Dosing question

A

Ajholms0427

Member
Hearing the advantages from a fellow reefer, I would like to start dosing vodka as my carbon source. I'm wondering who dosing vodka in addition to Kalk. I also heard the two are hard to dose together (maybe a negative side affect)?
 
Vinegar and kalkwasser seem to go more hand in hand from my research.

R u against vinegar dosing instead of vodka. Both are carbon sources.
 
Ajholms0427 said:
Hearing the advantages from a fellow reefer, I would like to start dosing vodka as my carbon source. I'm wondering who dosing vodka in addition to Kalk. I also heard the two are hard to dose together (maybe a negative side affect)?
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There should be no side effects unless you overdose or do not mix properly.

You can dose vodka or vinegar in your ATO as long as the kalk is 1 tsp per gallon of ro/di or higher. This way the elevated ph in the reservoir will keep the bacteria from consuming the carbon source before it gets to the DT to do it's job. Also, if the bacteria consume the carbon source in the reservoir it will produce co2 which will deplete the limewater.

Make sure you have a good understanding of how long your ATO last and scale your daily dosing accurately and you should have no issues. There are numerous threads on RC where Randy Holmes Farley talks about this.
 
I'm not against vinegar dosing I just heard vodka has better outcomes. I don't plan on putting the carbon source in with my kalk ato, I will be manually dosing the carbon source.
 
Ajholms0427 said:
I'm not against vinegar dosing I just heard vodka has better outcomes. I don't plan on putting the carbon source in with my kalk ato, I will be manually dosing the carbon source.
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I personally am having better results from Vodka. However it is 8X stronger than vinegar so the room for error is less.
 
I have heard stories of Vodka users to stop cold turkey and have a real negative affect. But not sure if true!!!

Vinegar to me is much safer and overdosing is still bad, but won't cause as much damage as Vodka. Plus vinegar is much cheaper once you get hooked into dosing.

Please, Please make sure you have a very reliable test kit. API is not one of them ? This requires you to test until you have reached your goal!!!

Note: Your light spectrum will penetrate more once you start!! So you might want to lower your LED's or move your fixture higher for about a week..
 
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I've been dosing kalk with my ato for quite a while. I just started dissolving the lime in vinegar about a month ago. It really increases the amount of lime that dissolves into the water (without precipitating). I changed nothing other than this, and my alk went from 7.7 to 9.0 over the course of a month (no water change in that time). I'm backing off a bit on the vinegar because I run biopellets and the alk sweet spot is 8.0.

I'd say if you're doing kalk, you might as well do vinegar. You can dose both together, it's really easy, and it makes your kalk more effective.
 
sawdonkey said:
i've been dosing kalk with my ato for quite a while. I just started dissolving the lime in vinegar about a month ago. It really increases the amount of lime that dissolves into the water (without precipitating). I changed nothing other than this, and my alk went from 7.7 to 9.0 over the course of a month (no water change in that time). I'm backing off a bit on the vinegar because i run biopellets and the alk sweet spot is 8.0.

I'd say if you're doing kalk, you might as well do vinegar. You can dose both together, it's really easy, and it makes your kalk more effective.
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++ 1 i started dosing vinegar about 3 weeks ago now and dripping kalk. About a week ago , ive noticed my po4 is still a little high but slowly coming down , my calcium was slightly low at 415 , its now at 425 with just the kalk. My ph is steady day and night at a range of 7.98 - 8.05 want to bring this up slightly .
I am also dissolving my kalk. With a little bit ov vinegar first , however i am dosing my vinegar in the same spot as my kalk. Should i be moving one to a different spot ?
 
Siebo said:
There should be no side effects unless you overdose or do not mix properly.

You can dose vodka or vinegar in your ATO as long as the kalk is 1 tsp per gallon of ro/di or higher. This way the elevated ph in the reservoir will keep the bacteria from consuming the carbon source before it gets to the DT to do it's job. Also, if the bacteria consume the carbon source in the reservoir it will produce co2 which will deplete the limewater.

Make sure you have a good understanding of how long your ATO last and scale your daily dosing accurately and you should have no issues. There are numerous threads on RC where Randy Holmes Farley talks about this.
Click to expand...

+ 100



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