[cheeks69]

The results weren't all that nice in Lab and later on in the aquarias !

I do know arround 30 aquarists in europe that lost some big quantity of their stony corals... mostly due to
bacterial infections.

The ethanol boosts the growth of almost any bacteria in the tank, some people even reported some withe slimy film
on the aquaria glass. In some tanks the coral died because of "starvation", since PO4 and/or NO3 went down to zero in no time.
Some other ones dies because of the mysterious PO4 increase.

I did a some test in my Lab here in switzerland over period of about 2 month. I did these with some enriched bacteria cultures of my
tanks sediments. When the PO4/NO3 ration was around 1/16, there was a good decrease of PO4 and NO3. If not so, the one or the other
element was the limiting factor stopping or slowing the bacterial bloom. As soon as these happened, the PO4 went up. The answer to that
is, that the dying bacteria where releasing the Phosphorus they previously got out of the PO4.
In a normal tank the skimmer should eliminate most of the biomass resulting from the bacterial bloom. But if the skimmer is
to slow or the biomass to big, then the tank would suffer a massive PO4 peak.
In one tank I was able to measure these, the PO4 went up to 2mg in 18 houres ! If we wouldn't have been monitoring these tank
so closely, then these would have been the end of another aquarium... but we where able to bring enough PO4 Adsorber in to the System
to remove it just in time...


Some other experiments in these area where about the bacterial diversity. The diversity decreased in all cultures and aquarias after
a short while, when feeding it whit ethanol or vodka. In some closed cultures I ended up with just one bacterial strain left in the culture within a week.

Since then I used ethanol only for "jump starting" new systems, so I could get very fast a good bacterial density in a fresh tank.

I believe that ethanol is very dangerous, since its unpredictable what the bacteria growth will be in a certain tank. Ethanol will boost almost
any bacterial, even some marine pathogens. Depending on the conditions, those bacterias might take over the system.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...a&pagenumber=5

I would be very hesitant with these results.