Sweet Reef

Ok some I’m doing some experimenting on my reef system. On Monday I started to add sugar to my reef system to help lower the Nitrates from 5.0 to 0 if possible. Also I have cyano popping up and I would like to get rid of it without making any big changes. I do have a Pos reactor and I just got in some ROWAphos and will add it after I finish this test with sugar.

I started with about 1/2 t-Spoon for my 34 gallon tank. I have done a lot of research on how sugar works and I understand it. The one thing I'm not sure is what ill the long term affect will be. I will post updates as time goes on.

 

Hey! Hello there! My friend, anaerobic cyanobacteriae feed on carbohydrates, just like other more or less wanted bacterial strains! Moreover, in case of an overdose you can count on bacterial bloom, that will wipe your tank in hours! Instead of sugar, consider ethanol dosing! It's definitely safer because there are less bacteria that can directly utilize ethanol (though, overdosing is still possible)! I've been using ethanol, before suflur nitrate reactor, and got quite nice result (reduction of nitrates over 2 weeks from ~100 mg/ml to 10mg/ml). I hope that helps!

I strongly recommend reading this article -> http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php

Good luck!

 

Agree with Camilsky but want to make a small observation.

Ethanol is sugar too. But not all sugar is the same. My point is we are assuming you mean table sugar when you say you are adding sugar. But I suppose you could have meant ethanol (I don't think you did though).

Reef on!

 

Hey! Thanks for feedback! No ofense, but as a starting academic teacher I have to disagree. Ethanol is DEFINITELY NOT SUGAR! It's classified as alcohol. Carbohydrates (commonly called sugars) can be also classified as alcohols (polyhydroxy alcohols), but far more complicated in structure and physical properties than ethanol!

 

Looks like its time to break out the still!! ;D

 

I think you're being a bit too specific in chemical structure for the purposes of this thread. Ethanol (well, alcohol in general) is made from sugar (essentially, but fermented from sugar might be a better way of putting it) and I can easily imagine someone saying they're adding sugar when they mean ethanol. I think it is fairly common for folks to consider ethanol as alcohol and alcohol as sugar, therefore ethanol = sugar in a lot of peoples dialect. I don't mean technically, of course. But sugar has a definition that can really be used to include ethanol, IMO. And I do not think you can say ethanol is definitely not sugar... IMO, sugars definition isn't concise enough to say that with such bold authority (get it? bold=pun)

That was my point - that just saying "sugar" doesn't really tell us what you mean. Sugar can mean a lot of different things.

As an analogy - I asked my wife to pick me up Epsom Salts. She couldn't find any and said they didn't have it. I asked her where she looked and she said "in the spice section, ya know next to the table salt..." if you follow what I mean.

 

Heheh! My apologies! We, Europeans got used to take things literally From what I have learned, application of carbohydrates -> sacharose (or commonly known as white crystal sugar) causes bacterial / algae outbreaks. The ethanol method originates from Germany. The main idea of the method is introduction of carbon source that is normally not present in the reef environment, and therfore can't cause stress/or side effect to marine flora and fauna. Elevated, levels of simple carbon compounds (read: ethanol) help in development of nitrate/phosphate-hungry bacterial strains. Consequently, one needs skimming to physically eliminate bacteria from water!

 

My wife just did the exact same thing last week!

 

this has been talked to death on many threads.most seem to think vodka and sugar do pretty much the same thing.it works but can also crash a tank.its your gamble.i personally won't take the chance but many people like to experiment.

 

some people use vodka. i think it was supposed to be better then the others more stable or some thing. all your doing is spurring bacteria growth causing them to use the excess nutrients in the tank. they say some people get some slime growths(not cyano) on there rocks. but you have to be careful doing this, you could screw up the dosing and be worse off. I view it as steriods while dosing if you over do it you get health problems, and if you don't quit the right way you end up worse off then when you started.