Few Thoughts on Bio Pellets

W

Wingman6

New member
I started my 180 gallon reef tank about 6 months ago and added biopellets to it a few weeks after cycling finished. Within about 2-4 weeks the nitrates and phosphates dropped to zero (or at least weren't detectable). One side effect i didn't really plan for was a drop in pH. Running the reactor dropped my pH about 0.1 or 0.2 pH, not the end of the world. I added a CO2 scrubber and that seemed to help keep my tank 7.9-8 at night.

I then recently added in a Calcium reactor and that further dropped the pH, down much closer to the trouble zone. I dripped the effluent over more media to degass but that didn't seem to help much. I also started to consider adding kalk to help bump the pH but didn't really get around to it.

I also noticed that during this time my softies, LPS, and anemones began to not do so well. A lot of my zoas started to melt away and lose color. One of my nems shriveled up and has no tentacle extension. Now i know some will say it was that my tank was too clean for the softies etc, but i feed really heavy a few times a day.

I know this topic can turn into quite the thread as there is a lot of debate over some of these things but I pulled the reactor a day or two ago and the pH has come right back up and things are start to look better already. Maybe 0 nitrate and phosphate is not the best thing and some low levels are actually better.

Either way, just figured I'd put a few thoughts on my experience out there..maybe some others have a few thoughts...my numbers for those that will ask were as follows:

calc - 430
alk - 9.5
nitrate and phosphate 0
no ammonia
mg 1400
ph 7.8 night (or a bit lower) to 7.9 or 8 day.
3 radion lights running max of 60% for 7 hours.
 
Sorry to hear of your troubles. It is normal for pH levels to drop due to large amounts of bacteria colonizing in the system. This is one of the things a BIG Skimmer and feeding the Biopellet Reactor directly to the Skimmer inlet helps with.

I wouldn't give up on the pellets just yet if I were you. There are plenty of things you can do to bring pH up, such as adding air stones, increasing surface agitation or for maximum effect, adding Kalkwasser to your ATO.
 
ReachTheSky said:
Sorry to hear of your troubles. It is normal for pH levels to drop due to large amounts of bacteria colonizing in the system. This is one of the things a BIG Skimmer and feeding the Biopellet Reactor directly to the Skimmer inlet helps with.

I wouldn't give up on the pellets just yet if I were you. There are plenty of things you can do to bring pH up, such as adding air stones, increasing surface agitation or for maximum effect, adding Kalkwasser to your ATO.
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I agree with the pH dropping portion. I ordered another eb8 for my apex and was going to dose kalk to help with pH. My skimmer is pretty large and the outlet of my pellets was near the inlet of my skimmer feed pump.

I just felt the soft stuff was really suffering for some reason. I might add them back if their removal doesn't help out.
 
i tried bio pellets and had this same effect. my ph was never that low but had multiple coral issues.

in my opinion, i think bio pellets would be best on a fowlr tank only. i wont use them again on a reef.

your problem could be your alk is too high for the lack of nutrients in the tank. feeding is also an option.
 
mos90 said:
i tried bio pellets and had this same effect. my ph was never that low but had multiple coral issues.

in my opinion, i think bio pellets would be best on a fowlr tank only. i wont use them again on a reef.

your problem could be your alk is too high for the lack of nutrients in the tank. feeding is also an option.
Click to expand...

interesting...my pH was actually ok until i added the calcium reactor. I'm guessing my alk was closer to 7 or 8 when i wasn't running the calcium reactor as right when i added it this was the range it was sitting in. Soft corals were still suffering at this point.

Just curiously, did everything recover? How are your levels and did you add anything to help such as GFO?
 
well. long story short. no. i was able to save most of my softies. i lost a few of my lps and almost all of my sps's. to this day im not sure why it happened exactly. i did have few minor alk swings when i added the calcium reactor but besides that who know.

the sps issue couldve been related to me changing from mh's to leds. but not the lps, softie issue.


i was keeping nitrate a .25 redsea and phos at .02 hanna ppb. i only added gfo if phos rose above .04 and only 1/2 dose. to get it back to .01-.02.

on my new tank i keep it simple. 2-part dosing,large skimmer, mh lighting, cheato fuge, gfo,carbon. i dose prodibio bio-clean every 2 weeks and weekly w/c's. thats it. no more experiments for me. i did this on my coral tank for 6 months also. worked like a charm.
 
