from Vodka to Vinegar

Wow, you really don't evaporate much. I guess without a sump there is less opportunity for evaporation.

 

Great write up Steve!

Thatgrimguy, I'm curious why you think pellets won the experiment? If I recall correctly, I though the vodka and pellet tanks more or less evened out at the end. So the intermediate result could have just been an acclimation/dosage issue for example.

Personally, I have been dosing vinegar and vodka. I've switched to all vinegar and have not noticed much difference. I was thinking off adding some vodka back to see what happens though. All these testing methods tend not to be optimally controlled. So, typically, it is hard to say more than one seems to work, or doesn't. Saying one really works better, or such is a tough conclusion to really justify in most cases. It may, but there tend to be a lot of other possibilities no accounted for.

 

I may have just been mistaken. I lost track of the thread mid way through and only skimmed after to keep up. I could very well have just missed some conclusions. I had thought the pellets were pretty clearly in the lead as far as results and seem to be much easier to use.

Mostly I was just looking to learn from his decision making process to use vinegar in the method he is using it.

 

your right Thatgrimguy , it has meant that ATO has been something I have never seriously even considered

Thank you Matt

I would agree, early days in those systems Vodka seemed to have an advantage, although later on the pellets caught up and the tank seemed to look better
but as stated it may be simply other factors
one possibility is that the vodka was limited to the amount I added on a daily basis and with only 12 gallons of water to work with I hesitated in ramping it up to much, pellets on the other hand may have been a greater source of free carbon due to the volume I had present in order to make the reactor effective (to few and the pump would have turned it into a novelty christmas snowstorm effect)
whilst it is simple to do the 1 mil vod = 8 mils vin , it is not simple to get a ratio between either of those and pellets and it may have been a simple ratio issue that gave me the results I saw

 

Yeah, I have no idea how to convert anything to pellets. You don't know how much carbon is in the pellets, or more importantly the exposed surface area, for bacterial colonization. Going from vodka to vinegar, or even to something such as vitamin C may just be easier in some cases.

 

Thanks Matt

I had approx 100 grammes of pellets in the reactor on a tank with 12 gallons of saltwater
using the Genetics, Stony corals guide for vodka dosing and only using 3 mils of vodka in 75 gallons on my full set up, made it seem ridiculous to consider going above 1 mil of vodka in a 12 gallon tank
but maybe if I had gone 1.1 and then 1.2 etc evetually conditions in that set up would have been on a par with conditions in the pellet set up

as you say its hard to make direct comparisons between sources that are so different in terms of method used

maybe next time round (with no livestock in the set up) it would be worth testing that theory