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Opinion on bacteria & carbon dosing

Well, there might be another case where people dose carbon to supply more bacteria for acros to “eat.” Lou Ekis had a talk explaining that corals aren’t good at utilizing phosphate from the water but are good at consuming phosphate-containing bacteria. But this requires having a lot of corals to filter out the excess bacteria that grows after carbon dosing.
That's interesting. I'm curious what the ramifications on using All for Reef for dosing is then. My understand if All for Reef uses a calcium source which effectively is calcium bound with a carbon to prevent it from precipitating out. In the tank it separates, freeing the Ca and also effectively acting as a carbon dosing.

The implication then seems to be don't use All for Reef if you're not running a skimmer.

Any thoughts on that?
 
Well, first off, both those sources make a product for you to buy, and their product is obviously best. :)

Regarding the larger topic of what can we feed corals for them to thrive, well the science is still working on that and the fact that all the corals on the reef have evolved to feed on a different food source separate from their neighbor means a food for one coral would is not necessarily be a food for another. Corals have evolved to eat everything available out of nutrient poor waters, so they all specialize as to not compete with each other so much. Looks like you have like 20 SPS frags bunched all next to each other. (what do you plan to do with those in 6 months when they all grow into each other?) that could very well be 2O different BEST food sources right there.

The best you could probably hope for is copy the methods of someone else with a similar live stock that has had long term success. I personally haven't seen any with mind blowing SPS color/growth long term without a skimmer, even if just for the gas exchange.
 
That's interesting. I'm curious what the ramifications on using All for Reef for dosing is then. My understand if All for Reef uses a calcium source which effectively is calcium bound with a carbon to prevent it from precipitating out. In the tank it separates, freeing the Ca and also effectively acting as a carbon dosing.

The implication then seems to be don't use All for Reef if you're not running a skimmer.

Any thoughts on that?
All For Reef is calcium formate plus other minor and trace elements. The formate is converted to carbonate (Alk) by bacteria through carbon consumption.

So yes, it is like carbon dosing along with Alk, Ca, and other element dosing. Risky to use without skimming. Plus it lowers pH and O2, which also could be stabilized by skimming but could get too low without.
 
All For Reef is calcium formate plus other minor and trace elements. The formate is converted to carbonate (Alk) by bacteria through carbon consumption.

So yes, it is like carbon dosing along with Alk, Ca, and other element dosing. Risky to use without skimming. Plus it lowers pH and O2, which also could be stabilized by skimming but could get too low without.
Thanks for the reminder on that. Was gong to try all for reef on one tank and Kalk on the other to compare. One tank doesn't have a skimmer, so I know which one gets what now.
 
Well, first off, both those sources make a product for you to buy, and their product is obviously best. :)

Regarding the larger topic of what can we feed corals for them to thrive, well the science is still working on that and the fact that all the corals on the reef have evolved to feed on a different food source separate from their neighbor means a food for one coral would is not necessarily be a food for another. Corals have evolved to eat everything available out of nutrient poor waters, so they all specialize as to not compete with each other so much. Looks like you have like 20 SPS frags bunched all next to each other. (what do you plan to do with those in 6 months when they all grow into each other?) that could very well be 2O different BEST food sources right there.

The best you could probably hope for is copy the methods of someone else with a similar live stock that has had long term success. I personally haven't seen any with mind blowing SPS color/growth long term without a skimmer, even if just for the gas exchange.
Thanks for the tips!!! All of my SPS are individually glued to a 2-3" rock and then glued on the big rock so I can move them around however I want. Eventually, I think I will be fragging a lot, my hope is that in the future when the corals become too big I can cut them to make the exact shape I want (kinda like bonsai) to make a beautiful aquascape. Still, it is just a plan. :)

Check out this 600g tank, he has not run a skimmer for over 6 months. (video at 6:50) For me, I know it is a big challenge, my tank is also much smaller than his - 600g vs 50g. :D
 
Thanks for the tips!!! All of my SPS are individually glued to a 2-3" rock and then glued on the big rock so I can move them around however I want. Eventually, I think I will be fragging a lot, my hope is that in the future when the corals become too big I can cut them to make the exact shape I want (kinda like bonsai) to make a beautiful aquascape. Still, it is just a plan. :)

Check out this 600g tank, he has not run a skimmer for over 6 months. For me, I know it is a big challenge, my tank is also much smaller than his - 600g vs 50g. :D
I don't consider 6 months no skimmer after 5.5 years with a skimmer long term success, especially note he mentions he is adding a skimmer back to the system. The 5.5 years prior had more to do with that tanks success than the last 6 months without the skimmer (temporarily). Also, huge tanks with huge coral populations are not the same as a small tank full of frags. Much more surface area for gas exchange (500 gal sump!) and the corals eventually become your nutrient export, but you need to get them big enough to export all the imports first.

