Vodka dozing , any input I have brown algie,

I have a fariley new set up it has been running for a couple months now and have had fish in for about 3 weeks now, I know they say keep the nitrates down and it will starve it's self, but also read about the vodka dosing,   Whatcha think, it is a 90 gal tank

So vinegar instead of vodka

Edited by twolow4law1 - November 12 2012 at 3:14pm

I've heard you need to run a good amount of carbon and need a good skimmer.

You need to make sure you are also introducing some type of bacteria. I just use Microbe-Lift Special Blend.

The above advice is good. You may not need to dose. Have you finished your new tank cycle? (Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate). How long after that ended did you see the algae?  What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?  All this will help determine if you should dose.

It is not that complicated, you should know what you're doing and why, follow the directions carefully and test, test, test.  Once things get back into normal ranges you need to readjust the amount you are dosing.  Also know that dosing can crash your tank -- not a lovely thing to wake up to in the morning before work. In reading some of the reports on dosing it's relatively safe if you're careful, start slow (low dose) and build up slowly (add to the dose at the end of a week) and monitor you're chemistry. Once the nitrates and phosphates lower you need to back off to a maintenance dose.

Watch for bacterial blooms, mine occurred in my skimmer of all places.

Fat

Thanks to all your Input. I know my nitrates where at 0 last I checked but will check it when I get home on Thursday I'm on vacation at the min, I will give it another week or two before any dozing, I do have a prety good skimmer its a g2, I will also in crease clean up crew and lots if snails, right now only have a few crabs and like 15 snails in the 92 gal, because it was a new set up did not want them to starve, will add 50 crabs and 50 snails on Thursday ,   Thanks again   Ronnie

If you have a cyano outbreak you can still read 0 on nitrates and phosphates because the cyano is using it to grow. However, the fact that the problem is increasing says there is still a surplus of the two. Not saying that nitrates and phosphates are the only thing used for cyano growth but it's a major factor. My reconmendation before dosing would be to cut down on feeding, make sure your temps are staying fairly the same throughout the day and cut back on how long your lights are on.
I would also look at some other options like running gfo. I'm not saying dosing doesn't work but i'd just look at all options.
Good luck

It works the same for algae as well. You can get a false negative because the cyano/algae growth uses up the excess nitrates and phosphates.

Diatoms and green hair algae tend to be new tank things.  You can do things to minimize them, run GFO to scavange the phosphate, make sure your light bulbs are as new as possible and left on as little as possible, stock mexican reef crabs and cerith snails, use only RO water for mixing, dose bacterial starters, and increase aeration and water flow.  All will help, but unfortunately 99% of new tanks will have one or both types of outbreaks before they are a year old.  Give it time, it will subside.

Until then, remove as much of it manually as possible a couple times a week, and practice good basic maintenance and it will decrease eventually.  I have dosed vodka, vinegar, VGV and commercial products and while I am a fan of carbon dosing, it has some serious drawbacks, and it can go from great to an absolute disaster very quickly if you aren't extremely careful.  IMO it is neither necessary nor ideal with a tank that is testing less than 10 nitrates. 

For what it is worth if you do decide to carbon dose: be aware that it means you will have to clean filters and plumbing much more frequently.  It must be dosed consistently every day (no vacations without a tank sitter or dosing pump), and you must monitor nitrate and phosphate levels with high sensitivity tests weekly if not twice weekly.  When I first started carbon dosing I got lazy and skipped the water testing for two weeks. In those two weeks, the nitrates and phosphates both hit zero, starved the biofilter, and my tank went through a mini cycle.  Had I not skipped my water tests I would have realized that the levels were dropping too low and started tapering the carbon additions down to stabilize the system, and it wouldn"t have crashed.

I prefer vinegar to vodka.  Vodka for me seems to encourage cyano outbreaks.  My favorite is actually the zeovit system.  BRS has a starter kit:

 http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/korallen-zucht-zeovit-starter-package-with-vertex-rx-z-1-5l-zeolite-reactor.html

Zeovit is more expensive than homemade solutions, but IME it is more stable with fewer side effects.  Good luck!