my experiment with sugar dosing.

[rotarygeek]

Bump for easy finding tomorrow when i do the water change. Got a small 5 gallon water change done, but thats not a whole lot. Tomorrow ill get a 10 or 15 gallon water change going. Im still waiting on petsolutions to ship out my bucket o salt and my reefmasters test kit though, so still won't have a phosphate reading for you all. I have altogether stopped dosing sugar as of now, but my skimmer is still working at pulling out gunk. I haven't dumped the collection cup but once since i stopped dosing, so i can definetly tell that it has slown down skimming wise. But here is some updated picks. The Green hair algea has slowed way down, and the red slime has a big white spot coming out of the middle. Hopefully this is killing it. My new addition is also in the pics.

 

[tdog7879]

Originally Posted by RotaryGeek
http:///forum/post/2743819
Bump for easy finding tomorrow when i do the water change. Got a small 5 gallon water change done, but thats not a whole lot. Tomorrow ill get a 10 or 15 gallon water change going. Im still waiting on petsolutions to ship out my bucket o salt and my reefmasters test kit though, so still won't have a phosphate reading for you all. I have altogether stopped dosing sugar as of now, but my skimmer is still working at pulling out gunk. I haven't dumped the collection cup but once since i stopped dosing, so i can definetly tell that it has slown down skimming wise. But here is some updated picks. The Green hair algea has slowed way down, and the red slime has a big white spot coming out of the middle. Hopefully this is killing it. My new addition is also in the pics.
put some red slime remover in do the water change and get some kinda off phosphate remover (seachem makes a good product) and add a DSB . I have a DSB and 0 trates for a long time now.KNOCK ON WOOD).

 

[bergamer]

This is horrible, but at one point my nitrates were at 550ppm (I had to 1/4 the test kits) I began dosing vodka and brought it down to 20ppm in a week and half. Although it took a lot of skimmer cleaning.
I wouldn't try this method if you don't have a good skimmer.

 

[rotarygeek]

Man life is making me eat my words yet again. I ended up spending all day getting my new house all lined up. Only about ten minutes away from my prison, so ill save 2/3 of the gas i was using to get to work to pay new bills. tomorrow i go and pay the first months rent, then i gotta paint it. The mexican guy who is the landlord painted it bright orange, he said it matches the trees. Its out in the country with 2 acres of land, so ill finally get to shoot my guns again. Only downside so far is its a mobile home, but for 350 a month and he loves any kind or amount of pets, i couldnt pass it up. I have been looking for this exact situation for a good two months now, and this is what i found. So my master plan is to
A) Tear down tank and put all LR in a tote bin along with fish and power heads.
B) Paint back of tank black
C) Brace bottom of stand to put even pressure across the floor instead of just on 4 points.
D) Get rid of sand becuase i have a feeling thats contributing alot to my high nitrates. Ill make sure to save it to add to the already base sand i have for a make shift DSB in the sump someday.
E) Move tank to new place and get everything set up about half full of new water and some LR.
F) Then get all my fish and the rest of the LR to the new place. Hopefully by ditching the sand i can avoid a cycle at all. and by keeping half my old water it should be good. only thing I am worried about is adding all my fish at once.
So if you see a flaw in my plans let me know. hopefully ill get a chance to do a water change within the next two days.

 

[rotarygeek]

Well i got my salt in today and my reef masters test kits. didnt get a chance to test my water yet becuase i had to get out to our new house and keep on painting. but ill check it all tonight, everything. then you all can help me decide what is wrong with my tank.

 

[rotarygeek]

I got my tests all done and here are the results.
Ammonia - .25 ( I think this is from my firefish goby dissapearing)
Nitrate - 0
Nitrate - between 40 - 80 ppm
Ph - 8.0
Kh - 125.3
Phosphate - 0
Calcium - 420
Temp - 79
Sal - 1.025
So what do you all think? Anything way out of whack here?

 

[fau8]

the phosphate level is way up there, I am surprised you have been able to avoid a hair alge out break.

 

[rotarygeek]

Um, am i missing something? Phosphates are zero.....
Unless they are supposed to to up there, then maybe im dumb.

 

[fau8]

sorry my mistake, saw ph 8. mis read. I honestly expected a high Phosphate. With following your entire thread and the potential over feeding being the cause of the nitate I expected to see elevated phos. The water looks good other than the nitrate levels. Keep at the water changes and everything will be fine.
Looking at your pics, your have very little sand in your tank and none in your fuge, are you removing the waste as it settles to the bottom of your tank? That could be your nitrate factory.

 

[rotarygeek]

Lol ok you had me worried there for a minute.

 

[rotarygeek]

Oops, i forgot to mention I did a 10 gallon water change yesterday. And I got my bucket of salt finally so i will start doing water changes more often. But once i get it down to a decent level im going to resume dosing with sugar to see if it works or not.