I had a NanoCube for years where Xenia and Bristol worms were my only export. Ran great because it was just stable and imports matched exports.
 
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I don't consider 6 months no skimmer after 5.5 years with a skimmer long term success. The 5.5 years prior had more to do with that tank than the last 6 months. Also, huge tanks with huge coral populations is also not the same as a small tank full of frags. Much more surface area for gas exchange (500 gal sump!) and the corals eventually become your nutrient export, but you need to get them big enough to export all the imports first.

I had a NanoCube for years where Xenia and Bristol worms were my only export. Ran great because it was just stable and imports matched exports.
Actually agree with that, 6 months is a bit too short to call it a long-term success.
 
Thanks for the reminder on that. Was gong to try all for reef on one tank and Kalk on the other to compare. One tank doesn't have a skimmer, so I know which one gets what now.
Huge difference in pH effects between those 2 options- AFR results in significantly lower pH than regular dosing and kalk significantly higher pH than normal dosing.
 
Huge difference in pH effects between those 2 options- AFR results in significantly lower pH than regular dosing and kalk significantly higher pH than normal dosing.
Correct. Was looking in to a future alternate to actually supplement the Kalk if I ever exceed the amount I could add to the tank (wishful thinking). Ran Kalk + Ca reactor on the 240 eventually when I exceeded what I could add via evaporation. That tank had an enclosed hood with MH and T5 and in a much warmer zip code, so evaporation will surely be much different here. Wanted some first hand experience with the product to understand its idiosyncrasies and see how I could use it, especially since the dry formula is so new. I have the option of direct air intake into the skimmer, so lots new variables to play with.

Back to Bacteria and Carbon. Sorry richiev.
 
Correct. Was looking in to a future alternate to actually supplement the Kalk if I ever exceed the amount I could add to the tank (wishful thinking). Ran Kalk + Ca reactor on the 240 eventually when I exceeded what I could add via evaporation. That tank had an enclosed hood with MH and T5 and in a much warmer zip code, so evaporation will surely be much different here. Wanted some first hand experience with the product to understand its idiosyncrasies and see how I could use it, especially since the dry formula is so new. I have the option of direct air intake into the skimmer, so lots new variables to play with.

Back to Bacteria and Carbon. Sorry richiev.
@JVU Can you follow-up on the All-For_Reef impact on PH more? Reached out to Randy Holmes-Farley and he said the lowering PH is negligible compared to any of the non-PH boosting supplements, and about the same as a non-potash 2 part, with a net add from increased ALK still on your side. Pretty much said it should not "Lower" pH unless you compared it to something that actively increases pH. Said it would be less then someone actively Carbon Dosing which made me think of @richiev comment above again. Didn't now if you had any professional or extended experience with the product as Randy wasn't answering from an experience stand point, he is all Chemistry. I kinda like the minor carbon dosing thought but absolutely claim no knowledge of Chemistry besides that of the avg. reefer.

I'm likely still going to use Kalk as I can't get my PH up. Home is old so air changes are minimal with the heater we have (no AC). Going to lengthen my skimmer inlet out the window, but there is a Dryer Vent right there so that my be a reason I abandon that. If it works well, I may draw air from under the house instead. Have a crawl space.
 
@JVU Can you follow-up on the All-For_Reef impact on PH more? Reached out to Randy Holmes-Farley and he said the lowering PH is negligible compared to any of the non-PH boosting supplements, and about the same as a non-potash 2 part, with a net add from increased ALK still on your side. Pretty much said it should not "Lower" pH unless you compared it to something that actively increases pH. Said it would be less then someone actively Carbon Dosing which made me think of @richiev comment above again. Didn't now if you had any professional or extended experience with the product as Randy wasn't answering from an experience stand point, he is all Chemistry. I kinda like the minor carbon dosing thought but absolutely claim no knowledge of Chemistry besides that of the avg. reefer.

I'm likely still going to use Kalk as I can't get my PH up. Home is old so air changes are minimal with the heater we have (no AC). Going to lengthen my skimmer inlet out the window, but there is a Dryer Vent right there so that my be a reason I abandon that. If it works well, I may draw air from under the house instead. Have a crawl space.
AFR has two main effects on pH relative to other options for Alk/Ca dosing-

1. The actual calcium formate, which doesn’t have much effect on pH and therefore is not increasing pH like most other options people would use who want to boost their pH up to near ocean levels (like sodium carbonate or kalk). So Randy is correct that this part would not lower it relative to other options that don’t increase pH… but people paying attention to pH and wanting a more normal pH are using the options that raise pH, and AFR isn’t one. So using AFR results in a lower pH than using sodium carbonate or kalk.

2. The carbon dosing part, where bacteria use it as an energy source and lower the pH with their respiration. If you are dosing a lot of AFR because you have a lot of Alk consumption, then you will be dosing a lot of carbon which can give you a bacterial bloom and drop the pH significantly.

