N/P reducing pellets (solid vodka dosing)

[Dizzle63]

I have a BRS duel reactor and have the choice of running either a phosban 150 or 550 reactor on a 75. What would be the best way to run the biopellets, carbon, and phosban? I have maxijets available. What other pump might I need?

 

[davyr]

Bleaching of Corals.

Bleaching of Corals.

Has anybody noticed any bleaching of their softies after using the pellets? Have a look at these guys and it has only just happened since i started with the pellets.

 

[180+55reef]

so a leather of mine has bleached

I am one of the people that has seen no improvements, and to boot I had a ugly film of cyno. My slimmate was clear, it has been running for 5 or so months

Recently I started dosing vinegar (3 weeks or so) and I get ugly smelly stuff out of my skimmer and the cyno is reduced, but not totally gone

comments?

 

[daveonbass]

my comment: the BP don't really do anything. I am starting to firmly believe that it's all the other "regular husbandry" that is paying off. I think that if there is a bacteria bloom, then yeah, maybe there is something working in them there. But I don't recall anyone being able to claim that they STOPPED doing regular husbandry, even just water changes, and still noticed that their water got "better." I have held off doing a WC for weeks now hopeing to see the BP do something in the tank to reduce NO3. And no effects. However, if I had continued to do my regular WC's then I too would have undetectable nutrient levels. I just have not EVER been shown that BP "ALONE" will do anything, the success stories all seem to have too many other variables that could have contributed to the success.

 

[davyr]

so a leather of mine has bleached

I am one of the people that has seen no improvements, and to boot I had a ugly film of cyno. My slimmate was clear, it has been running for 5 or so months

Recently I started dosing vinegar (3 weeks or so) and I get ugly smelly stuff out of my skimmer and the cyno is reduced, but not totally gone

comments?

I have seen my nitrates reduce since the 23/7/2010 as they used to be 25 but now they are between 5 and 10 (salifert). I cannot however seem to get them under 5 but they have only been running 4 wks. Also i am not getting the mulm that people are talking about. I have had the reactor slow boiling fast boiling and just ticking away like rowa but i still cannot seem to get a decent skin on these pellets. It would help if the manufacturers of the pellets would put up a decent video to see how much we should be fluidising these babies.

 

[davyr]

my comment: the BP don't really do anything. I am starting to firmly believe that it's all the other "regular husbandry" that is paying off. I think that if there is a bacteria bloom, then yeah, maybe there is something working in them there. But I don't recall anyone being able to claim that they STOPPED doing regular husbandry, even just water changes, and still noticed that their water got "better." I have held off doing a WC for weeks now hopeing to see the BP do something in the tank to reduce NO3. And no effects. However, if I had continued to do my regular WC's then I too would have undetectable nutrient levels. I just have not EVER been shown that BP "ALONE" will do anything, the success stories all seem to have too many other variables that could have contributed to the success.

Maybe you are right. I am using the SWC pellets here in the UK,i had them shipped over and i did notice a drop within the first 48 hrs but lately it is getting to the stage where i am having to get the kids to confirm on the salifert colour chart what the colour is. And i think half the time i am convincing myself it is a lower number than what it is.:eek1:

 

[ari5736]

This discussion is getting pretty interesting. I will try and measure my NO3 on Monday, having taken the reactor offline Friday, to see if nitrate went up quickly where as with the pellets nitrate raised at a very slow rate.

 

[tozzi]

Someone should start a poll . if they work for u or not, this thread is makin my head spin

 

[pecan2phat]

I have seen my nitrates reduce since the 23/7/2010 as they used to be 25 but now they are between 5 and 10 (salifert). I cannot however seem to get them under 5 but they have only been running 4 wks. Also i am not getting the mulm that people are talking about. I have had the reactor slow boiling fast boiling and just ticking away like rowa but i still cannot seem to get a decent skin on these pellets. It would help if the manufacturers of the pellets would put up a decent video to see how much we should be fluidising these babies.

I started my pellets about 14 to 17 days ago and I immediately got huge amounts of bacterial sloughing or mulm off the pellets after about 2 days. By the 3rd or 4th day, the water started to cloud up tremendously indicating a bacterial bloom in effect. It took another 3 days for that to clear up but the mulm in the reactor only dissapated about 50%. When I added another 550 ml of pellets to the reactor, the mulm got so thick that I had to open up the reactor to syphon the large chunks out, it was nastie!
I'm wondering if people that do not have the bacterial sloughing or even the bacterial bloom in the water column is because of low No3 & Po4 to start with.
Reason why I mention this is because I was getting huge amounts of bacterial sloughing/mulm in the reactor and my pellets were not even tumbling but the system that I am trying these on is mainly a FOWLR system with LPS corals. When I started the pellets, No3 was at 100 ppm and Po4 was at 2.53 ppm. I tested just the No3 today and it was at 80 ppm. I now have the pellets tumbling like a slow boil after changing out the manifold to a dedicated Mag 7 pump but still need to add the remaining 550 ml of pellets to the reactor for the recommended amount of pellets.