 

[bergamer]

RotaryGeek: to dose sugar effectively, you need a good skimmer! In addition, a good skimmer will keep your nitrates down. I am not trying to bash you, but what you are using atm is a POS. And don't get a seaclone!

 

[fau8]

I honestly expected a high Phosphate. With following your entire thread and the potential over feeding being the cause of the nitate I expected to see elevated phos. The water looks good other than the nitrate levels. Keep at the water changes and everything will be fine.
Looking at your pics, your have very little sand in your tank and none in your fuge, are you removing the waste as it settles to the bottom of your tank? That could be your nitrate factory.

 

[rotarygeek]

Yeah im starting to get the feeling that with sand its either go deep or go home. I dont have much of a clean up crew, and hardly any of it is centered on sand, so when i move next month ill be ditching the sand completely. I dont remove anything from the sandbed at the moment, but once i get rid of it i can just use a gravel vac and clean the bottom. Im kinda surprised at my phosphate levels also, and i think that the sugar dosing played a huge role in reducing it the the range its at. I also understand i have a cheap peace of detrius as a skimmer, but my birthday is coming up, so maybe ill get one then. I do think that is why my nitrates werent going down, the skimmer just couldnt keep up with it. When i resume dosing, ill do a week or two before i up the dose any. that way the skimmer should have time to get used to it. I dont think waiting 3 days between upping the dose helped any. So for the record, attempt 1 was a failure, so everybody go ahead and get your "told you so"s out of the way.

 

[sly]

Originally Posted by RotaryGeek
http:///forum/post/2748396
so everybody go ahead and get your "told you so"s out of the way.
Not needed... Sometimes the only way to gain wisdom is through experience. Now you know... (and so do I)

 

[rotarygeek]

Ok little bit of an update. I already made a new thread to ask this question cuz i figurwed it would get answered quicker in its own thread. I did a 15 gallon water change today, and when I lifted the canopy to clean up the overflow box and found some purple slime stuff in it. I know i was supposed to see some algea blooms from the sugar dosing.... could this be it? But anyways, I did another 15 gallon water change today, so that makes like 30 gallons this week. Should cut my nitrates considerably. Ill post up results of everything when i get them checked in a little bit. And here are the pictures of what I found in my overflow box.

 

[rotarygeek]

Ok i got the results for todays tests done.
Ammonia - .25 (Thinking this could have something to do with the slime stuff in my overflow box.)
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - Drumroll............... 20-40 ppm. Water changes are doing the trick. But im still going to try sugar dosing.
Ph- 7.9
Calcium - 400
Kh - 11 or 196.9
Phosphates - 0
Temp - 78
Sg - 1.023
So everything is looking good, all my water perameters are getting into shape here. I still need to get the ammonia down, but that will happen naturally.
Surprising to me, my tang hasn't gotten ich yet. I was 100% sure she would after going from a small 10 gallon at the store to a 55 and all the stress. But I have been watching and haven't seen a single wierd spot or any rubbing against the rocks yet. She loves to swim in and out of the rockwork and is still very skittish when ever i come around. But she is eating lots of seaweed (the LMB still isn't though, won't touch the stuff) and even taking some formula 1 and frozen mysis shrimp. So all in all, everything is looking great. Im happy with it.

 

[cveverly]

That dark red stuff in your overflow looks like Cyanobacteria.

 

[flricordia]

If you are going bare bottom tank then think about putting a perforated pvc length of 1/2" along the bottom back and have a strong power head attatched to it so it will blow any debris to the front making syphoning it off easy. If you can keep a large container of saltwater mixed up then you can take a 1/3"-1/2" ID hose and syphon off what has accumilated at the front each day and replenish. A quart or two each day is all that would be needed and this would help to keep the nitrate levels down. Also would practically eliminate large water changes, temp and ph changes while preforming the water changes.
Eventually make the system a bit more stable.

 

[rotarygeek]

Yeah that sounds all good and such, but the main problem isn't that. Its that im so busy lately i haven't been able to keep up with my water changes, and the idea you suggest, however very good it may sound, just wouldn't work very well for me becuase of the time. I feel like i need one of those clariten add where it says Missing..... 2 hours. Last seen after taking blah blah blah. But im getting back on track here lately since that storm blew over and i won't have to pull tons of manditory overtime with all the evacutated inmates from the coast. So it should be good. I plan on just running barebottom with a dsb in the sump. Oh yeah, before I get my hopes set on that, does anybody know how wide a dsb should be at vry minimum? I have about 10 inches of extra space and i planned on making it 4-5 inches deep. Also, what kind of critters should i keep in there to keep my dsb healthy? Ill take a picture of the almost complete sump in a couple minutes.