N/P reducing pellets (solid vodka dosing)

[DJREEF]

Is there something that eats Cyanobacteri?

That's the problem with cyano, it's kinda toxic when consumed in large quantities. Cerith snails will eat some. I've witnessed large turbos eating it (prob overkill for what you need) and sea hare's will (once again probably overkill).

DJ

 

[ryanuuy]

Does anyone else have any ideas on how to increase PH without touching alk or is adding more o2 the only other way? So far, the co2 scrubber hasnt made any significant effects and im worried that the lower ph will start affecting my livestock soon. Im going to try adding an airstone later to my sump as well and hopefully that will do the trick till i can get my hands on a larger skimmer. The effluent of my reactor is already pointed to the direction of my skimmer chamber.

 

[bagz727]

Does anyone else have any ideas on how to increase PH without touching alk or is adding more o2 the only other way? So far, the co2 scrubber hasnt made any significant effects and im worried that the lower ph will start affecting my livestock soon. Im going to try adding an airstone later to my sump as well and hopefully that will do the trick till i can get my hands on a larger skimmer. The effluent of my reactor is already pointed to the direction of my skimmer chamber.

try aiming a fan on the water surface of your tank or sump!

 

[DJREEF]

Does anyone else have any ideas on how to increase PH without touching alk or is adding more o2 the only other way? So far, the co2 scrubber hasnt made any significant effects and im worried that the lower ph will start affecting my livestock soon. Im going to try adding an airstone later to my sump as well and hopefully that will do the trick till i can get my hands on a larger skimmer. The effluent of my reactor is already pointed to the direction of my skimmer chamber.

Pull the air for the skimmer from outside your stand - you may need to run a tube. Crack a nearby window in the house if it isn't too cold.

DJ

 

[zygote2k]

I use Polycaprolactone pellets in a mesh bag and some in a fluidized bed on my skimmerless SPS system. After a month of using them in the mesh bag and dosing MB7, I developed a huge cyano bloom that lasted for nearly 3 months. After using the fluidized bed, the cyano has been dying off and is only in small patches where there is little current. I stopped using GFO during the cyano bloom because the chaeto in the fuge stopped growing. I now have a healthy fuge and many places on the rocks have sprouted various types of macroalgae. When I initially started using the pellets, my N03 was about 35ppm, it is now less than 8 ppm.

 

[Scej12]

Hi Folks - I've been following this thread with great interest. I recall the discussion about removing filter socks due to rapid clogging by bacteria; however I don't recall whether the recommendation was to get rid of mechanical filtration entirely...?

I've been running about 2L of biopellets (SWC & Vertex mixed) on a 500 Gallon system for about 4-5 weeks now... for what it's worth I had a smaller amount running on the system for about a month before but there have been many flow and arrangement adjustments as this also happens to be a proto-type filtration system that I am constantly tinkering with. In addition to the biopellets, I've also been running Phosban GFO in a reactor.

Before I started my recent rehabilitation intervention on this particular aquarium, nitrates were way the hell off the chart - I would guesstimate well over 200 ppm on API; and phosphate was probably close to 1ppm. After a couple of quick GFO replenishments the phosphate is now around 0.5ppm, and after about a month of running the current amount of bp, the nitrates are somewhere between 80-100ppm.

I originally started the system with MB7; but currently dose about 20 drops of Zeobak a few times a week. I also occasionally attempt to supercharge the pellets by putting them in a pail of aquarium water over night and adding a disproportionately large amount of zeobak to the bucket (with aquarium water of course)....

WELL here's the interesting part: since I was not sure exactly why my nitrates and phosphates were dropping at such an undetectable rate over the course of more than a month of relatively stable operation - I decided to test the water in the pail I was super-charging. Here are the results:

This is my proto-type filtration system which has been added onto a 450 gallon aquarium - there is another sump attached which just houses a heater and some mechanical filtration (filter floss on top of engineering foam)


I placed the entire reactor worth of bp into a 5 gallon pail with only a covering of water and about 25 drops of Zeobak to supercharge. This was actually just started off as one of my regular supercharge routines but then I serendipitously decided to test for NO3 & PO4 - as it turned out the nitrate was absolute 0 and the PO4 was way the heck off the chart... some kind of deep deep purple. Finding this interesting, I repeated the experiment with a little more water and inserted a little maxijet powerhead... the following photos display the results after about 12 hours (the 0 readings are from the pail - yes even the phosphate was 0; and the high readings were from the aquarium water; both samples tested simultaneously):





At this point I was thoroughly confused so I repeated the experiment, but this time removed the bp and only added zeobak and kept the powerhead:



This was also left for about 12 hours; and as you can see there is no change from the water in the tank to the water circulating with the zeobak.... this saved me one more test as I could then deduct that the zeobak was not responsible for processing out the NO3/PO4 in the previous test; but was in fact the bacteria that would be present on the bp...

