I overdid a vodka dosing and have had a bacterial bloom in my 29 gallon reef. It has a very low bio load (money has been tight). Right now the only livestock reactions I have had are my frogspawns are not opening all the way and gsp's will only open slightly for a few hours and then close. I did some research and subsequently tested for ammonia and phosphates and found a small spike in both. Therefore, I have been running seagel (carbon + phosphate remover) and skimming near wet. I normally don't run carbon. I was planning on doing a 5 gallon water change this weekend (when I have the time) unless the ammonia or carbon exceeded their current levels (low, not in the danger zone yet). I have observed that my skimmate is incredibly frothy so hopefully it will get most of the crap out of the tank. My only concern is that my tank smells kind of like fruit, not really like dead fish. I was wondering what this off smell could be and what y'all think my next moves should be. TIA

* Before this params were zero and everything was thriving

If you can manage it, try a 10 gallon waterchange instead. You wanna get that ammonia to zero, its quite harmful at the pH marine aquariums operate at. Carbon won't do a thing to remove ammonia, although it can't hurt to run it anyway to remove other things that may be overly elevated.

The fruit smell could be the alcohol being turned into whats essentially sugar by all those bacteria. I'm just grasping straws there though, and probably totally incorrect.

How much did you dose? You should have started out at 0.2ml and gradual increased dose slowly. Vodka dosing is best done by individuals who have researched it throughly and maybe you have. But you should not be having a bacterial bloom after dosing, you could crash your whole tank. Good luck and please let us know how your dosing is going in the mean time a wc is definitly a good idea.

I made the mistake of pouring the dose over my tank, I think you can imagine what happened next. I haven't lost any livestock, yet, I'll update as soon as I get it under control. Thank God I am running a skimmer rated for a 90 gallon tank on a 29.

Allright, 10 gallon water change. I am also going to sub chemi pure for the sea gel to combat the remaining nh4, no2 and no3, i'll update tomorrow. My skimmer is skimming like crazy, good thing i am home. I am not skimming wet, yet it still needs to be changed every 4 hours...unreal. Last time I try any unconventional methods, too much of an amateur.

Waited to update because I didn't want to jinx myself. Only livestock lost was one fire shrimp, I consider myself lucky. All corals are open 100% and critters are feeding and behaving normally. In case anyone searches for "bacterial bloom" and needs a fix this is what I did-

if you have a skimmer, skim wet (collection cup very low)
chemi pure and phosguard
as soon as ammonia spikes, 30% water change. I wish I had done the water change it sooner, although that might have resulted in needing to do an additional water change once the remaining bacteria died off.

Thank you for following up with the outcome of your bacterial bloom, post vodka dosing. One more experience that I can avoid, in the forest what ifs of SW aquariums.