Sugar Dosing In My 18g Saltwater Tank (nsw)

I did quarter spoon sugar dosing in my tank . I could see skimmer skimming foams now . Now I just have hermit crab . I have my fishes to cousin. Yet to add corals .
Any advice in dosing sugar ?
I really have no idea. I have heard that it would reduce nitrite .

 

Well, I've only really heard of people doing this in relatively large tanks (55 gallon+), since in smaller tanks it's too easy to overdose.

I'm going to link KinsKicks , so you might be able to get someone with more knowledge here.

 

I had never even heard of sugar dosing, so you certainly piqued my interest. I'd love to see what Kins has to say about this, but in the meantime, here's a link to a thread where Randy Holmes-Farley discusses sugar dosing with the OP, (look this guy up if you'd like. He's an accomplished man with a PhD in chemistry from Harvard, and he's been a reef keeper for many years.)

 

Thanks a lot mate

I had never even heard of sugar dosing, so you certainly piqued my interest. I'd love to see what Kins has to say about this, but in the meantime, here's a link to a thread where Randy Holmes-Farley discusses sugar dosing with the OP, (look this guy up if you'd like. He's an accomplished man with a PhD in chemistry from Harvard, and he's been a reef keeper for many years.)

 

Sugar is one of those fads that seems to market itself as a quick fix for all your problems, rather than having the keeper actively try to fix the source rather than all of the symptoms (same goes with vodka and even vinegar dosing).

The idea behind dosing sugar (or whatever) is in order to provide a carbon source to help feed and kick start the good bacteria in the tank to reduce the algae-causing parameters in our tanks. However, while yes, it does accomplish this, it also promotes the bad bacteria as well (and these are the ones that can affect you fish, corals, inverts, etc). Its sorta like, if you ever try to feed birds, and you want to feed the really nice pigeons, the meaner seagulls or hawks come down and eat the food too; you can't have one without the other.

There is a very fine balance in all of it; its why you'll see some cases where its wildly successful and in other where its a complete fail. In very well-maintained systems, there is a lot of nutrient control so the your photosynthetic flora produce very little sugar naturally, and can handle a dose of artificial sugar dosing (which can be beneficial). But in other cases, you can cause adverse affects (like bleaching your corals for example; these are cases where the corals own bacteria will turn on them).

To be totally honest, I have dosed sugar before in a tank that was totally ruined my neglect and miscare and I had run out of all my bag of tricks to try and control the terrible algae and parameter spikes it had (plus, its hard to fix something when somebody else continually reverses your work!). I will admit it did help me solve the issue and restart the tank without having yo do it totally from scratch; but this was a tank only consisting of LR. The person had watched me do this and attempted to do the same in a tank that only had a minor algae issue (that really could have been solved with reduced lighting and a quick fix of the fuge) and he did end up wiping out nearly the entire coral population. And, he used the same dosage. So, you can see the issue in balance that one would have to achieve for something like sugar dosing (aka carbon dosing); we can't realistically control, test, monitor, etc every single parameter in our tanks and in/on our fish, so it makes quick-fix methods like those unreliable.

Hope this helps a little bit in the idea behind these things Although I’m definitely not a PhD chem grad from harvard, this is just my take on it

 

It was fine mate. I found sea fan near my shore.
I added it to my tank . My skimmer started foaming a lot . And tank started smelling . I took 80% of the water. I ruined my system . Thankfully I didn't have any fish except hermit crab

Sugar is one of those fads that seems to market itself as a quick fix for all your problems, rather than having the keeper actively try to fix the source rather than all of the symptoms (same goes with vodka and even vinegar dosing).

The idea behind dosing sugar (or whatever) is in order to provide a carbon source to help feed and kick start the good bacteria in the tank to reduce the algae-causing parameters in our tanks. However, while yes, it does accomplish this, it also promotes the bad bacteria as well (and these are the ones that can affect you fish, corals, inverts, etc). Its sorta like, if you ever try to feed birds, and you want to feed the really nice pigeons, the meaner seagulls or hawks come down and eat the food too; you can't have one without the other.

There is a very fine balance in all of it; its why you'll see some cases where its wildly successful and in other where its a complete fail. In very well-maintained systems, there is a lot of nutrient control so the your photosynthetic flora produce very little sugar naturally, and can handle a dose of artificial sugar dosing (which can be beneficial). But in other cases, you can cause adverse affects (like bleaching your corals for example; these are cases where the corals own bacteria will turn on them).

To be totally honest, I have dosed sugar before in a tank that was totally ruined my neglect and miscare and I had run out of all my bag of tricks to try and control the terrible algae and parameter spikes it had (plus, its hard to fix something when somebody else continually reverses your work!). I will admit it did help me solve the issue and restart the tank without having yo do it totally from scratch; but this was a tank only consisting of LR. The person had watched me do this and attempted to do the same in a tank that only had a minor algae issue (that really could have been solved with reduced lighting and a quick fix of the fuge) and he did end up wiping out nearly the entire coral population. And, he used the same dosage. So, you can see the issue in balance that one would have to achieve for something like sugar dosing (aka carbon dosing); we can't realistically control, test, monitor, etc every single parameter in our tanks and in/on our fish, so it makes quick-fix methods like those unreliable.

Hope this helps a little bit in the idea behind these things

 

It was fine mate. I found sea fan near my shore.
I added it to my tank . My skimmer started foaming a lot . And tank started smelling . I took 80% of the water. I ruined my system . Thankfully I didn't have any fish except hermit crab

oh no! I'm sorry . If I had to guess, you probably got a strong bacterial bloom! Hopefully, it'll kick back up soon and you can show it off

 

Yeah . I will do water change tomorrow . Hopefully I get back . I ordered corals it's coming in two days probably

oh no! I'm sorry . If I had to guess, you probably got a strong bacterial bloom! Hopefully, it'll kick back up soon and you can show it off