Kalkwasser Usage

[SantaMonica]

You can dose without the skimmer if you want; simply converts inorganics to organics. Will have to experiment to see how much causes bacterial blooms.

[Ace25]

I agree, if you start to see bacteria blooms simply back off on the amount of vinegar used. On my system, 80ml of vinegar per 5G seems to be the limit, anything more and I get bacteria blooms even using a skimmer. Without a skimmer I would probably start off at 20ml per 5G and slowly move up (+5ml a week) until you see the first signs of a bacteria bloom which is usually a white sticky coating on glass or for ATS users the algae on the screen gets very weak and starts turning to mush. Liquid carbon dosing (vinegar/vodka/vitamin C/etc) is much easier to control and fine tune than solid carbon dosing so I can see how it could be possible to carbon dose that way and still have success with an ATS. Always error on the side of caution, start slowly, and wait at least a week before increasing dosage to give the tank time to adjust.

[kerry]

Even when I dosed 100ml vinegar per gallon I never really had a bloom. A month ago my water had a slight white haze to it for a few hours and I wondered if it was the bacteria but it was before I started the kalk/vinegar drip for that day.
The least I dose is 50ml vinegar per gallon (with 2 tsp lime powder per gallon). This is all on a 40G that gets a gallon of this a day.