# Sugar in the aquarium water??



## davemonkey

I read a comment awhile back and I've tried to get it out of my head, knowing that dosing sugar into the aquarium is probably a bad idea, but I just can't shake it. :loco: So, I decided to post the question, or rather, questions.

What happens if you put sugar into your aquarium? Will it break down into simple carbons? Can plants utilize it as a carbon source? Will it release CO2? Will bacteria break it down the same way yeast does and release not only CO2 but ethanol as well?

I would guess it would eventually break down after dissolving in the water once bacteria get to work on it, but what would be the by-product?

I thought I did well in Chemistry in high school and college, but I really have no clue on this. :noidea: Anybody care to take a guess or share some thoughts/info?

-Dave


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## Jimbo205

davemonkey, my experience with this comes from when I had my mixture from my DIY CO2 bottle spill some sugar and yeast into my tank. This was before I had an empty soda bottle between my DIY CO2 bottle and my tank (others may suggest a check valve, but this is what has worked for me).

The effects were NOT good. 

Someone explained to me that what I had was a bacterial bloom and that this competed with my fish for O2 in the water. My fish were gasping for air. I was lucky that most of my fish were still alive at that time when I came home at the end of the day (I did lose some smaller ones..) and that the person helping me on APC suggested that I immediately put an airstone in the tank with an airpump going FULL BLAST. From what I saw, my opinion became that this is what saved my fish at that time. I saw my fish immediately swim back and forth specifically through the air bubbles. 

I will not say that doing a water change right away would not have been effective, but from that experience my opinion became that - when time is of the essence an air pump going full blast with an airstone will save the day. 

I think I may have done a water change right afterwards, but this happened a while ago and my memory is not perfect on what I did in the following steps. 

I do wish I had become involved in this hobby at the same time or before I took Junion High School, High School and College Biology and Chemistry. I think I would have absorbed it more effectively or I would have asked more application questions of my teachers and professors at that time. All I have now is faded memories of academic subjects that I do not believe ever approached the topics we explore once we are in this hobby. 

I would love to hear a reply from a Junior High School, High School or College student on whether their classes taught them what would happen. 

And of course, we have many biologists, chemists and environmental scientists on APC that are not just hobbyists, but rather professionals that handle this subject as part of their day to day work. 

Let's wait to see what either side of the spectrum reply with. :smile:


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## HeyPK

What Jimbo205 says is exactly what will happen---bacterial increase leading to cloudy water, lowered oxygen and gasping, dying fish. With a good oxygen supply, bacteria will convert the sugar to CO2 and water, using up lots of oxygen. With a poor oxygen supply, bacteria will convert sugar to alcohol or lactic acid, but all the fish will be dead.


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## Jimbo205

See, I knew someone would actually have the answer to your question. :smile:

I think what kept most of my fish alive at the time before I got home was the fact that I had a BIO-Wheel Hang on Back Filter. That normally keeps an aquarium well oxygenated. (Not normally recommended for a planted aquarium though.) The fish were swimming at the top of the water right next to the out put from that filter. 

Learn from my experience: don't do it. 

HeyPK, that is one awesome gallery and profile that you have. Wherever is appropriate (in this thread or not in this thread), please let me know where the sticky is to add photos to our gallery and if there is any limit to it. (Back in the day, the limit I believe was 2 or 3. I am encouraged that that may not be the case anymore.)


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## Idiopathogen

If a veterinary opinion counts (along with the biochemistry I had to take to get there), I would expect fermentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_(biochemistry))

As with all toxins the amount of sugar added to your tank is also important.

1. At an (unknown) minimal level -- unless you want to experiment, probably nothing will happen -- the bacterial populations will handle the sugar without causing a significant change in water chemistry.

2. An increasing amount may cause a significant pH drop and/or ethanol toxicosis for your fish which could lead to drunkeness and/or death. Sugar when completely broken down does become carbon dioxide and water. The problem is the intermediate products that will get into the water during the fermentation process which could include lactic acid and/or ethanol. The amount and types of acids produced depends on how the bacterial populations typically present in a fish tank would handle the sugar. I have no idea what byproducts would result and in what quantity, but most of them are acids. The more sugar added, the more acid produced.

3. A very large amount of sugar would kill all the bacteria, fish, and plants, and basically make a fish tank syrup. Sugar is an osmotic and will draw all the water out of the bacterial cells, as well as the fish and plants. They will all die of dehydration and your tank will be sterilized.

I wouldn't recommend ever adding sugar to your fish tank intentionally.


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## Jimbo205

Holy cow, these guys are good!!!


