Refugium with chaeto or bio-pellet reactor

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by davej

Denny a question for you.
I have been dosing vinegar on the 4 week schedule like you suggested.
Really happy with how things are looking.
Have been at 0.4 ml for about 3-4 weeks so far.
Phosphates read near zero to zero but nitrates hover around 10 ppm.
Don't have a large bio load and I think I feed fairly light.
Running an omega 150 for a skimmer and cant seem to get a good dark skimmate out of it always seems to skim fairly wet weak tea colored fluid.
Could this be a factor?
Could it just be too much skimmer for my setup?
Should I bump the vinegar up a little more?
What level do you settle in at on a daily basis?
Is it the 0.4 or different?

If there's no signs of stress then you can go higher for sure , once nitrates drop to zero you can always slowly cut back , just watch your ph and if you need to spread your dose out.

If phosphates are too low you can always feed a little more or cut out gfo if running it

Your skimmer is most likely a factor , skimmate should be dark almost black you'll know when it's working , I don't think that skimmer is overpowered fwiw but still you should be able to tune it to do it so there's an issue there IMO .

Keep an eye out for the signs of too much like white films on the glass or cloudy water and keep an eye on your livestock

I've made it to 1ml per gallon on setups and on average about 0.4 ml per gallon so the numbers can vary from system to system but you can fine tune it and it's a little forgiving

Once you find your mainatance dose it's pretty set and forget