However the bp reactor when running on my 500 total gallon system does not make noticeable strides on the NO3/PO4 on the system - although I do believe it is dropping the values sssslooooowwwwwly....

Soooo I'm left with (and of course am requesting your input on) the following possibilities:

- Either the approx. 2L of Biopellets that my reactor can handle is not enough to drop the nutrients quickly on a large system that has been nutrient neglected for the better part of 6 years; or

- My filter floss/engineering foam mechanical filtration is adversely affecting the process even though 100% of the effluent from the reactor is fed directly into the skimmer with 0 exception. Incidentally the skimmate in the first photo is little more than 48 hours worth.

As can be determined from my mini experiments, the biopellets are in fact 'ignited' and functioning. If they can remove approx. 100 ppm of NO3 from 3 gallons of water in under 12 hours, then there must be some other factor at play that is preventing the same results in the actual display tank after more than a month (albeit a large [500G] system). I removed the mechanical filtration from the first filtration chamber yesterday, so if I see noticeable change over the course of this week - then perhaps it can be determined that a bp system needs to run entirely on skimming and GAC filtration alone... i.e. no mechanical filtration whatsoever....? does this sound reasonable to y'all operating with success out there. Please advise on the level of mechanical filtration that should be employed.

Thanks in advance.

Sheldon.

P.S. Did I mention that this is a spectacular thread...!!!
P.S.S. As you can tell from my post count I do a lot more reading than contributing - please don't hold it against me as I still consider myself a reefkeeping student.... SJ :rolleye1:

 

[bertoni]

Does anyone else have any ideas on how to increase PH without touching alk or is adding more o2 the only other way?

The only way to increase the pH without affecting alkalinity is to remove carbon dioxide from the water. If the scrubber for the skimmer isn't helping, you might try a scrubber to blow treated air over the water surface. I'd try aerating a cup of tank water for 3 hours in the tank room, and seeing whether the pH rises. That should tell us more about what's happening.

What's the pH now?

 

[ryanuuy]

so far its seems to be working but just slowly! my ph is finally hitting 8 now. i opened all the windows and doors and i kept my aquarium cabinets open as well. im also gonna go and buy an airpump with an airstone and try adding that to the sump later.

i already ordered a bigger skimmer from one of the suppliers here SRO XP 3000 ext and hopefully that combined with a scrubber will do the trick. Im thinking the skimmer i have now may not be doing such a great job.

 

[tmz]

If you are adding CO3 scrubbed air to the skimmer ,assuming it's prodcuing enough bubbles, the CO2 level in your tank should be lower than the CO2 in the air around the tank( room air). Increasing aeration via extra surface agitation(air stone in sump) will speed up the CO2 equilibration with the air faster negating the scrubbers effect in decreasing CO2 in the water.

 

[tmz]

Correction CO3 in first sentence should be CO2, sorry for the typo.

 

[DJREEF]

Hi Folks - I've been following this thread with great interest. I recall the discussion about removing filter socks due to rapid clogging by bacteria; however I don't recall whether the recommendation was to get rid of mechanical filtration entirely...?

I've been running about 2L of biopellets (SWC & Vertex mixed) on a 500 Gallon system for about 4-5 weeks now... for what it's worth I had a smaller amount running on the system for about a month before but there have been many flow and arrangement adjustments as this also happens to be a proto-type filtration system that I am constantly tinkering with. In addition to the biopellets, I've also been running Phosban GFO in a reactor.

Before I started my recent rehabilitation intervention on this particular aquarium, nitrates were way the hell off the chart - I would guesstimate well over 200 ppm on API; and phosphate was probably close to 1ppm. After a couple of quick GFO replenishments the phosphate is now around 0.5ppm, and after about a month of running the current amount of bp, the nitrates are somewhere between 80-100ppm.

