N/P reducing pellets (solid vodka dosing)

[chercm]

my ph kept dropping .... pls advice

 

[jptenklooster]

For proper aeration keep in mind that you have to draw air from outside the tank area, specially when you have a high bioload. When the skimmer is inside a closed cabinet, like most sumps are then it is recycling its own air. result CO2 is pumped back into the water and you will get a drop in pH. If you extend the airtube to a place outside your tank/cabinet or in some cases your house (I had to do this for my non-photosynthetic coral tank) then that will do wonders for CO2 and oxygen levels in your tank.

To indicate how important your skimmer is for proper aeration, the pH in my tank will drop to around 7 within the hour when I switch of the skimmer for cleaning. Fortunately, it normally does not take me 1 hour to clean my skimmer. I'm well aware that my tank is the extreme in bioload and feeding
(30 fish and fully loaded with corals of which half of them are non-photosynthetic and require 12x feeding per day in a 300 liter tank and still keeping nitrate between 0 and 2), but it is good to know how these things work.

We will try to put all this info on our website and labels in the future. The product was tested by many people before marketing it and all these problems were not encountered before, however, there are so many variants that you encounter once you launch a product, you can't test for everything unfortunately.

I'll keep following this thread.

Cheers,

Jean Paul

 

[jptenklooster]

CO2 scrubbers are a very good alternative though for removing the CO2 from the air that is being used by your skimmer.

 

[jptenklooster]

I had a close call last night. If I didn't take any action last night and went to bed, I would have a tank of dead fish:sad1:. This thread saved my tank!

I have a 92g tank with a total water volume of about 100g. I started using the BP last night and used about 500ml. Within two hours after I started, my RKE PH alarm tripped meaning at one point my PH must have dropped to or below 7.8. Before BP, it was 8.25. However, the controller still displayed 8.1 so I didn't think too much about it and reset the alarm.

Just before midnight, the PH alarm tripped again and the display showed 8.05 and dropping fast. Thanks to Stevedola's post I quickly dialed back the flow rate thru my reactor and increased the flow rate thru my ATS. I also opened up my canopy and sump doors to get as much free air circulation to my tank. Finally the PH stablized at 8.07 before I went to bed at 1a:worried:. I woke up this morning at 5.30a and the PH alarm had never tripped again and was at 8.05. The fish seemed to be okay. Whew!!

I didn't think the bacteria can grow so fast. I thought this system will take 2-4 weeks to work. I must have pretty high nutrient level for the bacteria to grow so rapidly. However, I measured my P&N earlier yesterday and they were both zero. I still have some GHA in several spots. I have been running a ATS and GFO for several months and started vodka dosing about 12 days ago.

Lesson learned: watch your PH after you start your BP and be able to dial back your flow rate. As Steveloda mentioned earlier, have something to aerate your water like airstone.

This is indeed very rapid, but you also mention that you started dosing wodka 12 days ago. Wodka dosing takes 1 or 2 weeks to kick in as well and can give a similar drop in pH as the pellets can, because the principle is the same, you provide your bacteria with a carbon energy source.

 

[SimonSKL]

For proper aeration keep in mind that you have to draw air from outside the tank area, specially when you have a high bioload. When the skimmer is inside a closed cabinet, like most sumps are then it is recycling its own air. result CO2 is pumped back into the water and you will get a drop in pH. If you extend the airtube to a place outside your tank/cabinet or in some cases your house (I had to do this for my non-photosynthetic coral tank) then that will do wonders for CO2 and oxygen levels in your tank.

To indicate how important your skimmer is for proper aeration, the pH in my tank will drop to around 7 within the hour when I switch of the skimmer for cleaning. Fortunately, it normally does not take me 1 hour to clean my skimmer. I'm well aware that my tank is the extreme in bioload and feeding
(30 fish and fully loaded with corals of which half of them are non-photosynthetic and require 12x feeding per day in a 300 liter tank and still keeping nitrate between 0 and 2), but it is good to know how these things work.

