tank for two weeks now...to get rid of that nasty slime algie and.......85% of the red slime has gone...every day the rocks are cleaner....no affect on the corals or fish!!!!The only problem I have is the lack of vodka for me to drink.....not much left......

warick.

OK sweet.. so you have been doing it on a daily bases??

Used to be a vodka fan but found the performance from it will drop off over time, maybe six months or so.

Think this is likely because it reduces bacterial diversity as it favours certain bacteria. Perhaps dosing a bacteria culture such as supplied by zeovit or prodibio would get around this problem.

Nonetheless, a tank suffering from excess nutrients can benefit greatly, at least in the short term, from vodka dosing, combined with strong skimming, which is needed to export the extra bacteria created by the vodka.

And Warwick I know what you're saying about cyano. First time I dosed vodka was to a tank with a nasty cyano problem, all over everything. Due to lack of experience I dosed way too much vodka. However the results were GREAT! Within a day or so the cyano started disintegrating, and then my skimmer started filling up with thick red skimmate. All cyano gone and tank beautiful & clean in perhaps a week or so.

But before everyone rush off and try this I've heard of some cases where it did not work. Just one of those unexplained little tank mysteries!

so whats the recommended dosing for vodka?

1ml to 100ltrs

once? every day? every week?

once a day i have been told, i need to know i started today

no recommended dosage, just keep drinking it until you dont care about the algae anymore........

Hi Slappers that 1 ml per 100 liters is meant to be a daily dose you monitor things and then increase or decrease by how your nutrient reduction is going.

Hi Slappers that 1 ml per 100 liters is meant to be a daily dose you monitor things and then increase or decrease by how your nutrient reduction is going.

ioc so i am putting about 5ml in a day . (piss heads) my skimmer has kicked in and foaming like crazy now (brown poo) i just hope it gets rig of all that brown alage that has gone all over my rocks ??tests what tests

no recommended dosage, just keep drinking it until you dont care about the algae anymore........

Yip that'll work!!

it'll be interesting to see how it goes slappers.

My theory on how Vodka works:

(Please tell me if you know different)!

To remove nutrients, the tank requires bacteria as one form of filtration.

In normal conditions a tank runs a certain amount of bacteria quantities in balance with bioload waste being produced.

If one wants to create more bacteria to breeak down every last bit, how would that be done?

There are only two ways I can think of it as.

1: Add more food, this in turn will create food for the bacteria allowing them to reproduce moire numbers.

The problem is with more food, you get more nutrients, which in turn will allow a build up of Phosphate and Nitrate etc over a short period of time.

This build up is from the nutrients in the food. Vodka doesnt have any.

VODKA.

Dosing vodka allows one to add PURE food for the bacteria. Vodka, (Alcohol) is a pure carbon food source which gets gobbled by the bacteria which allows multiplication.

There is no nutrient level in vodka because is is so clean, therefore no extra nutrients added.

Voila!

You have just successfully boosted bacteria and nothing else.

(This is my theory).

Any one else????

this is after i have been adding vodka

Whats all that about Slappers!!

Are they your eggs!!!

yes do you want some all yours

Nah, prefer mine fried thanks!!

:lol:

Way to go slappers all that skimmate means it's kicking in. Two kinds of skimmate can happen with vodka, you can get clear and slimey, which is just masses of bacteria (good cos they're full of nasties you want to remove), and the kind of skimmate you have, which is a mix of all sorts, this will increase for a time as nutrient levels drop below what is needed to maintain nuisance algae & it dies and gets skimmed.

tests what tests

:lol: Dude you just won the tank cowboy of the week award! ROTFL

Basically what you should be testing for is nutrients. In the tank if there is too much, you get nuisance algae, but if there is too little, everything can suffer. We cannot test for every existing nutrient so what we test for is phosphate, if that's about right, we assume the rest are too. A little rough but works reasonably well.

However, in the absense of a phosphate testing kit, there is another way, it's this. - If you have to clean your front glass every day, there is too much nutrients. In fact you should not have to clean it more than once every 4-5 days. So stay with the vodka until you've got glass cleaning to about that. My own tank is very low in nutrients because I actually feed the corals with additives, I would only clean my front glass probably once a month, and that would just be to remove spots of coraline algae.

The other thing to do is monitor your corals, if anything looks like it's shrivelling up, reduce the vodka. However IMO the glass cleaning test for many people is just as good a way to monitor phosphate as actually testing for it with a kit, because testing it with hobby kits is an imprecise science anyway.

phosphate is sort of between 0.25 and 0.5 its one of them

Dude you just won the tank cowboy of the week award! ROTFL

do i get a trophy

If that's what your kit says, the real level will be higher. It's probably up around levels that will stop coraline algae from growing. But even if that's the case, by the looks of your skimmer that will soon be solved.

well it will be a good test to see if it can get my rocks all nice and clean again. i will take a picture today and one in two weeks to see whats been happening

heres the picture as it is today

My theory on how Vodka works:

(Please tell me if you know different)!

To remove nutrients, the tank requires bacteria as one form of filtration.

In normal conditions a tank runs a certain amount of bacteria quantities in balance with bioload waste being produced.

If one wants to create more bacteria to breeak down every last bit, how would that be done?

There are only two ways I can think of it as.

1: Add more food, this in turn will create food for the bacteria allowing them to reproduce moire numbers.

The problem is with more food, you get more nutrients, which in turn will allow a build up of Phosphate and Nitrate etc over a short period of time.

This build up is from the nutrients in the food. Vodka doesnt have any.

VODKA.

Dosing vodka allows one to add PURE food for the bacteria. Vodka, (Alcohol) is a pure carbon food source which gets gobbled by the bacteria which allows multiplication.

There is no nutrient level in vodka because is is so clean, therefore no extra nutrients added.

Voila!

You have just successfully boosted bacteria and nothing else.

(This is my theory).

Any one else????

Sounds good to me. Just a semantics thing, but alcohol is technically a nutrient for bacteria. It just happens that it isn't as an effective source for algae (including zooxanthellae), unlike nitrate and phosphate. Just the same as the second part of the zeovit theory.

Vinegar would be an interesting alternative to test too. Acetate (vinegar) is a carbon source which is written about a lot with respect to bacteria.

Layton

well looks like he is enjoying the vodka