I originally started the system with MB7; but currently dose about 20 drops of Zeobak a few times a week. I also occasionally attempt to supercharge the pellets by putting them in a pail of aquarium water over night and adding a disproportionately large amount of zeobak to the bucket (with aquarium water of course)....

WELL here's the interesting part: since I was not sure exactly why my nitrates and phosphates were dropping at such an undetectable rate over the course of more than a month of relatively stable operation - I decided to test the water in the pail I was super-charging. Here are the results:

This is my proto-type filtration system which has been added onto a 450 gallon aquarium - there is another sump attached which just houses a heater and some mechanical filtration (filter floss on top of engineering foam)
View attachment 131543

I placed the entire reactor worth of bp into a 5 gallon pail with only a covering of water and about 25 drops of Zeobak to supercharge. This was actually just started off as one of my regular supercharge routines but then I serendipitously decided to test for NO3 & PO4 - as it turned out the nitrate was absolute 0 and the PO4 was way the heck off the chart... some kind of deep deep purple. Finding this interesting, I repeated the experiment with a little more water and inserted a little maxijet powerhead... the following photos display the results after about 12 hours (the 0 readings are from the pail - yes even the phosphate was 0; and the high readings were from the aquarium water; both samples tested simultaneously):

View attachment 131544

View attachment 131545

At this point I was thoroughly confused so I repeated the experiment, but this time removed the bp and only added zeobak and kept the powerhead:

View attachment 131546

This was also left for about 12 hours; and as you can see there is no change from the water in the tank to the water circulating with the zeobak.... this saved me one more test as I could then deduct that the zeobak was not responsible for processing out the NO3/PO4 in the previous test; but was in fact the bacteria that would be present on the bp...

However the bp reactor when running on my 500 total gallon system does not make noticeable strides on the NO3/PO4 on the system - although I do believe it is dropping the values sssslooooowwwwwly....

Soooo I'm left with (and of course am requesting your input on) the following possibilities:

- Either the approx. 2L of Biopellets that my reactor can handle is not enough to drop the nutrients quickly on a large system that has been nutrient neglected for the better part of 6 years; or

- My filter floss/engineering foam mechanical filtration is adversely affecting the process even though 100% of the effluent from the reactor is fed directly into the skimmer with 0 exception. Incidentally the skimmate in the first photo is little more than 48 hours worth.

As can be determined from my mini experiments, the biopellets are in fact 'ignited' and functioning. If they can remove approx. 100 ppm of NO3 from 3 gallons of water in under 12 hours, then there must be some other factor at play that is preventing the same results in the actual display tank after more than a month (albeit a large [500G] system). I removed the mechanical filtration from the first filtration chamber yesterday, so if I see noticeable change over the course of this week - then perhaps it can be determined that a bp system needs to run entirely on skimming and GAC filtration alone... i.e. no mechanical filtration whatsoever....? does this sound reasonable to y'all operating with success out there. Please advise on the level of mechanical filtration that should be employed.

Thanks in advance.

Sheldon.

P.S. Did I mention that this is a spectacular thread...!!!
P.S.S. As you can tell from my post count I do a lot more reading than contributing - please don't hold it against me as I still consider myself a reefkeeping student.... SJ :rolleye1:

Yea, I'd say ditch the filter floss foam setup - I'm thinking the biomass could be clogging this stuff up, and use some of that needlepoint mesh from Hobby Lobby/Michaels. You want as free a flow going through the reactor as possible that brings the pellets to a slow simmer.

DJ

 

[larryfl1]

hi i have np pellets and also been dosing prodibio...

is it an issue to use both? is one better then the other?

also i started using some zeovit additives (coral vitalizer, amino) to get colors back...it is helping but now i have some slimey brown fuzzy agae covering stuff??

is this due to the zeovit stuff??

recommendations.???

 

[Scej12]

Yea, I'd say ditch the filter floss foam setup - I'm thinking the biomass could be clogging this stuff up, and use some of that needlepoint mesh from Hobby Lobby/Michaels. You want as free a flow going through the reactor as possible that brings the pellets to a slow simmer.

DJ

Thx DJ - Still too early to see any effect. I'm interested in that needlepoint mesh though as I need to catch the stray pellets which are leaving the reactor and heading into my skimmer pumps. Will stop into a Michaels here in Toronto.