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## Jeff.:P:.

This is becoming more and more popular with reef tanks in order to increase bacteria and reduce N, P. using either vodka or sugar. Like others said I don't think it will fair well in a planted tank.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=288714


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## HeyPK

> please let me know where the sticky is to add photos to our gallery and if there is any limit to it. (Back in the day, the limit I believe was 2 or 3. I am encouraged that that may not be the case anymore.)


I don't know if such a sticky exists. You can find instructions for adding photos by going to the User Manual, clicking on "search user manual", and entering "photo album" in the search box. Then you get instructions on using the photo album to upload pictures and display them in your post. (Note: That is the ONLY way to access these instructions. If you browse around in the user manual, you won't see them:noidea I doubt that there is a limit of two or three, because many members have lots more than that. If there is an upper limit on picture size, I have not found it yet.


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## davemonkey

Thanks for all the great replies! I don't know why I kept thinking about it, maybe because it's something I didn't know and I JUST HAD TO KNOW!  And I certainly was not willing to try an experiment on my aquarium to find out "the hard way". If I were a cat, I'd probably be dead by now from all my curiosity.  And I never would have figured it for reef tanks. 

-Dave


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## HeyPK

Do the experiment on a small scale. Get a glass jar, put some soil on the bottom, fill with water, plant a plant, put in a snail, let it spend a week or two on a windowsill, and then put in some sugar.


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## davemonkey

HeyPK said:


> Do the experiment on a small scale. Get a glass jar, put some soil on the bottom, fill with water, plant a plant, put in a snail, let it spend a week or two on a windowsill, and then put in some sugar.


I've got a 1/2 gallon jar I can use. If I figured right, 0.05 tsp sugar would be the same as 1 tsp in a 10 gallon tank. 0.05 tsp is 0.25 ml. I think I can get close to that.

I might even have two of these jars. Then I can do one with sugar, one without. I'll start tomorrow and update after a week or so. I have a sneaking suspicion this won't go down in history as one of the greater studies conducted. :delete:

-Dave


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## OhioPlantedtankguy

davemonkey said:


> I've got a 1/2 gallon jar I can use. If I figured right, 0.05 tsp sugar would be the same as 1 tsp in a 10 gallon tank. 0.05 tsp is 0.25 ml. I think I can get close to that.
> 
> I might even have two of these jars. Then I can do one with sugar, one without. I'll start tomorrow and update after a week or so. I have a sneaking suspicion this won't go down in history as one of the greater studies conducted. :delete:
> 
> -Dave


Well i dont know about FW, i have used Sugar in a SW tank, the results were, well Bad very very bad. The water looked like Milk it caused such a Large bacteria bloom, and everything in the tank died, which at that point was a few snails, and a couple hermit crabs, so not a huge loss. It will cause a Massive Bacteria Bloom that much im sure on, but the effect on plants i couldn't tell you.


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## davemonkey

Hey, Ohio. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't turn out good at all for fish. It's like one of those things that sounds good in theory, but really isn't. Except, in this case, the theory isn't all that great either. 

Just for kicks, you don't happen to remember how much sugar you put in, and how many gallons water? I've decided to test it out on Ludwigia and Bacopa cuttings.


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## OhioPlantedtankguy

davemonkey said:


> Hey, Ohio. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't turn out good at all for fish. It's like one of those things that sounds good in theory, but really isn't. Except, in this case, the theory isn't all that great either.
> 
> Just for kicks, you don't happen to remember how much sugar you put in, and how many gallons water? I've decided to test it out on Ludwigia and Bacopa cuttings.


Yup 4 tablespoons in 20g long tank, im guessing about 16 to 17 actually gallons of water. Make sure you use pre-cycled substrate and Water change water to fill your jars, that way it will be faster than waiting on it to cycle lol.


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## davemonkey

And so it begins...:clock:

I am using 2 rubbermaid half-gallon containers. They're about 5" in diameter and 8-9" inches tall. Don't check the math for volume, I didn't actually measure them. 

I used soil from the yard because..., well..., it was there and I didn't want to dig around in my tank's substrate. It's a clay loam, but I rinsed it to get clearer water faster, so what's left is mostly silty sand. It is a naturaly highly fertile soil, so hopefully some nutrients stayed with me. I placed 2 _Ludwigia repens _cuttings and 1 _Bacopa caroliniana _cutting in each jar. I filled them each with water from the aquarium and sat them in a window (hopefully they don't get cooked) and put about 0.7 ml of sugar in one. That should be pretty close to the equivalent of 1 TBS per 10 gallons. :blah:

Anyway, I'll let you all know what happens as it happens. If anything significant comes about, I'll get some photos.

