N/P reducing pellets (solid vodka dosing) - Split

[this is me]

The smell was strong during the first two weeks of running the pellets and my skimmer cup always get full in a couple of days. But ever since after that, my skimmer is skimming normal and the horrid smell stop as well. It's like after a week of very now nitrate and phosphate, the skimmer stop skimming out too much and the smell stop.

 

[reeftivo]

hi reeftivo ,

I never had any additional smell from the pellets compared with normal carbon dosing or no dosing whatsoever .
How much (regulary ) do you clean your skimmercup ?
Try to do it at least onces a week , when having smells i would do it even more often every 3 to 2 days .


greetingzz tntneon

Yah! I empty my collection cup daily and scrub it out with a brush I got from ATB. I clean the chamber of the Tunze foam extractor weekly when I do my WC's

I have a 4" fan which blows through the cabinet and exits the opposite side. The fan blows directly over the skimmer and cup so I suspect that's where I'm getting a bit of odor.

No biggy! I can barely smell it and my wife and visitors have never commented.

My skimmate is actually increasing and getting much darker as of two days ago. This weekend I tested and nitrate was undetectable with po4 at .02.

before pellets, when I was using zeovit I skimmed dry and was used to dark, concentrated skim. I set my skimmer wet for the pellets and until recently had not gotten the abundance of skimmate that everyone else has posted about until now. Maybe it's because my system was pretty clean to begin with? Not sure.

I'll post a pic of the skim after I get a pic tonight

Still happy

Happy Reefing

Tivo

 

[reeftivo]

That's one of the reasons i stopped running "pellets" the smell in the house where the tank is
since switching to zeovit I've never looked back


Robbie

Zeovit definately works!! I ran it for a year and a half but couldn't handle the dosing and reactor while away. I would ask my friends to help while I was gone but I felt it was beginning to become burdensome and just wanted to opt for something easier.

How are you handling the cost of zeo supplements? It was expensive for me even with my small system. I could only imagine the $$ with your 700ltr

 

[larryfl1]

hey all,

i need some opinions / thoughts..i know it all subjective but I'm confused...

I started nopox about 4 weeks ago and since i started...my nitrates are flat at 2ppm. they won't budge.. i am currently dosing 36 ml of no pox on a 300 gal tank...

during that time cyan has exploded and thought its not growing as fast now theres lots of it...

im not sure why my nitrates won't drop..they just stay 2ppm day after day....

so with cyano in the tank...do i switch to pellets? will that make my cyan worse???

im not sure what to do at this point...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'd suggest switching to just vinegar if cyano is increasing with other organics. GFO would also be a good way to attack the cyano.

 

[larryfl1]

What's the proper technique for vinegar? Tank is heavy fish population fed heavy. Approximately 300 gallons and mixed reef

Thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Pretty much the same as vodka, but more, like 8x more. There's an article around on vodka.

 

[cherubfish pair]

I was wondering if there would be any benefit to dosing vinegar in a pellet reactor? The bacteria would metabolize acetate into bicarbonate or carbonate. Would there be any saving in not using a 2-part?

You could run a closed loop in a bucket with dilute vinegar. Put your pellet reactor pump in the bucket and reactor outlet in the same bucket until the vinegar is metabolized.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Pellets, vodka, and vinegar all end up as CO2, not bicarbonate or carbonate.

Batch processing could probably work out, but seems like a large amount of work.

 

[larryfl1]

I do think i want to bring the pellets online at this point..it just seems if it works its more hands off... i have no issue using gfo if i have to in the future...

so the question is the following

on approximately 350 total gallon size tank... nitrate sitting at 2ppm and phosphate undetectable.

how much pellets total?

how much and for how long as i introduce the total volume of pellets? I have read start slow and add on....

i am currently dosing no pox for the past month ... how do i transition safely off from that to the pellets?

thanks

Larry

 

[tntneon]

Hi larryfly1 ,

i would start with 500 ml's and every month you up it with 500ml , until you have about 2 L pellets in a reactor with enough flow and w/o any filterpads (they will clog very fast) .
Have a strong skimmer that is set for wet skimming .


Don't know what nopox are so i don't have any specific tips regarding this product .
Is it a kind of carbon dosing liquid ?

greetingzz tntneon

 

[larryfl1]

nopox is a form of liquid organic carbon... if i was using an equivalent like vodka for only 1 month could i just stop and put pellets on line or do i need to slowly reduce the vodka?

 

[tntneon]

-I would put the first 500ml of pellets in service and keep adding the nopox for the first 2 weeks then i would gradualy cut nopox dosage to half.
When you put the next 500 ml of pellets in , you can gradualy cut nopox dosage to a 1/4.
And keep observing your tank for improvements and checking nitrates , when nitrates drop to zero i definitly would stop nopox earlyer .
Or when whitnessing a bacterial bloom (cloudy water) , i too would stop dosing nopox in that circumstances
I rather have 0.2 nitrates then zero.

greetingzz tntneon

 

[reeftivo]

Update after a couple months

Running 250ml BRS pellets

My tunze and API kits are showing no detectable nitrate and my hanna photometer is now at .01 PO4. perams are all stable but funny thing is that cyano has come back on the sand with a vengence. so either my skimmer isn't pulling enough of the sloughed bacteria out or there is just too much carbon going in (all animals are doing well). I perform weekly 8 gallon WC's on my small system and use scripps instit. NSW aerated 24hrs and it comes in a little low (ca 380-400/alk 6.5-7/Mg 1200-1280) so I bring the levels up with ESV 2 part and some mag. I had previously increased my flow in the DT and have been skimming wetter but the darn cyano is back. I'll be getting a Warner MF121 in a few days and will see if that will help out. meanwhile I'm just siphoning the top layer of sand weekly during water changes and occasionally using my eheim sludge extractor when needed.