IMO you PO4 levels were good but NO3 was too low, I like to keep mine around 5ppm and mine is a FOWLR ( when the NO3 reach that level back off on the effluent of the BP reactor), I have very good results with mine, I like that I can feed my tank heavy and not be concerned with nitrates or phosphates
 
azjohnny said:
IMO you PO4 levels were good but NO3 was too low, I like to keep mine around 5ppm and mine is a FOWLR ( when the NO3 reach that level back off on the effluent of the BP reactor), I have very good results with mine, I like that I can feed my tank heavy and not be concerned with nitrates or phosphates
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My problem is that if i drop back on the effluent, i started to get clumping. I'm going to try a few weeks without and see how things go. If everything starts to look good again, i might eaze into it or find another way of removing NO3 and PO4.
 
mos90 said:
i tried bio pellets and had this same effect. my ph was never that low but had multiple coral issues.

in my opinion, i think bio pellets would be best on a fowlr tank only. i wont use them again on a reef.
Click to expand...

I'm running pellets,and a calcium reactor with no ph issues( 8.16-8.2),and no coral issues. I feed alot too!
 
grcforce327 said:
I'm running pellets,and a calcium reactor with no ph issues( 8.16-8.2),and no coral issues. I feed alot too!
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One thing I will note is my pH prior to adding both was about 8.1 or 8.2 during the day. Within two days of removing the pellets I gained most of that back.
 
Wingman6 said:
One thing I will note is my pH prior to adding both was about 8.1 or 8.2 during the day. Within two days of removing the pellets I gained most of that back.
Click to expand...

It may be a gradual thing. My pH was lower,but over time it worked it's way up. Pellets have been going for about 4mo now.
 
What kind of skimmer do you have?

I have .2 nitrates (salifert) and .015 phosphate (hanna) and my system runs great but I feed an insane amount of food and have a lot of fish.

You might be better served with a recirculating bio pellet reactor.

I personally don't think I will ever run a reef tank without biopellets or some other form of carbon dosing.
 
tkeracer619 said:
What kind of skimmer do you have?

I have .2 nitrates (salifert) and .015 phosphate (hanna) and my system runs great but I feed an insane amount of food and have a lot of fish.

You might be better served with a recirculating bio pellet reactor.

I personally don't think I will ever run a reef tank without biopellets or some other form of carbon dosing.
Click to expand...

I'm running a deltec adf600. Sounds like its decently oversized for my tank. I tested with multiple kits and was at zero zero for phosphate and nitrate.

My corals are already looking better without the pellets. I'll see how it goes and maybe hook it up again.

To me it sounds like some nitrates are needed and maybe even phosphates.
 
Great articles...thanks for passing those along. I think i have a better idea of the roles of each. Definitely sounds like some nitrates are OK but phosphate are ok to shoot for 0.

I'm running macro-algae so its possible this can help take up a lot of the nitrates and phosphates in the system.
 
Some interesting info on the tank...

So after doing a bit more reading i found some info on red light in tanks and read that some corals are ok with it (shallow water corals) while others (deep water corals) tend to actually do worse with lots of red light. Looking to try anything, i cut the red leds from my radions and within a few days i saw significant improvement. Corals such as my green star polyp went from closed to open, a nem that was shriveled began to improve, etc.

Now i know i changed two variables at once, cutting biopellets and lights, so its hard to say for sure it was the lights but i think it was the lights.

I added the biopellets again as my phosphate was under control with ROWAphos but nitrates crept up pretty rapidly. So far everything seems to be doing well and still looks great even with bio pellets on again. we shall see what happens.
 
For those running BP Reactors, what brand did you choose and why? I'm considering the Reef Dynamics because you can control the effluent without reducing the tumble rate to keep clumping to a minimum.
 
memontgo said:
For those running BP Reactors, what brand did you choose and why? I'm considering the Reef Dynamics because you can control the effluent without reducing the tumble rate to keep clumping to a minimum.
Click to expand...

I chose the reef octopus reactor. Has a nice cone bottom to get pellets tumbling and won't clog on the bottom. The top screen can clog over time but I ended up taking it out.

I do like the idea of a reactor where you can adjust effluent.
 
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