Oh, and I put a couple snails in each.

-Dave


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## Idiopathogen

Should be interesting Dave.

If we can find a safe dose of sugar to use and it does cause a significant bacterial or algae bloom, I could try it in a daphnia culture.

I've set up one in a 20 gallon container outside, and there's only about 10 of them in there from a local pond. If I could speed up the process with some sugar without killing them, that would be cool.

I'm going to wait and see how your experiment goes first.

It might be interesting to see also if the nitrate levels get consumed quickly indicating that the bacteria and algae use it up while proliferating.

~Peter


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## Sunstar

So....keeping my 9 air pumps might be a good idea if that happens? or mgith that be a little bit overkill?


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## Idiopathogen

If you accidentaly get sugar in your aquarium, especially if there are fish, I would do a large water change.


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## Sunstar

I will keep that in mind as I do have two yeast reactors.


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## davemonkey

update:

3 days in and a notable difference. J1 will be the sugar-jar, J2 will be the non-sugar jar.

J1 is notably hazy/cloudy, the water has a noticeable film on it, one snail has some slimy/white/fungus stuff growing on it's shell. Snails seem happy and plants look healthy.

J2 has cleared up nicely, some surface film, but not much. Snails look happy and plants healthy. Neither snail has any fungus-stuff on it.

We'll call Tuesday "Day 1", even thought I started this that late afternoon.
-On Days 1 and 3, I dosed sugar to J1...est equiv to 1TBS per 10 gallons.
-On Days 2 and 3, I dosed micros and macros, respectively...est eqiv to Seachem's recommendation on the bottles.

It appears that one of the ludwigia stems in J1 is longer than it's respective counterpart in J2, but I will not assume or measure until more time has gone by.

So far, I will say that sugar in the aquarium would be a disaster aesthetically.

More updates in a few days.

-Dave


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## Jimbo205

The guys in my local Capital District Aquatic Plant Society are like this. They like to experiment. Which by the way, Tom Barr has always said is the ONLY way to KNOW if a theory is true or false. Diana Walstad in her book - Ecology of the Planted Aquarium proved some assumptions false about lights and light bulbs. 

El Exorcisto has always said to me that at the worst, just redo the entire thing. 

Me, I just hate cleaning up a mess. Hate it. 

I personally would prefer to learn from others' experiences and experiments. 

Of course if you come from a family that is in the building and contracting field, then blowing things up and rebuilding them may come naturally. At which point, I am extremely jealous. 

Sounds cool. 

Dave, let us know how it goes. 

And for the green water and growing a Daphnia culture, that sounds fun too. I personally loved the book by Tropical Fish Hobbyist (published by) called - Culturing Live Foods.


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## Idiopathogen

Let me know how this turns out.

My daphnia culture is getting a bit cold. I could set two 10 gallon tanks up inside and test w/ sugar. I'm waiting to see what happened to your snails.

~Peter


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## zer0zax

This experiment is interesting! If the aquarium turns to sludge, it might be worth trying again with less sugar. If you end up with a bacteria bloom, put some daphnia or fairy shrimp in there! Easy live food


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## davemonkey

I think there are better ways to get carbon into a tank than using straight sugar...like CO2, DIY yeast/sugar method, excel...at least these don't have sludge associated with them. 

I'll post my final update in a couple minutes.


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## davemonkey

Final Update, experiment terminated

I’m getting the house ready for appraisal, and jugs in the window don’t help. 
I’ve satisfied my curiosity though. 

Day5 (Saturday) J1 has white-fungusy-film on plants, snails, and soil. Water is hazy.
J2 is crystal clear and looks like a healthy “El Natural” .

At peak of sunlight, J1 plants producing tiny ‘pearls’ at a rate of 9:1 compared to J2 (this is total bubbles seen rising to the surface, not bubbles forming per plant… ) .

Day 6 (Sunday), added sugar again to J1. The slime-covered soil is producing significant amount of bubbles (looks like soda pop) while J2 has none noticeable. Snails in both are still doing well. Water in J1 has never cleared up.

Day 7 (Monday), measured stem growth. Bacopa in J1 has ½” more growth than J2. Ludwigia stems have ¼” more growth each in J1 compared to J2. (Keep in mind that J2 had NO source of carbon added. ) Aside from filmy residue on J1 plants, all plants look very healthy, full of color, and turgid. However, I did toss out J1’s stems; put J2’s back in the aquarium.

