Canning BioPellets in Favor of Prodibio?

I've been doing quite a lot of research on various sites and it seems like there are quite a few horror stories of tanks being stripped and alk and phosphate levels dropping so quickly that SPS bleach or Zoas and LPS begin to melt. Most of these stories seem to be tied to systems that were established and then had pellets added to them. Currently I'm not sure what my feeding regimen or what my stock fishwise will be like but I do know that I travel quite a bit and am afraid that I won't be able to test and see if a sudden drop will happen.

Now onto the real question:

Its seems to me like biopellets are only half a system unlike from what I understand Zeovit and Prodibio. The Bacteria rely exclusively on external food sources and can therefore drop your levels too low for positive results if feeding regimens and such are not high and regular.

However, with Prodibio and Zeovit you are providing additional food sources for the bacteria (?) which will make a crash less likely.

I simply don't have the time for ZeoVit so, do you guys think Prodibio BIOPTIM will provide a pretty good low maintenance ULNS alternative without so much fear of nutrients stripping?

 

Zeo is basically just a more powerful version of pellets. The same negative effects can happen x 1000. The solution though is to feed more. Granted they package their own food and sell them at very high prices, but really, that is what your doing, feeding more... IME, with other forms of carbon dosing, such as pellets, you can feed more too, and even use less expensive foods.... I'm not as familiar with prodibio, but the concept seems similar. You dose carbon sources and food sources. If you don't mind paying a bit extra for a pre-canned system though, both certainly seem to work well in most cases. Honestly however, I think the reason people have problems with pellets is more lack of understanding, I.e. people don't need them and just want super low nutrients, but end up driving bacteria levels too high, to the point the bacteria start competing with corals for resources. The simple solution and what zeo and prodi seem to do is add more resources... Or cut back on pellets etc...

 

So reduced flow or amount of pellets might be easier since I already have the system?

 

First things first. Biopellet horror stories are not a fault of the biopellet but the user not having an understanding of the bacteria they are feeding. Bacteria primarily needs 3 things to reproduce (for our purpose I will use terms that relate to us): Nitrate (nitrogen), Phosphate (phosphorus), and a carbon source. We all have nitrate and phosphate in our tanks and those are the primary nutrients that we are trying to control. As long as those 3 things are available to bacteria, the bacteria will continue to reproduce until any one of those things are limited.

Why does phosphate drop rapidly?
Adding biopellets is like adding a carbon source buffet to your tank. If you already have a buffet of Nitrate and phosphate available, bacteria will reproduce uncontrollably. This is why phosphate levels drop so fast in biopellet tanks. As I understand it, bacteria can double their population every 30 mins when they have the food and fuel to do so. That answers why phosphate drops quickly. Remember if phosphate or nitrate is 0 then the bacteria will no longer reproduce uncontrollably, they are limited by the introduction of phosphate and nitrate.

Why does alkalinity drop rapidly?
We know that high phosphate is a limiting factor of growth in stony corals. Corals calcify faster in tanks with low phosphate. Limit phosphate = enhanced growth = increase of consumption of calcium and alkalinity.

Why do SPS bleach?
Zooxanthellae is a symbiotic algae in coral. It wastes feed the coral. Zooxanthellae is also limited by uptake of phosphate and nitrate. The bacteria easily outcompetes the algae thus the they are starved out. That is good however for the coral to survive you need to replace their food source with supplemental feeding.

Why do Zoas and LPS melt?
Typically under normal circumstances these issues are due to bacterial infections. I think we have already established that these tanks are the optimal place for bacteria to thrive with no limits.

I was one of the first people to use Prodibio in the US. Like you I chose it over Zeo for the same reason as you. I would start by saying that you have a pretty good idea of the advantages of this system. What makes it for the most part fool proof is that you can limit the carbon source (Bioptim) to limit bacteria blooms.

 

Thanks for all the info mr Carrol. I now understand why people who use liquid carbon dosing call solid carbon media hard to adjust. I guess I'll go with Prodibio then, that way I can control the bacteria populations more effectively and combat some of the more common problems associated with pellets like cyano.

 

Once you nitrate and phosphate are low you could easily consider replacing Bioptim with pellets which is what I did. I eventually stopped because it became quite expensive dosing a large tank. I now occationally dose different bacterial products (Prodibio BioDigest, Dr Tim's Waste Away and EcoBalance, as well as Ecoligical Labs Special Blend. I only do this to maintain a diverse population, although I'm beginning to wonder how important adding bacteria to an established tank is. I guess I do it because it makes sense to in some ways.

 

So the only advantage to this would be keeping the levels down as opposed to simply dosing Bioptim with decreasing frequency to keep some diversity?

 

Prodibio is a really great product, i have been using it for since i set my tank and it have work really nice.

 

I've been dosing Prodibio for a few weeks now. Gcarrol are you still using prodibio and biopellets?
I'm thinking about getting a biopellet reactor.
I know it takes about 6 weeks for the prodibio to really get in the swing but I can tell for sure it made the water super clear. I am still fighting PO4 with a lot of GFO though.
I had some mishaps and mistakes.
I had a skimmer overflow and next thing I got a brown algae bloom.
I started prodibio digest but mistakenly also used reefbooster and biotim. I got some cyano after that which is where I currently am. I stopped the biotim after reading the RC prodibio thread. I wish they would put better instructions on the prodibio website.
Main question is how much does a biopellet reactor help with PO4? My NO3 is always zero on an API card.
PO4 is usually .03-.05 .
Cheers