[Firefish]

I was talking to a guy at the lfs and he was telling me about how he puts 2 tbs. of pure sugar in his 90 gallon every week. This sounded realy strange to me. Any of you reefers ever hear of this???

[ravenmore]

Never heard of it - the only thing I can think of that it would do would be to raise the bacteria levels in the tank. Some corals feed on bacteria, so that might be a benefit, but I would think you could get there by simply feeding the tank heavier. And I want to say I've heard of some German/European reefers using vodka - not sure what for though (alcohol is a type of sugar).

I HAVE heard of using vinegar in kalk mixes....it allows more calcium to be dissolved into the solution I think, and it also might lessen the ph swing from adding kalk too fast? Look for articles by Craig Bingham before you try it though.

-Mike

[icemark]

I heard of that a couple of years back, didn't pay much attention to the threads though...

I think the gist was that they thought the suger actually fed the corals, as the sugar is mostly amino acids.

I think its one of those things that someone was drunk one night and tried, and thought his (or her) tank looked better in the morning. So they said, "hey this works for me." Enough other people may have said, "well that could actually work because of this this and this". But I still question if there are any actual benefits.

[Biomanjcs72]

C6H12O6 (glucose, I think) is nothing close to an amino acid. Have no IDEA why someone would add it to their tanks. Can't remember the formula for Vineger (acetic acid) but the general reaction for any acid+base yields a salt and water. Alchohol is not a tye of sugar, it is a type of alchohol (ethanol, C2H6O) to be exact. The Vodka, in fact all distilled spirits do have rather large amounts of sugars in them, though.

hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers.

JCS

[ravenmore]

thanks for correcting me on the alcohol thing - no ruffled feathers here.

I did some research on the vinegar idea and found something that might validate both the sugar and alcohol idea. This all comes from Craig Bingham - I'll try to post a link to the article at the end of my post.

Basically he states that kalk provides both calcium(in the form of calcium ions) and alkalinity (in the form of hydoxide ions). Alkalinity has to be converted to carbonate alkalinity in order to be used for calcification (our animals skeletons, shells, ect...). This happens when carbon dioxide interacts with the hydroxide ions. However - if you have a tank with too low of a bio load, there's not enough CO2 in the system to accomplish this, so your ph can go up if your really adding a lot of kalk to the system (I've seen this in my 20 gal). Bingham states that adding an organic carbon source to the system would feed bacteria in the system causing them to create greater levels of CO2 in the system, thereby taking care of the problem. If you think about it, sugar, vinegar, and alcohol could be used to do this.

Some of what I said was taken pretty directly from Mr. Bingham's article (don't want to be accused of plagerism ). Here's the article in question:

http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/a...io/default.asp

-Mike

[Biomanjcs72]

Makes sense to me, all of that stoichiometry (basicallt the last half of the article) is the reason I didn't get a double chem degree and only have a minor in chem. Well, that and the fact iwould have had to subject to at least another year of advanced Calculus (Ugghhh)

[FMarini]

Hi:
two words........coral vital.....

This was the premise of using coral vital along time ago, adding glucose to your tank allowed corals to utilize this energy source directly, and therefore would "do" better, it was also a food source for all your infauna and bugs.
The premise is the same as you getting IV glucose.
I have little idea if this stuff works, but they sure sold alot of coral vital-which i believe was apple jucie and something else.
my opinion
frank

[suekey1]

After spending $18 on a bottle of coral vital, we found out the same thing....sugar water!! And boy did we have an algae explosion. Everyone has their secret weapon but we decided that wasn't it.

[organicreefer]

i know that raw sugar added to certain fruit/vegetable crops inreases flavor, fruit size ,and overall yeild.the question is,what the hell does that have to do with reefs?

[Firefish]

Maybe he's tring to make reef chowder I dont think I'll be addind any sugar to my tank anytime soon.

[Penguin]

Wouldn't adding sugar increase the specific gravity?

[addicted2fish]

Sugar is food for yeasts, which in turn are eaten by rotifers and many other critters. How well this theory works in a tank setting, well, who knows?