Conclusion, sugar dosed at 1 TBS per 10 gal is a usable source of carbon for aquatic plants. However, the havoc it wreaks on the aesthetics is not worth using it. Since we already have at least three good methods for introducing carbon, methods that do not have the adverse side-effects, there is absolutely no reason to put sugar into an aquarium. So, never put sugar directly into your aquarium. Use the DIY yeast/sugar method, buy a pressurized CO2 system, or use Excel. (Or use that carbon brick thing…not sure what it’s called. )

Aside from the sugar/carbon question, this experiment showed me how easy it can be to set up an El Natural aquarium. If I ever can get a second tank, it will be El Natural.

Thanks for reading.

-Dave


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## Jimbo205

davemonkey said:


> Conclusion, sugar dosed at 1 TBS per 10 gal is a usable source of carbon for aquatic plants. However, the havoc it wreaks on the aesthetics is not worth using it. Since we already have at least three good methods for introducing carbon, methods that do not have the adverse side-effects, there is absolutely no reason to put sugar into an aquarium.
> 
> So, never put sugar directly into your aquarium. Use the DIY yeast/sugar method, buy a pressurized CO2 system, or use Excel.
> 
> this experiment showed me how easy it can be to set up an El Natural aquarium.
> 
> If I ever can get a second tank, it will be El Natural.
> 
> -Dave


This was so cool to read. It is fun to read men experimenting with stuff. Very cool. Pushing the limits and verifying results is a good thing.

If you ever get a second tank.....

Dave, if you don't mind my asking... how many tanks do you have (Nano, PICOs, Medium, Large, Gigantic, etc) ?

If you have not caught MTS (Multiple Tank Syndrome) yet, or do not want to catch it - run now.

Once you invest in your first magazine subscription, get your second magazine subscription, extend your first subscription during the Christmas time season to 3 years (best deal!) and then start collecting all the aquarium books that you can get your hands on for ideas, photos, the latest, etc and feedback from hobbyists around the globe - you are hooked.

And when every time your kids are in the car with you and one way or another they end up with you at the local fish store (Come on, Dad!!!); just remind your family that you are not a crack addict or an alcoholic.... and smile. And then watch the expressions on their faces when they see you approaching their teacher about science, chemistry, biology, environmental sciences (and your kids know it is eventually going to come out...) and the benefits of aquariums in the classroom.

My wife does not know it yet, but my local club is going to be helping me take my shrimp breeding tank and turn it into an ATTRACTIVE Display Shrimp Tank. The things she does not know.. and the parts of the hobby that I have not mastered or explored yet.

Multiple Tank Syndrome... Dave would you like a Betta or some Poecillia Wingei (Endler's)? 
I could ship you some...


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## Jimbo205

davemonkey, that profile rocks!

Resource Conservationist, that sounds like a cool job!

Do the wife and girls know how to say and spell 'Hemianthus Micranthemoides' yet?

(The things we men need to teach our families..)


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## zer0zax

Success! Your experiment passed with flying colors, so I am on the way to the store to buy 2 bags of sugar now. Will this be enough sugar for a 55? I can't wait to see my plants grow!:twitch: Just kidding!


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## davemonkey

Jimbo205 said:


> davemonkey, that profile rocks!
> 
> Resource Conservationist, that sounds like a cool job!
> 
> Do the wife and girls know how to say and spell 'Hemianthus Micranthemoides' yet?
> 
> (The things we men need to teach our families..)


Yep, my job is WAAAYY Cool! Actually, the reason I have this job is because of the Dust Bowl from back in the 1930's. Long story short, I get paid to make sure that, in the event of severe drought, we don't have a situation like the Dust Bowl again. I get to spend lots of time outside helping landowner's conserve soil and other natural resources.

Anyhow, my wife doesn't even want to know what Hemianthus is. My kids are too young to spell it, but my 3 yr-old is ever at my side when I work in the aquarium soaking up whatever info I can give her.

Don't send me any fish just yet. I'm getting ready for a 475 mile move to the other end of Texas (Houston). But, I'm trying to convince my wife that the 3 yr old needs an aquarium "of her own...so she can learn the sciences involved..." We'll see how that goes. 

-Dave


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## Idiopathogen

That's great Dave!

Now I need to set up a couple daphnia jars since your snail survived, and see if I can increase daphnia reproduction with sugar.

I'll post when I get things set up, perhaps tomorrow.

~Peter


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## Fortuna Wolf

I'm going to point out something...
1 tbsp of sugar / 10 gallons, if we assume 1tbsp to be ~15ml of sugar then we have 400 ppm of sugar. Whereas with excel flourish we add with .5ml of 2.5% GA / gallon, about 3ppm. 
You can probably cut the sugar wayyyy back and still add carbon without some crazy fermentation... For a 50% sugar solution 1 drop per gallon would give you about 6ppm.