We will try to put all this info on our website and labels in the future. The product was tested by many people before marketing it and all these problems were not encountered before, however, there are so many variants that you encounter once you launch a product, you can't test for everything unfortunately.

I'll keep following this thread.

Cheers,

Jean Paul

Jean, This is an excellent point about pulling air from outside the tank to the skimmer that I never thought about.

Since I just started the vodka dosing 12 days ago, should I stop that immediately now that I am running BP or should I taper down the dose gradually over several days? I was up to 1.3ml on a mixture of vodka/vinegar/sugar. Thanks

 

[this is me]

I've jumped on the bandwagon this weekend and currently running 500ml of BP in a BRS reactor w/Maxi1200. I did not rinse the pellets and did not notice the cloudy water at all. But I'm also running a lot of activated carbon.
My tank had suffer the dino algae outbreak. I'm hoping this will help.

 

[bluereefs]

jptenklooster can you post picture of your tank and equipment? I am highly interested to see how you use them and how your aquarium look. Picture worth 1000 words. Asked because I am highly interested in that type of aquarium, not because I do not trust you.

I use BP in 3 aquariums, dont had bacterial bloom except once but that was my mistake (clogged foam inside the reactor) and those bacterial bloom actually prove that BP do their job.

In 3 aquariums where I use them one who have good fluid reactor and where is 1000 ml of BP in 600 lit fosfate and nitrate are 0. In second aquarium also 600 lit, my main aquarium with loots of fish and heavy feeding so far I can not remove the nitrate and they are very high, 25-50 mg/lit but I use there BP in smaller fluid reactor, aprox 500 ml and 1000 ml in another diy reactor but without tumbling. Maybe because the most of the bp dont fluidised I can not remove the nitrate?? I start to dose vodka to see will be vodka + bp remove the nitrate. Probably I will for experiment move the bigest fluid reactor from aquarium who have 0 nitrate to this aquarium to see the efect of proper use of bp, maybe I can not remove the nitrate because I dont use bp properly.

 

[jptenklooster]

Jean, This is an excellent point about pulling air from outside the tank to the skimmer that I never thought about.

Since I just started the vodka dosing 12 days ago, should I stop that immediately now that I am running BP or should I taper down the dose gradually over several days? I was up to 1.3ml on a mixture of vodka/vinegar/sugar. Thanks

I would stop dosing the wodka or decrease the pellets. You can always slowly increase either of them when this is necessary

 

[jptenklooster]

some pictures of my gorgonia's and more

 

[jptenklooster]

and some more

 

[jptenklooster]

The size of my tank is 100cmx50cmx65cm high. so more or less 300 liters. 4x39 watt T5, 3 streamers ranging from 5000-8500 l/h. one red dragon 6500 coming from my sump and recently I installed a BBK SM 250 protein skimmer. For this tank I'm using 2 liters of pellets in a zeo-reactor and that seams to be working fine for me.

 

[bluereefs]

Thank you very much jptenklooster :thumbsup:
In your opinion is thumbling of bp important for best results? I do have a liter of bp in high flow reactor but no tumbling, there is ,loot of bacteria and mulm inside so this obviously work but for now he dont put my nitrates to zero. I use bp aprox months and a half, do you think it will need more time to remove the nitrates?

here is one of my aquarium with bp, mixed reef with some non photo corals inside, I have beautiful tubastrea inside and she do not wont to open so I dump food all the time trying to get the reaction from her and polyp expansion, that is main reason for so high nitrate concetration right now.

 

[SimonSKL]

The size of my tank is 100cmx50cmx65cm high. so more or less 300 liters. 4x39 watt T5, 3 streamers ranging from 5000-8500 l/h. one red dragon 6500 coming from my sump and recently I installed a BBK SM 250 protein skimmer. For this tank I'm using 2 liters of pellets in a zeo-reactor and that seams to be working fine for me.