I'm thinking of using my zeobac with pohls coral snow again since it help when I had a bout a year ago before the pellets but thought I'd see what others thought.

 

[larryfl1]

hey all,

i have the pellets tumbling for now about 5 days... i want to make sure they start working relatively quickly as my phosphates/nitrates are climbing..though they are low...

i just ordered zeobak... how should i dose that? into the tank? or into the reactor and how much??

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I would not assume zeobak is of any value in a case like this since it is not seemingly designed to provide suitable bacteria to grow on any particular organic material you may be using.

 

[reeftivo]

I would not assume zeobak is of any value in a case like this since it is not seemingly designed to provide suitable bacteria to grow on any particular organic material you may be using.

Probably safe to assume that since they are cultured to be effective on inorganic zeolites stones, but I used them in an attempt to jump start my pellets. whether or not it helped? Can't be sure! However my nitrates are non-detectable now and phosphate holds at .02 without GFO.

Still haven't got cyano to abate (sand only) but it's showing signs of weakening. It's not spreading like it was and has gone from dark red to light brown. I have installed a new 250 watt XM bulb (old one was only 7mo), increased DT flow a bit and decreased the reactor flow by half, with pellets still tumbling well. My new Warner Marine MF121 is still breaking in but seems to be helping a bit as well.

I will not hesitate to pull the reactor if I can't get a handle on the cyano (hate it!) but I'll give it more time since the animals are doing really well.

Happy new Years to all and Happy reefing!

tivo

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Probably safe to assume that since they are cultured to be effective on inorganic zeolites stones, but I used them in an attempt to jump start my pellets. whether or not it helped? Can't be sure! However my nitrates are non-detectable now and phosphate holds at .02 without GFO.

I'm less worried about the surfaces they choose to grow on than the organic matter they are capable of eating. Like giving grass to a cat, when it was meant for a cow, it isn't all the same.

That said, it seems like things are working out fine with the pellets so far.

 

[cherubfish pair]

reeftivo,

Since you can't siphon the cyano as it's on the sand, could you stir up the sand/cyano and let your skimmer push it up and into your skimmer's collection cup?

 

[Scej12]

Any Carbon...?

Any Carbon...?

Probably safe to assume that since they are cultured to be effective on inorganic zeolites stones, but I used them in an attempt to jump start my pellets. whether or not it helped? Can't be sure! However my nitrates are non-detectable now and phosphate holds at .02 without GFO.

Still haven't got cyano to abate (sand only) but it's showing signs of weakening. It's not spreading like it was and has gone from dark red to light brown. I have installed a new 250 watt XM bulb (old one was only 7mo), increased DT flow a bit and decreased the reactor flow by half, with pellets still tumbling well. My new Warner Marine MF121 is still breaking in but seems to be helping a bit as well.

I will not hesitate to pull the reactor if I can't get a handle on the cyano (hate it!) but I'll give it more time since the animals are doing really well.

Happy new Years to all and Happy reefing!

tivo

Hey Tivo:

Do you employ an activated carbon regime??? I was primarily focusing on pH in my own battle against cyano bacteria. I'm trying to rid an old tank of about 7 years of PO4 absorption, and so I'm dealing with my liverock cycling between GHA (first) then cyano (then repeat). As well, for the longest time I had cyano on the substrate despite establishing 0 nitrate; and phosphates fluctuating between 0.02 - 0.12 (down from 0.75, and even higher [1.5] a year ago). I've rigged up a lanthanum chloride setup which has been running for about 3 months now.

In trying to pick this annoying problem apart I've raised the pH up from 7.8 to 8.2, however there was no immediate result after about 1 month of elevated pH - the cyano still persisted on the substrate and on the liverock. I then noticed that the water colour appeared very yellowish indicating a high level of dissolved organics. Admittedly, I'd pulled the activated carbon for some time as I was trying to minimize the risk of head and lateral line erosion on my tangs. However based on the visibly observable organics, I decided to dump in another large hit of carbon on this large system... there was almost an immediate result on at least the substrate cyano proliferation, not to mention the clarity of water. Another week later, and I hit the system with another large dose of carbon just to finish polishing the water of excess DOCs. Now about a week and a half later, and all of the cyano on the substrate has completely disappeared.

Now I'm about to arm myself with a couple of gallons of magnesium and resume blowing the rocks off with a powerhead while the lanthanum chloride system deals with the leaching phosphate over the next few months or so... The idea being that I will finally be able to establish a strong coralline dominance on the liverock.

In summary, although I can acknowledge that biopellets tend to feed cyanobacteria; my thoughts are leaning toward solutions that deal with raising pH to address the autotrophic (photosynthesizing) feeding ability of this nuisance; as well as employing strong DOC removal. I would think that when all else is in check, the balance of the problem might be solved by focusing in on these two factors...

Low nutrients; high pH; low DOC; and good flow...

Regards,

Sheldon