The Cheato and skimmer were working fine until I learned why my corals weren't doing so well. I discovered that I wasn't truly feeding my tank. I put the food in, but my wavemakers were off and I only left the food in place for 5 minutes.
I learned that if I turn the return pump off, keep the wavemakers on, and let the food circulate for up to 30 minutes, all of my corals would get fed.
I saw results immediately. My Acans got fat, my SPS started extending their polyps, and my Candy Cane corals are starting to come back. Basically I had been starving my corals.
So why biopellets? With my new feeding regimine, my Cheato cannot keep up with the nitrates. My API test kit showed over 100 ppm!!! I have never seen nitrates that high even in my freshwater tank!
I had heard of sugar or vodka dosing and the results look great. After bounching the idea around on this forum, I chose biopellets. My corals just look to good to go back to starving them.
Although biopellet reactors are relatively cheap, it bothered me that I had to buy a pump to use them. While searching for a reactor that included a pump, I came across a video by Reef Dynamics of a recirculating biopellet reactor. That includes a pump. The nice thing about that reactor is that not only is the flow inside of the reactor adjustable, but the flow
out of the reactor is adjustable as well. The tumbling effect and the output are completely independent of one another. Therefore I can control the tumbling rate independent the output. This permits me to avoid the 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate issue that can occur. I can limit how much nutrient export the reactor performs.
I found two recirculating biopellet reactors. One by Reef Dynamics and the other by Aqualund. I opted for the Aqualund since the price/capacity point was better.
Here is the reactor.
Opening the box.
The reactor came with a broken wing nut but at trip to Lowes and 25 cents fixed that.
