BioPellets to Fish Only

[musarra]

Hey all,

I have been having trouble keeping algae down in my FOWLR tank. It 120 g and has a tang, pair of clowns, coral beauty, and a long nose hawk fish. I will be adding a marine beta soon. The nitrates used to be steady at 20ppm but recently have increased to 40ppm due to overfeeding (while trying to get the betta to eat anything I would prepare a lot of food and the leftovers went in display tank) and the death of almost all my snails (about 20 astrea and one turbo). I think the snails were killed by my lobster.

I only have a skimmer on the tank at the moment, Octopus 2000 bh, and no sump. My lighting schedule is pretty much all day so their schedule meets mine. I change 10-15% water every other week and I have been unable to keep the nitrates down.

The question is will the biopellets help keep the nitrates and phosphates down?

On the other hand should I look into getting another type of filter?

I don't run gfo or carbon as my power filter died and i disliked the disruption of a canister filter maintenance.


TIA

 

[tkeracer619]

Yes it will reduce nitrates and phosphates.

 

[Urchinhead]

Alternately you could remove any detritus still in there from the snails and extra food and do several 20% water changes over the next two weeks.

The key is to remove the source of the nitrates as well as exporting the existing nitrates out. Adding another form of filtration may or may not solve the underlying problem.

 

[musarra]

I believe I have removed all the snail parts and after feeding time there is nothing left floating around. I believe the feeding issue is a result of all the additives that have gone into trying to feed the beta.

I did a big water change recently when I found the lobster eating the turbo snail. My real problem is not so much the nitrates as it is the algae that results from it.

A while back I had nitrates down to 10ppm and 10 more inches of fish but the algae was still growing. At that point I removed the canister filter, no change, and recently the motor on the power filter died.

I just can't afford 24 gallon weekly water changes for my fish only tank at the moment.

I guess what I'm interested in right now is something that can help get rid of the algae without increasing my biweekly ritual.

 

[TheAquatard]

I think you should try GFO first, worked wonders for me. Are you using RODI?

 

[tkeracer619]

I wouldn't hesitate running bio pellets on a fish only.

 

[musarra]

Yes i use a spectra pure RO/DI and I have tried GFO it did help control the algae a bit, but I had some other things to spend money on and over the three months I didn't had any to use.

I put some in a month ago but my phosphates are below my tests ability to read them anyway.

Then my power filter died and my canister filter kept leaking and my protein skimmer broke so I have to buy some new stuff.

My water on the way in reads zero all around.