Jean Paul, 300 liters is less than 80 gallons but you are using 2 liters of pellets! I thought it is recommended to start with 500ml for a 100g tank. I understand you must have been running this for a while and gradually increased to this volume. But this is almost 5 times the starting volume of pellets!

Here is a video that I just took of my sump. As a temporary measure to raise my PH I extended the air hose of the skimmer to outside the tank. Do you think the movement of the pellets in the reactor is adequate given the episode that I encounter last night? I plan to increase the flow rate once my PH is up near normal. I have about 500ml of pellets in the NextReef MR-1 reactor.

 

[ksed]

The size of my tank is 100cmx50cmx65cm high. so more or less 300 liters. 4x39 watt T5, 3 streamers ranging from 5000-8500 l/h. one red dragon 6500 coming from my sump and recently I installed a BBK SM 250 protein skimmer. For this tank I'm using 2 liters of pellets in a zeo-reactor and that seams to be working fine for me.

Hi JP

A BK SM 250 in a 300 liter tank:eek2:
I think that tank has more air than water:lmao:

Thanks

Kevin

 

[jptenklooster]

Yes I use 2 liters, but keep in mind that I'm feeding my corals 12 times a day and this does not include the feeding for my fish. On the other hand, I started with 1 liter and was able to reduce my nitrate to 2 ppm within 2 weeks. The additional liter was able to reduce nitrates to 0.

Jean Paul, 300 liters is less than 80 gallons but


you are using 2 liters of pellets! I thought it is recommended to start with 500ml for a 100g tank. I understand you must have been running this for a while and gradually increased to this volume. But this is almost 5 times the starting volume of pellets!

Here is a video that I just took of my sump. As a temporary measure to raise my PH I extended the air hose of the skimmer to outside the tank. Do you think the movement of the pellets in the reactor is adequate given the episode that I encounter last night? I plan to increase the flow rate once my PH is up near normal. I have about 500ml of pellets in the NextReef MR-1 reactor.

 

[jptenklooster]

tumbling is looking fine, no problem there. looks like my pellets in tumbling.

 

[jptenklooster]

Thank you very much jptenklooster :thumbsup:
In your opinion is thumbling of bp important for best results? I do have a liter of bp in high flow reactor but no tumbling, there is ,loot of bacteria and mulm inside so this obviously work but for now he dont put my nitrates to zero. I use bp aprox months and a half, do you think it will need more time to remove the nitrates?

here is one of my aquarium with bp, mixed reef with some non photo corals inside, I have beautiful tubastrea inside and she do not wont to open so I dump food all the time trying to get the reaction from her and polyp expansion, that is main reason for so high nitrate concetration right now.

You might consider adding more pellets when feeding more then an average tank. If your tuba's don't open you should try our new low-inorganic phosphate reefpearls. They will be on the market soon. they range between 30 and 200 micron and give a great feeding response in tuba's gorgonia's and many photosynthetic corals.

 

[euromomtx]

same here: high flow but no tumbling. It just pushes the pellets (1000ml in a Nextreef MR1 reactor with a Mag 3 pump) towards the top. Lots of bacteria goop.
Should I open the reactor and stir them up every once in awhile? Or is goop okay to have?

 

[jptenklooster]

as long as the goop does not hinder the flow through it should be OK

 

[bluereefs]

Thank you jptenklooster
I just add my third reactor on this aquarium, that was reactor who sucesfully keep 0 nitrates on other aquarium (same model and dimension like this aquarium) so right now I have aprox 2500 ml BP on my main aquarium. Will post updates with nitrates situation.
Here is the picture of all 3 reactor, 2 are fluidized, one are high flow without tumbling.

Will post a video too to show the tumbling in reactors.

If your tuba's don't open you should try our new low-inorganic phosphate reefpearls. They will be on the market soon. they range between 30 and 200 micron and give a great feeding response in tuba's gorgonia's and many photosynthetic corals.

Great news, dont know will she last so long until new reef pearls get on the market