to bio-pellet or not to bio-pellet, that is the question.

only 7 votes? I'm sure more people have input seeing everything everyone has to day about bio pellets on other threads or are a lot of people talking with out experience?

 

im guessing you might get a lot more votes if you add.... "no bio pellets are best left alone." on the pole... ;D

 

I know its an older thread but I just wanted to share my experience. I just added a reactor to a 20 year old mature reef we had set up at my fish store. We used half the recommended dose at first as suggested in the instructions. During the next few days, the tank became very cloudy. After about a week a very large hammer coral and a basketball sized frogspawn shrivels up and we lost over half of the heads. Those were the only 2 corals that were effected and we are trying to save them by placing them in another reef tank. After 2 weeks nitrates began to slowly drop and the cloudiness was gone.

So to conclude, I believe the reactor caused too fast a change in this mature reef and threw the bacteria ecosystem out of balance. I prefer algae scrubbers over reactors but if you do decide to use a reactor, make sure your nitrates are low to start off with and go slow. Adding a few more pellets each week.

 

I fully agree. IME it's best to start the system with bio pellets, if you are working with a mature reef like you were, I find it's best to lower the n/p with an aggressive water change schedule then add the pellets to maintain the low level.

 

your right. I't was my mistake. Nitrates were high to start with. It's just that daily water changes on a big system is a major PITA. lol

 

The problem with having to be an expert on it is that if you want to go out of town for a week, you'll have to worry about something like this.

imo the best question is "How can I fit a bigger sump?" if you have to do water changes too frequently, or lower the livestock. Get another tank for some of them, perhaps. I just prefer to keep maintenance low and simple.

 

a recirculating style of reactor runs very well, they can be made from a calcium reactor so you can have separate control of the pellet tumbling and the effluent. Just make sure the effluent leads directly to the skimmer input, I have made a fitting out of a T fitting

I would check your nitrates on a weekly basis and if your nitrates get close to zero I would either slow down the effluent or dose nitrates, or the bacteria will consume all of the nitrates, ( corals do need small amounts of phosphates and nitrates) the nitrates will get consumed first and the bacteria colony will slow down and than your phosphates will go back up, dont be afraid to feed your tank to keep the nitrate level up a bit

corals dont like fast changes so take it slow,

 

well, you wouldnt want to change something or add equipment if you were about to go out of town. but I like to keep it simple too.

 

I think that the people that have had problems with bio-pellets either were not patient and added the pellets too quickly or already had other problems with their tank (probably the reason they were trying the pellets in the first place). Either the combination of the pellets along with their already present issues like being overstocked caused the crash or they were already headed in that direction with or without the pellets.

 

Absolutely!!!