SJ

 

[DJREEF]

Thx DJ - Still too early to see any effect. I'm interested in that needlepoint mesh though as I need to catch the stray pellets which are leaving the reactor and heading into my skimmer pumps. Will stop into a Michaels here in Toronto.

SJ

Actually, pellets in the skimmer is a non-event. I placed pellets in my skimmer intentionally. I mean think about it. What better place to have the bacteria growing than in there. The bacteria are literally being cultured inside the mechanism designed to export them.

DJ

 

[Scej12]

I see your point however in my case the bp reactor is plumbed directly into the skimmer through the two needle wheel pumps... so that means I hear a bunch of [impeller] rattling from the skimmer and the productivity drops down.

It seems that if I put more than 2L of pellets in my 6" reactor the occasional floaters make it into the needle wheel because I removed the pvc strainer that was once at the top of the reactor. I'll need to adjust the plumbing so that the exiting water must past through a perforated pvc plate at the top of the reactor which is actually going back to an earlier arrangement.

I put more pellets in this afternoon, and of course the floaters immediately began making their way into the needle-wheel, but I didn't have time to stick around and fix so I'll have to tackle the issue tomorrow. Thanks again for your input DJ. Will let you know how the week sees the trates & phates change.

SJ

 

[Scej12]

hi i have np pellets and also been dosing prodibio...

is it an issue to use both? is one better then the other?

also i started using some zeovit additives (coral vitalizer, amino) to get colors back...it is helping but now i have some slimey brown fuzzy agae covering stuff??

is this due to the zeovit stuff??

recommendations.???

I'm by no means and expert on the myriad of ZEO additives out there so I'll just take a stab at the first part of your question. As far as I understand the principles of the whole bacterial driven system; prodibio, zeobak, mb7, etc. serve to seed your aquarium with favourable bacterial strains that actually use up the unwanted nutrients while posing little threat of becoming unsightly like cyanobacteria... the pellets (or any other form of carbon dosing) serve to maintain this seeded population of favourable bacteria.

From what little I understand about the use of amino acids, I believe they are used to fill the nutritional void for corals left once all of the nitrates & phosphates (and whatever other algae/zooxanthelae feeding nutrients) are removed from the water column. I think the beauty about this system is that the bacterio-plankton maintained by the biopellets help to take some of the emphasis off of the amino acid supplementation, as the unwanted nutrients are replaced by a usable and much more natural source of heterotrophic food for corals. Perhaps the brown algae your are finding is resulting from the presence of more nutrients being available than your corals are using.

SJ

 

[DJREEF]

I see your point however in my case the bp reactor is plumbed directly into the skimmer through the two needle wheel pumps... so that means I hear a bunch of [impeller] rattling from the skimmer and the productivity drops down.

It seems that if I put more than 2L of pellets in my 6" reactor the occasional floaters make it into the needle wheel because I removed the pvc strainer that was once at the top of the reactor. I'll need to adjust the plumbing so that the exiting water must past through a perforated pvc plate at the top of the reactor which is actually going back to an earlier arrangement.

I put more pellets in this afternoon, and of course the floaters immediately began making their way into the needle-wheel, but I didn't have time to stick around and fix so I'll have to tackle the issue tomorrow. Thanks again for your input DJ. Will let you know how the week sees the trates & phates change.

SJ

Sounds good. Adding the xtra liter certainly won't hurt anything. Now understand that your original assumption that it may take a little time to bring down the levels may be correct. You've got a ways to fall. It took my system a full 3 months to register near 0 NO3.

DJ

 

[Scej12]

Sounds good. Adding the xtra liter certainly won't hurt anything. Now understand that your original assumption that it may take a little time to bring down the levels may be correct. You've got a ways to fall. It took my system a full 3 months to register near 0 NO3.

DJ

Ahhh... now that's a revealing [& relieving] perspective. Don't know why but I was under the impression that most people were achieving their results in days not months. I guess I'm approaching 0ppm from a long-distance journey so to speak. I should also find comfort in the fact that I confirmed the pellets are in fact working, and perhaps it is not a bad thing to slowly cruise down to 0 levels. I'll just continue to play with my reactor a little to see if I can't find a way to contain a larger amount of pellets without having them flow out into the skimmer pumps. Will play around with that today - hoping I don't break anything :worried2:

BTW DJ - how big is your tank and what level of NO3/PO4 did your pellets work down from; how much pellets did you use?