 

[SimonSKL]

Someone should start a poll . if they work for u or not, this thread is makin my head spin

I think there are a lot of us running the pellets are not sure if they work or not. There are just too many variables and everyone's tank is somewhat different.

 

[tmz]

Thanks, and certainly a fair point of view. I think what would be real interesting would be to take a look at an established low nutrient bacterial driven methodology, like zeovit, and see how it performs both with and without bacterial additions. I realize that such an experiment would be difficult in terms of maintaining controls and even fashioning a way to accurately make the comparison, but I think such a comparison could shed some light on the importance, if any, bacterial dosing can play in the carbon dosing technique. What would be interesting to see if the zeolites were populated in each instance with very different species or densities of bacteria (andparticularly those dosed in the zeobak) and what, if any, difference it made in terms of nutrient export.



If the folks making the bacterial supplements told us exactly what bacteria were in there we probably could look them up and see what the CNP ratio was and draw a few conclusions from that.Better an analysis of the bacteria could give information on CNP levels in the biomass. I'm not sure a zeo system test would carry over to other carbon dosing methods per se but the experiment would be interesting.

Good luck . Hope you grow a beautiful reef.

 

[whatcaneyedo]

Has anybody noticed any bleaching of their softies after using the pellets? Have a look at these guys and it has only just happened since i started with the pellets.

I'm using the Vertex pellets and I've had the same thing happen. A leather, toadstool and kenya tree have all bleached completely white like what you're showing. I'm going to try taking the pellets out for a week or more to see what happens.

 

[daveonbass]

low nutrients, and high nutrients (PO4 and NO3) still don't work.

 

[bluereefs]

Just for the testing purpose I took some bp from functional reactor as well some bp from the sump who "run" out from the reactor, and put them in plastic jar with aprox 200 ml+ water from aquarium, in less then 24 hours testing water are litlle cloud and there was visible bacterial string from bp long aprox 3-4 cm. Will see how long will need to water become totall cloudy and if nitrates drop in those experimental jar.

Next part of the experiment is to took bp from non functional reactor and made same experiment.

 

[tntneon]

Cool bleureefs ,
that you take the effort (...and time , that i don't have for the moment ) to experiment with the pellets , maybe the lazzy pellets are now seeded and will also kick in.
Keep us infomed...

greetingzz tntneon

 

[davyr]

According to B/P,s graph below they drop for the first 5 wks and then they seem to drop slowly but what i want to know is. How much flow through the reactor?

 

[bluereefs]

Thank you Tntneon , will keep you informed, as anybody else in this thread. Is actually quite interesting experiment.

Regarding the flow I just measure outlet flow from both of my reactor, relativ precise with 1100 ml can and stopwatch.

Functional BP reactor with aprox 500 ml of bp have flow 640 lit/hour , aprox 160 gall/hour

Non functional reactor with aprox 1000 ml of BP have flow 613 lit/hour, aprox 153 gall/hour

Hope that help

 

[larryfl1]

hey all,

i have been running pellets for 1 month..i stopped gfo and also removed most algae from refugium...looked like it was receeding on its own...

i currently have no nitrates...but i do have about 1.5 ppm phosphates..

prior to starting the pellets i had undetectable phosphates...

what should i do?

 

[tntneon]

hey all,

i have been running pellets for 1 month..i stopped gfo and also removed most algae from refugium...looked like it was receeding on its own...

i currently have no nitrates...but i do have about 1.5 ppm phosphates..

prior to starting the pellets i had undetectable phosphates...

what should i do?

I think you changed too much to quickly , personaly i would kept the refugium with algea and removed the GFO offline when your parameters are stabile (low) for at least a month.
If the phosphstes won't drop i would put GFO back online.

greetingzz tntneon

 

[ari5736]

After taking my reactor offline on Friday, that has been running for a few months, I measured my NO3 today and it is steady at 15-20ppm. The fact that I feed pretty heavy and that NO3 did not increase to me means that the pellets were not only bringing Nitrate down, but they were not even keeping it steady.

I would like to seed the pellets but am not sure what to seed with. I used MB7 months ago when I first started the pellets, but added the MB7 directly to display and not near pellets.

Bluereefs I'm very interested in to hear how your experiment turns out.