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## davemonkey

Idiopathogen said:


> That's great Dave!
> 
> Now I need to set up a couple daphnia jars since your snail survived, and see if I can increase daphnia reproduction with sugar.
> 
> I'll post when I get things set up, perhaps tomorrow.
> 
> ~Peter


Can't wait to read about it. (Sorry if you already posted another thread about it, I'm trying to play 'catch-up' on reading posts. )

-Dave


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## lildark185

Would having a shrimp in the tank eliminate the slime that grew in J1? Would adding excel (to both jars to keep things constant) also eliminate the slime in J1, or would that kill the bacteria that utilizes the sugar? Also, I am thinking that the plants in J1 grew a bit taller because there was sugar readily available for growth rather than the plant producing the sugar itself.


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## Fortuna Wolf

aye, rather than producing CO2 from sugar the plants likely took it up directly as sugar, bypassing photosynthesis. There is a maximum rate at which plants can assimilate sugars in this way, which is also close to the maximum rate plants can use sugars. I recall from doing micropropagation techniques where you take bits of plants, sterilize them, and then introduce them to agar or nutrient broths with sugar in them that they grow at the maximum rate without photosynthesis - you can grow them in the dark in sugar nutrient solutions. 

We might be able to do something similar in the aquarium with a careful balance of sugars, nutrients, and fauna to eat any bacteria, fungi, and algae that attempt to bloom from the conditions. Perhaps a combination of shrimp, daphnia, and other protozoa would work.


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## HeyPK

Pond snails are great at eliminating bacterial films. Perhaps with pond snails and Daphnia present you could experiment with feeding some plants sucrose in limited doses.


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## davemonkey

Hmm, I never thought about the plants simply taking up the sugar as...sugar. It's very interesting, although I don't think I would do the sugar thing again. But I'd enjoy seeing some more tests with it and using daphnia, snails, or shrimp.


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## Fortuna Wolf

Actually a decent test would be in the dark. 
Take one jar with plants, put by the sun, 
Take another with plants, put by the sun and add sugar (but not a crazy amount!)
Take a third jar with plants, put in the dark and add as much sugar as the 2nd jar. 

Weigh plants before and after experiment. 

I'd do this but for some reason none of the local petstores have snail infestations and I'm short on snails due to nuking all but one tank with glutaraldehyde (DIE CLADOPHORA DIE)


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## zer0zax

What about root uptake? If you put a little bit of sugar in clay balls you could keep the water column a little cleaner. No idea what it would do to the rest of the substrate though. Swords are usually cheap, and a couple clay sugar balls under the roots would hopefully leave the rest of the substrate ok.

If that sounds viable, I will market them and call them zer0balls, or zer0's something or other. Let me call Amano real quick and see what he thinks.....


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## HeyPK

Not a good idea. The sugar would be fermented to various alcohols or organic acids by a variety of anaerobic bacteria. These alcohols and organic acids would not be good for roots.


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## zer0zax

out: I guess alcohol won't help the roots at all. I will make sure not to put my balls in the substrate.


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## davemonkey

zer0zax said:


> out: I will make sure not to put my balls in the substrate.


ound:


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## apistomaster

It has been too long since my last visit but this topic immediately caught my eye because one of the most famous of aquarists in history, the Late Jorgen Scheel writes about using a low dose sugar solution in his Killiefish tanks in his landmark book, Rivulins of the Old World. 1968, TFH Publication.
This book has been long out of print but still a must have for serious killiefish keepers.
Here is what he writes about using a sugar solution in lieu of our more familiar DIY CO2 fermentation bottles.

"Most rivuline individuals take very much foodand it is often not to easy to keep down the concentration of waste products. Also, these fishes prefer food rich in proteins and their waste-products simply cannot be taken up by the plants because of the deficiency of CO2 and an artificial supply of this gas should be given. The usual system, with fermenting sugar-solution in a separate bottle for each tank, is not very practical for the killifish fancier. When much care is taken, another system might be used. Prepare a 5% solution of sugar in water (about 6 ounces of sugar to each gallon of water) and add 16 cc. of this solution to each four gallons of aquarium water (1 cc. to each liter). Best results are had when the sugar solution is stirred into the water and bad results are usually had when solid sugar is added directly to the aquarium. This method is very useful when the possible bad effects are understood and counteracted. First the sugar is converted to carbon dioxide and alcohol, which do little harm. The alcohol is converted into acetic acid and the oxygen needed for this process is taken from the sulfates, resulting in the production of the poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas, which is very harmful for fishes. I have used this system in fifty tanks for more than two years without killing a single fish. The sugar solution usually is added to the tank every two weeks.
It has been possible to maintain many tanks without renewal of plants, peat and water for more than one year."

