Switching from vodka to biopellets

Thought I'd share my experience with anyone else out there looking to switch from vodka to biopellets. At the time of the switch, I was dosing 7.2 ml of 80 proof vodka daily via dosing pump. The daily dose was administered thoughout the day in 6 doses. My initial thought was to slowly add 100 ml of biopellets every 2 weeks, while slowly reducing the vodka dosage by 0.5-1.0 per week. There was not much info on the web on this matter, so I emailed BRS to inquire on their thoughts. Here is what I got back:

"Hard to say on this one. Theres a lot of fine details about both vodka and bio-pellets that people don’t know the answer too. They might be different types of bacteria all together requiring the biopellets to cycle just like they would in a brand new tank. Or maybe they will have a jump start an account of the vodka. Wish there was a more straight forward J I think you can try either approach. The reality is if it has to cycle on its own, it has to cycle on its own. If you gradually reduce the amount of vodka or not isn’t really going to change whether or not the biopellets have to cycle. My only concern would be that it could draw the process out longer if the biopellets are being starved for the first 2 weeks (or however long) you try to get them going because your still adding vodka. I would pull the GFO in the meantime either way though. You may need to get it running again in the future but no sense in depriving the bacteria you want of one of the food sources while you’re trying to get them to grow!

Short version is that I don’t think you’re going to run into any major problems either way."

So, given an opportunity to experiment, I decided to leave my vodka dosage as it was, start up a full reactor of biopellets (my reactor only holds ~300-350ml), and pull the GFO. My goal was to continue this way until I saw a reaction in the tank that would require an adjustment.

After about 10 days of biopellets running, I woke up one morning to find slimy mucousy bacteria strands all over the inside of the sump, and clinging to the liverock and tank walls. According to vodka dosing instructions (if you are building up to a ULNS), if you see this happen in your tank, you should reduce doseage by half until it disappears. So this is what I did, reduced my dosage to 3.6 ml daily, and continued with everything else.

The next day the bacteria completely disappeared, and so I remained at the 3.6 ml dosage. My thoughts is that the bacteria colony on the biopellets had matured to a point where it was consuming all available nutrients, and the excess vodka was fueling unsightly bacteria.

The bacteria "bloom" happened again about 5 days later, to where I completely removed the vodka from the system. The "bloom" disappeared a day later, and all has been fine since.

Bottom line is this method seemed to work with no adverse effects on the tank inhabitants, and incorperated the pellets in the system while avoiding any major algae or cyano blooms, or nutrient spikes.

Thanks for reading, and hope this helps someone!

 

ive been pleased with my pellets too.. i had a bloom for a day or so.... im on my 4th week and starting to see some nice changes to my tank...

i wasnt dosing vodka tho..