I have tremendous respect for Randy HF and agree with 99% of what he says. But I don’t agree when he says that pH/CO2 effects are neutralized by equilibrating with surrounding air and therefore are transient/negligible. In our medium and larger reef tanks the CO2 doesn’t equilibrate quickly enough to make this true. The reason our tanks’ pH decrease so much at night vs day is because respiration is happening in the absence of photosynthesis, and the excess CO2 is not getting blown off in our tanks despite the large surface area, power heads pointed at the surface, and oversized skimmers. The more packed with life your tank is, the more dramatic the swing. My tank routinely swings 0.3 pH units every day/night (more than double the CO2 level in the water at night), and my air CO2 level doesn’t change much if at all. Even at the end of the photoperiod when the pH is highest, it isn’t as high as it would be if the the water CO2 level was just equilibrated to surrounding air CO2 in the absence of boosting it with sodium carbonate or CO2 scrubber. So basically it never equilibrates to air though it is always trying.

In addition to understanding the science of it, I tried switching to AFR last year in my 200g tank. My experience was that as I slowly ramped up the AFR dose (and ramped down the sodium carbonate I was replacing) over a couple weeks, my pH swings started to drift downwards, at first subtly. By the time I noticed it they were getting dangerously low at night and I suffered an RTN event, which then worsened the pH dive (by making lots of nutrients available to bacteria from the dead coral) and made the RTN worse. When I stopped the AFR, did lots of water changes, and went back to sodium carbonate dosing (Triton) the pH stabilized and RTN stopped.
 
Nah, you both are right. I summarized my discussion with him so all the nuance is stripped out in my summary. Randy is 100% correct scientifically that the tank will equalize with the room assuming gas exchange is 100% efficient, or efficient enough to keep up with the net add of respiration/production. That just isn't the case due to the variety of tanks. He thinks like a scientist in the theoretical while we all live in the realistic/practical. I have had tanks that naturally land all over the map for PH due to all the varying factors. Sounds like your tank needs the boost in PH. I am still only thinking of using the product if I reach a limit with Kalk, which I probably won't. One can dream....

Funny, my tanks PH drastically goes up at night currently. Refugium and a PNS media reactor which are lit at night producing O2. DT has one coral and 20% lights during the day and me and the dog are in the room. Makes me think I should swap the PNS photo period to the day and watch the trend until I have something in the DT to actually lift the day time PH. Been adding plants and opening the window more as it gets warmer to exchange the CO2 in here. Wasn't until I had the tank in here and monitoring PH that I made the correlation with the CO2/O2 level. This room makes me sleepy. Thought that was just work and depressing life stuff, but I can blame CO2 now :)

Thanks for the feedback and making me think of swapping the photoperiod on the reactor. I'll let this thread get back to bacteria. Don't want to get off topic for Joseph.
 
In addition to understanding the science of it, I tried switching to AFR last year in my 200g tank. My experience was that as I slowly ramped up the AFR dose (and ramped down the sodium carbonate I was replacing)
Did you mean sodium bicarbonate? Reducing sodium carbonate (soda ash) dosing would be expected to reduce your average pH.

But I agree that it’s near impossible to actually aerate a tank into pH equilibrium. Even the Great Barrier Reef has daily pH swings.
 
Did you mean sodium bicarbonate? Reducing sodium carbonate (soda ash) dosing would be expected to reduce your average pH.

But I agree that it’s near impossible to actually aerate a tank into pH equilibrium. Even the Great Barrier Reef has daily pH swings.
I think I said it right- as I reduced the amount of sodium carbonate I was dosing and replaced it with AFR, my pH went down.
 
A better control would be if you had been using baking soda. Lowering soda ash dosing alone would lower your average pH.
 
A better control would be if you had been using baking soda. Lowering soda ash dosing alone would lower your average pH.
If I were doing an experiment… which I’m not. I was relating my experience transitioning from (probably) the most common Alk supplementation to AFR, which is likely a common scenario. And one I have not seen discussed enough honestly. I already made your point in my discussion as issue #1. I was trying to be helpful and relevant to the topic but I can’t guarantee that everyone will find it so.
 
Tips on PH:

1) Think about airflow between your tank and the room.
Does your stand tightly seal your sump and skimmer?
Do you have a tight canopy on top?
That can cause local CO2 buildup, and low PH.

2) Skimmers are not as great as they seem for CO2.
Tons of bubbles, but all jammed together, with little flow around them.
They help of course, but are not the magic some people think.

2) My quick tweak:
I put a large air stone in my sump, that is directly under a power head.
Bubbles rise and are chopped up further.
So tons of tiny bubbles, all spread apart, and tons of surface agitation.
There was a noticeable difference in PH drift over several days.
I was a bit worried about micro-bubbles in my DT, but really not a problem.
 
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