I have had this idea floating around my head since 1968 but I have never attempted it.
J. Scheel only used one plant species, Hygrophila difformis and these tanks all contained one to two inches of old peat moss. He never threw it out but always recycled his peat.
When someone of Scheel's stature puts forth this idea, one can hardly discount it. He was a consummate aquarist, fish research scientist, a giant in his field with many species of fish named in his honor. His book is not well known outside of the older Killiefish keeping community. I have never seen any mention of using a carbohydrate outside of reef tank denitrifiers fed on ethanol(vodka).
I was struck by the high concentrations of sugar some of the posters cited trying and had to look up this passage i copied from his book and posted above. I knew he used very little sugar but couldn't remember his recommended dosage rates. Perhaps this information will help fine tune some of the on-going experiments. I will watch this thread for comments and results of experiments anyone may do to test Dr Scheel's methods. I hope sharing his formula and techniques proves helpful.


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## Fortuna Wolf

His solution would be dosing at 50ppm which seems much more reasonable. I would venture a dose a little less but its a good starting point. I don't understand why he would dose only every few weeks. The sugar will be taken up or broken into co2 and lost within a day most likely. Dosing with sugar probably needs to occur daily. 

I'll try to get my hands on some elodea and mason jars.


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## apistomaster

I don't think Jorgen Scheel utilized aeration. Perhaps that makes the difference. The effects of the peat substrate is also a complicating factor. I suspect the nature of his set ups and relatively low stocking densities are some of the factors that complicate what actually transpired in his tanks.
Like I mentioned, his is the first time I had come across the idea of using a sugar solution to produce CO2 in situ until happening upon this thread today, 4 decades later.


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## davemonkey

apistomaster, thanks so much for posting that quote from Dr. Scheel! If I had that info from the get-go, I would have used his 5% solution. Wow, I wasn't even born until 7 years after that book came out!! 

Although I won't be experimenting with this anymore (at least not for a good while), I would certainly like to see more results from someone using that 5% solution, especially compared to pressurized CO2, DIY, and excel. It would be really neat to see how it stacks up! 

-Dave


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## Fortuna Wolf

well, I think within the week I'll be doing a small test. 
4 jars with aeration, going to weigh out elodea and myriophyllum before the test, then add them to each jar. 2 jars in light, 2 in darkness, 2 with sugar, 2 without sugar. Dosage will be approximately 50ppm /day. Run for 10 days. Weigh the plants after the test. 
Repeat until I have enough replicates to do statistics.


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## zer0zax

That will be a good experiment! Looking forward to seeing what happens, especially with the jars in the dark. What is the agar that is used in tissue culture? Is it just diluted sugar or are there other nutrients?


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## lildark185

If you grew plants in the dark long enough, would the plants be white? If so, one could then create a "winter" scape.


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## Fortuna Wolf

Actually yes, growing plants in the dark makes them white. Simultaneously though it also will make them "bolt" and grow very very leggy. We put some of the cultured plants in the dark to see just that. They grew up, but were white and spindly. Exposure to light normalized them.

I don't have a particular recipe, but this will give you an idea of making it. 
http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/first_light_case/horn/PTC/preptcmed.html
The nutrient packet is Murashige and Skoog salts which is the off 
the self nutrient mix for plants. Some plants require different mixes. 
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/tisscult/database/media/mssalts.html

In my lab we did a few different plants - tobacco, rose, venus flytrap, and myriophyllum.

Wait, Myriophyllum? Yes, that's an aquatic that we use in the aquariums. Yes, we grew it in the dark. And yes, we did not use agar in the media, we submersed it in liquid media.

Note, that the addition of sugars and nutrients in high concentrations meant that we bleached the plants and use antifungal and antibacteria wash and autoclaved instruments when preparing these. That's 30g of sugar / 800ml, or 3.8%. 
38,000 ppm.


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## HeyPK

Regarding the method used by Sheel:

Dosing with sugar would work as long as the sugar were added in small enough amounts so that oxygen is never used up or brought down so low as to cause the fish distress. I question whether it would get CO2 levels as high as present day methods of CO2 dosing. Maybe a good deal of the sugar can be taken up directly by the plants, and that would be helpful because oxygen would not be consumed. How well do plants take up sucrose, Fortuna?


