Yellow aglae growth from dosing Vit C...? High Alkalinity?

[Expressions-LTD]

Any thoughts on Vit C dosing affecting algae growth? How about high Alk?

Algae was growing nice and normal, until 3 weeks ago just went to yellowish, little growth, and a bit slimy. This waterfall scrubber is almost 2 months now. On week 5, I started to does Vit C. 5ppm. Week 6 upped to 10ppm. The ATS has been growing yellow and getting less and less growth, the last 3 weeks- since starting the Vit C. Any correlation? Alk is definitely high now as a side effect of the Vit C. Usually Alk is around 7, today measured 10.4.

Flow and LED on-time hasn't changed, so since it was working great before that shouldn't be an issue (slot is scrubbed each week as well). LEDs are on about 9 hours a day. Other parameters today: Phospahte 0.00. Temp 79. Salinity 51.5 (1.025). Nitrate 5. Nitrite 0.

Feeding- same as always- about 15ml of liquid food (10ml of Mysis Feast and 5ml of other coral food like oyster feast and roti feast) daily, with 2 silversides a week for an eel.

I am stopping the Vit C today to see what happens to the ATS. Hopefully it's not like a cocaine addiction and needs to be weeded off...

Pics:
Week 2:


Week 3:


Week 4:


Week 5:


Week 6:

[Garf]

It looks like its started to crash a week before the vit c, on week 4.

[SantaMonica]

Algae does not need C because it puts its own C into the water. If anything it might need iron.

Looks like it just ran out of nutrients. Probably only needs a small screen now.

[Expressions-LTD]

I believe you are right SM, now that I've sat here thinking about it. The dosing pump in the refrigerator is set to dose out 10ml of Mysis Feast daily, but I just watched it dispensing and while it does work, it appears it catches a hiccup every turn, so it's not pulling the food quite as evenly through it as the liquid coral foods do. So, I suspect I'm getting maybe 5ml of real food through it. The dosing thing I have is below (video). But I've been using the Vit. C to make the zoanthids recover- most were shriveled up for months, but are now finally open and many have budded new zoa's so it definitely works (the Vit C).

And to clarify, my Alk is 10.36 dKH (3.7meq) so it's not really that high.

The scrubber screen is an 11x6 screen: 66 sq. in., which should take a little over 5 cubes a day. What is the ml value of a 'cube' again?

[SantaMonica]

I never really tried to equate liquid to cubes, because the thickness is too big of a variable. However if you dried out the food so that it was almost solid (like wet cement), then you could probably put it into empty cubes and get an idea.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Just a note. I had a long conversation about Vitamin C dosing with Derek from Beef's Reef and he told me that Vitamin C dosing is pretty much all bunk and he inadvertently created it. It's a long story but basically he had given some "basics" advice to someone about how to maintain a healthy tank, the crux of which was to keep everything stable for 3 months, and then watch things take off. Well right at about the 3 month point this person decided to dose C and what do you know things took off. So she got all hyped up and went all over online about C being the bees-nees and even got someone at a university to study her system. The rest is history.

The moral to the story is Vitamin C dosing never did anything special and it never will. Stability is the #1 key to successful reef.

[Garf]

Good info bud, good info