I would consider my system lightly populated - the display tank is 450G; there are two modest sized sumps (figure another 50G combined); and there is one xl Vlamingi tang; 3 yellow tangs; 1 tomini tang; about 6 damsels; a lamarki angel; and a coral beauty angel; about 5 serpant stars; and a mix of about 50-75 snails and hermits... other than that; the filtration system is contending with about 6 years of under-circulated; and under filtered; and I dare say under maintained history. Before I finally bit the bullet and began turning this thing into a proper reef aquarium, I endeavoured to re-work the entire rockscape, and gravel washed whatever I could reach around the rocks... talk about a mess. Well this all happened over the last 4 months... of which the pellets were employed for about 2 and a half. So you're probably right - the pellets have a heavy load to deal with, and perhaps a more tightly calibrated test kit might indicate that the Nitrates are dropping by 5ppm or some modest figure like that which would explain why the API test is slowly moving from the 160ppm level down to the next shade of red which is 80ppm...? Perhaps this is also why people are achieving 0 levels when coming down from 10 or 20ppm within days. For what it's worth, I did notice one or two of the LPS under a bit of duress - namely a tooth coral has been bleach-white for about 2-3 weeks now - perhaps it's reacting to the constant but gradual drop???

I think the 'scale' of the bp effect is an important consideration - but I'll still leave this system mechanical filtration-free for the time being to see if things progress any quicker. Thanks again.

Sheldon John

 

[DJREEF]

Ahhh... now that's a revealing [& relieving] perspective. Don't know why but I was under the impression that most people were achieving their results in days not months. I guess I'm approaching 0ppm from a long-distance journey so to speak. I should also find comfort in the fact that I confirmed the pellets are in fact working, and perhaps it is not a bad thing to slowly cruise down to 0 levels. I'll just continue to play with my reactor a little to see if I can't find a way to contain a larger amount of pellets without having them flow out into the skimmer pumps. Will play around with that today - hoping I don't break anything :worried2:

BTW DJ - how big is your tank and what level of NO3/PO4 did your pellets work down from; how much pellets did you use?

I would consider my system lightly populated - the display tank is 450G; there are two modest sized sumps (figure another 50G combined); and there is one xl Vlamingi tang; 3 yellow tangs; 1 tomini tang; about 6 damsels; a lamarki angel; and a coral beauty angel; about 5 serpant stars; and a mix of about 50-75 snails and hermits... other than that; the filtration system is contending with about 6 years of under-circulated; and under filtered; and I dare say under maintained history. Before I finally bit the bullet and began turning this thing into a proper reef aquarium, I endeavoured to re-work the entire rockscape, and gravel washed whatever I could reach around the rocks... talk about a mess. Well this all happened over the last 4 months... of which the pellets were employed for about 2 and a half. So you're probably right - the pellets have a heavy load to deal with, and perhaps a more tightly calibrated test kit might indicate that the Nitrates are dropping by 5ppm or some modest figure like that which would explain why the API test is slowly moving from the 160ppm level down to the next shade of red which is 80ppm...? Perhaps this is also why people are achieving 0 levels when coming down from 10 or 20ppm within days. For what it's worth, I did notice one or two of the LPS under a bit of duress - namely a tooth coral has been bleach-white for about 2-3 weeks now - perhaps it's reacting to the constant but gradual drop???

I think the 'scale' of the bp effect is an important consideration - but I'll still leave this system mechanical filtration-free for the time being to see if things progress any quicker. Thanks again.

Sheldon John

140 gal. total volume. NO3 clocked in between 60-80ppm in a very high bioload system. I use 1 liter mixed Vertex/EcoBak. I even had the initial bloom, though light, that everyone has discussed in previous threads.

DJ

 

[Scej12]

140 gal. total volume. NO3 clocked in between 60-80ppm in a very high bioload system. I use 1 liter mixed Vertex/EcoBak. I even had the initial bloom, though light, that everyone has discussed in previous threads.

DJ

Well that all but confirms it. I had a similar light bac bloom almost immediately when I used only a litre of pellets right off the top. I will continue to wait patiently then (only change will be the mechanical filtration removal & additional 1/2 litre of pellets). Thanks again for the perspective - that answers a lot of my questioning.

Regards,
SJ