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## Fortuna Wolf

I've decided to use corn syrup which is a liquid mix of glucose and fructose instead of a sucrose solution. The glucose and fructose are smaller and may be able to be taken up faster. 

Temp °C mg/l oxygen freshwater 
0 14.6
5 12.8
10 11.3
15 10.1
20 9.1
25 8.2
30 7.5

So we ee that its temperature dependent, but I think most of our tanks are around 25C, maybe colder, rarely warmer. That's 8.2 ppm... by w/v. The molar concentration is ~.25 millimoles
Of sugar, added at 40 ppm, we have .22 millimoles. Being that it is C6H12O6 it will use up 6 O2 in order to fully combust, or about 1.32 millimoles of O2. 
No worries, if your tank is -aerated- it will continually stay at near saturated O2 levels, and even then it'll take a while for things to take the sugar up and then metabolize it, it not instantaneous. 

As for the estimates of plant uptake of sugar I can't really say. I know that they can take up enough sugar to reach the physiological maximum rate of growth that's the same as if you were throwing dry ice at it and had in the brightest light possible.


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## davemonkey

Fortuna, I'm not sure how this may add to your experiment, but I'm doing a 4-day sugar test on my tank before it gets torn down.

I decided I have nothing to lose doing a test in my aquarium since there are only a handful of plants left and the whole thing is getting torn down Saturday as I prepare to move. So, yesterday I dissolved 1.5 tsp of sugar in a cup of warm water and then poured it in my 50gal. By tank dimensions ( 48x12x18 ) , thickness of glass, and other stuff, I figure my tank holds 43 gallons of water. So, 1.5 tsp should give me 45ppm (if my math is good).

At the end of the day (when I got home) the water in my tank was NOT cloudy and the fish were not stressed. (In the previous test I did, I put about 200ppm, or 1 TBS per 10 gal, and that caused severe water cloudiness and other problems.) This morning I repeated the 1.5 tsp. I will not use any ferts or excel during these 4 days.

A little flash-back: I stopped all CO2 injection 2 weeks ago knowing I had to start packing stuff up. Of the very few plants I have left, they continued to grow for about 1 week as I used liquid ferts and excel as a carbon source. HOWEVER, the past week, all growth has stopped completely (at least from what I can see) . Despite excel and nutrients, there is NO noticible growth in a whole week (lighting has stayed the same) . I attribute this to lack of CO2, and it makes me wonder how good a carbon supplement excel really is. So, I believe that if the plants start growing again (*and I know 4 days isn't enough to get a good test or reliable reults*), it would have to be the sugar, whether taken up as-is by the plants, or converted in to CO2...

I'll let you know if anything happens.

-Dave


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## davemonkey

Well, that was short-lived. I came home this afternoon to find the white fungusy-film on my tank glass. I wiped everything down and did an 80% water change. No more sugar for this fella.

On the bright side, they replaced a section of water pipe yesterday, so the water is saturated with air. My whole tank looks like it's pearling like MAD! Even if it's not the real thing, I can pretend. 

-Dave


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## Fortuna Wolf

I think you should keep it up, if you're gonna tear the tank down anyway, right?


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## davemonkey

Fortuna Wolf said:


> I think you should keep it up, if you're gonna tear the tank down anyway, right?


You have agood point (and maybe the film would have eventually gone away after some adjusting), but the 'neat-freak' in me won't allow it. Plus, it'd be my luck that tomorrow the realtor will call and say, "Someone wants to come by to see the house and make an offer" and they come in and see my "fungus factory". 

Anyhow, I did notice in just two days that the two stems of Ludwigia I have left did put out new shoot buds. For your experiment you may want to cut down to 30 - 40 ppm and see how that works. Or maybe there's a threshold of how much sugar the sytem can take before the 'fungus attack' and it's related directly to stocking density of plants?

:idea: Hmm, now that I think about it, it may have been the fact that I have so few plants to utilize the sugar, that excess sugar fouled my system.

Oh well, I'll wait to see what you get first before I think about thrying the sugar again.

-Dave


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## Fortuna Wolf

I wish I knew some good tests for free glucose or fructose. I figure if anyone is diabetic they might have blood glucose test strips? But the normal level of blood glucose is about 900 ppm, about 20x what we're looking at at 40 ppm. I suspect that without plants to utilize the sugar the sugar simply wasn't broken down in the tank and daily dosing simply increased the concentration. You probably want a dosage that adds sugar which the plants will fully taken up between dosings. 

I'm still trying to get my hands on some large jars for the test.


