Biopellets vs carbon dosing

Sk8r

Staff member
RC Mod
I tried biopellets (npx) for about 6 months and quit, since I couldn't detect any benefit. The tank, however, has been through quite a bit of phosphate problems, which gfo helped, though my skimmer never really ran anything but pale watery skimmate. And the fuge (20 gallons) is about 8 years old, and suffering, well, sort of 'old fuge' syndrome, though wedded to a much younger tank.

So I tried (lightly) carbon dosing via vinegar (I also run kalk in topoff). The skimmer began pulling extremely dark skimmate. I have increased the dosage to about the max I intend to run. And the skimmate still is about as dark as it gets, which I [somewhat blindly] assume means much more efficiency from the Marineland skimmer.

Corals are happy, fish are happy, fuge cheato is dark green and mysis are breeding like mink down there. Nothing wrong that I can see. A great deal of stuff that was in the water is being processed out of the water.

This at least has been my experience.
 
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Just wondering what others' experience has been with either. I'm still on the fence about it, don't know whether it's safe, don't know if I didn't 'do it right' with the npx--I did a fluidized bed in a Phosban reactor---just still not sure. Is the vinegar 'producing' the dark skimmate, or is it actually improving function of the skimmer?
 
i used to dose vodka back in the day before bio pellets were avalible. it certainly works :) i have also been using bio pellets since they came out and continue to use them. they will maintian lower nutrient levels ( trates and phos ) but will never lower higher nitrates on their own ( 50 +)
 
I started running a bio-pellet reactor to help with my nitrate and cyano problem and it worked very well. I have also noticed that my skimmer has been pulling really dark, horribly smelly skimmate now, too.
 
I have a reactor to do biopellets and an extra dosing pump to do vodka or vinegar. I am considering doing the vodka dosing for starters. Every time I have run biopellets in the past, I grew a lot of cyano
 
Curiously, that I have seen. I had put it down to the normal snit that follows hair algae. But interesting.
 
IMO
biopellets = slow slow.. flow rate is key to them working but they do
vodka = works but cyano happens
vinegar = best solution.. no need to worry about flow rate or cyano
 
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