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## Fortuna Wolf

Finding test plants might be hard. I've been to a few pet stores and none of them have myriophyllum, hornwort, or elodea/anachris/etc. Back home we had a petsmart that would always have bunches of myriophyllum and elodea and hornwort for a few bucks.


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## Fortuna Wolf

Ok, I have containers and syrup ($1.50 for a qt of Blackburn Corn Syrup). No plants yet... 

The corn syrup seems to be standardized to 1g/1ml. It will be 1.5ml / 10 gallons for 40 ppm.


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## HeyPK

How often are you going to add the 1.5ml per 10 gallons? I would think every second or every third day at first. If the tank doesn't get overly cloudy or fouled up, then you could increase the amount or the rate of adding.


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## Fortuna Wolf

Initially I will add daily. If the experiment shows signs of growth then I'll do further experiments to see how growth is affected by different dosing regimes. 

On a whim I threw in pinches of sucrose or corn syrup into my tanks 3 days ago. These were large pinches, and I have no bacterial growth yet. I think pulsed dosing will work best, but there's not enough data yet.

Someone is bringing me hornwort tomorrow.


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## zer0zax

I am really looking forward to this Fortuna! Hopefully you will get many plants, keep us updated!


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## Fortuna Wolf

Tomorrow I will weigh the plants from my 10 day trial at 50ppm sucrose/day and we'll see if Ceratophyllum shows increased growth at 50ppm of sugar. It took about 7 days for the water to begin to cloud from bacteria, and there's no biofilms yet.


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## davemonkey

Cool, I look forward to the weigh-in.


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## davemonkey

Sorry to bump up this old subject, but I wanted to share another reason that sugar is probably a BAD idea in the aquarium. At work I had a 1 gal tupperware and through some plants in it. I decided to try to sugar again and sprinkled some in on occassion (close to the measurements Fortuna was talking about, but I just eye-balled it) . And, I used far more plants than my first try around.

I didn't notice any cloudiness, but every time I put my fingers in the water to play around with the plants, they began to burn. The water became so acidic that the snails slugged up to the top and stayed there until they dried up and died.

IMO, There are far better ways to fertilize a planted tank other than trying out sugar.

-Dave


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## quatermass

Interesting thread.

I've been adding sugar to my 250L and various 50L planted tanks for over 6 months now.

I got interested in this subject as I discovered that Tetra's product EasyBalance uses sugar to remove nitrates and this lead me to try castor sugar to remove nitrates after fishless cycling a tank.

After a few experiments in which I initially added too much sugar, I got white cloudy water and low oxygen levels (the few snails in the tank would rise to the surface) I discovered that 1g per 15L works for me.

Now I find that I can easily remove nitrate from my fish/shrimp/frog tank with no harm.

I was curious to the plant growth aspect too. But as I don't add sugar daily, I can't say I've noticed any harm or extra growth.


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## miwoodar

I believe organic carbon additions are best left to reef tanks.

I had really good success in 2008 dosing organic carbon to my reef tank. The 'reef' mentality is totally different than the 'planted tank' mentality though. Reef tanks need to be stripped to non-detect for nitrates and phosphates. I was able to do this, feed extremely heavy doses of foods, and eliminate my water changes by adding less than 1ml of vodka per day.

The doses stated in this thread are WAY TOO HIGH.

Organic carbon can be supplied through a variety of sources. In reefing, it's most often vodka, sugar, or vinegar (or a combo of the three). The other alternative in the reefing world is to switch to a proprietary system like zeovit, ultralith, prodibio, or others.

Here's an article that explains a vodka approach.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php


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## fishyerik

Re-bumping an old subject, one neat thing with sugar is that it is be possible to dose daily with a cheap automatic fish feeder. It could be an almost hassle and cost free carbon source. 

Problems I've found with reasonably dosed sugar isn't bacteria, not itself at least, but for example all the interesting organisms that feed on bacteria, for example I've had large increase in the amount of bryozoans in the tank. Thats no problem for me, but other might feel it's a problem. 

I have one question, do anyone know if algae or cyano would benefit more from the free sugar itself than the plants does? 

I don't get visible cyano in any of my tanks thats not intended for growing large amounts of fish and even there very rarely, so I can't draw any conclusions from own experience, and with algae I think I would need a lot of testing and time before I can reach any reliable conclusions with my limited resources.


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## quatermass

I found that with me adding sugar that the zero nitrate in my freshwater tanks keeps my algae right down.


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## davemonkey

So, how much sugar are you talking about exactly? (per gallon/liter/etc.... )


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