N/P reducing pellets (solid vodka dosing)

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What was the problem you were having and how did you fix it?

bluereefs said:
I am not quite sure did I belong to "betatesters" or not :) but in case I belong to them here is my short update.
BP right now work excellent, everything stabilize, nitrates are 1 mg/lit , in the begining they was 100 mg/lit. Skimmer colect every day big amount of stinky (very very stinky) skimmate and is cleaned daily, filter socks are cleaned every 48 hours, they get cloged with bacteria. No bacterial bloom, water transparency is excellent, no bad issue with corals whatsoever, all are open, PE are excellent, I dump loots of food in aquarium daily and nitrate did not rise... now they work as they should work.

Did not post latelly because I take care of nitrates what was my main issue last few months, now I take care of second issue: aiptasia infestation, get zapper from PaulB (thread: electrocuting majano) and zapping almost all aiptasia in last few days. Highly recomend this device, is number one invention in reef keping history ,lol

Second there was question here, mostly with Dave trouble where I simply can not help, dont know the answer for his trouble so there is no reason to post.
Click to expand...
 
Anen, is hard to explain in one post, I writed many post about experiment with bp in last few months in this thread.

Many things with bp usage are now much more clear but they was not clear in the past. Shortly, I could not get bp to work in standard fluid reactor but I could get them to work in my diy reactor, 2 things are unusual here, first there are no big diference betwen standard fluid reactor and my diy reactor, and second, standard fluid reactor who was not working in my case after I sold him work quite good in other aquarium.

For some unknowen reason bp do not wont to work always, and is not related with anything specific (for example high phosphate/ no phosphate, high nitrates/low nitrates, artifical seawater/natural sea water... etc)

After I get them to work in my diy reactor they actuall start to work too explosivly creating bacterial bloom almost instantly in various aquarium where I use them. So I come to solution and that is starting with very low amount of bp, in my case 100 ml per 150 gallons of aquarium capacity and toping each week or two with another 100 ml until I come to amount what remove nitrates but dont create bacterial bloom. In my case 500 ml was working amount.
 
bluereefs,

It would be very intereting to me at least, if you tried mixing in the pellets into 3-5 mm carbonate gravel and use this in your reactor, to see if you could cut back on the amount of pellets you need to use to maintain or reduce nitrate. :)
 
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FWIW, according to the PCL patent you should be able to cut back between 25%-75% of the volume of the pellets used in your reactor (at least the PCL product) and replace this volume with 3-5 mm carbonate gravel and achieve the same results. The gravel and pellets would need to be throughly mixed together and then placed in the reactor. This could amount to a lot of $$$$$ if it works. ;)
 
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Doing this may help reduce the chances of bacterial blooms as well. ;)

IMHO, it is worth experimenting with to see if money can be saved regarding the amount of these expensive pellets you need to use.
 
HighlandReefer , I follow your thread about PCL patent/pellets, is quite interesting. From that thread most interesting part ( if I get that corectly) is that grounding pellets made the best results?? So maybe I will ground some pellets and drop them in one aquarium too se the results. I do not have high nitrate anymore so dont know how to measue succes or not succes, but algae growths on the glass as well as complete aquarium look can give a hint if that work or not.

Regarding mixing bp with coral sand/gravel (4-6 mm) in reactor I can try that with my third aquarium where is still fluid reactor with bio pellets who do not wont to work as they should.

Will post my experiment after I start them in this thread.
 
Sounds good to me either or both ways you choose to try. You do seem to have a good success rate & a good handle when using these pellets. :)

I would definitely be interested in any results you discover.

Personally it would be nice to start your own thread to help segregate things out from this very long thread, which gets very confusing. ;)
 
bluereefs said:
I am not quite sure did I belong to "betatesters" or not :) but in case I belong to them here is my short update.
BP right now work excellent, everything stabilize, nitrates are 1 mg/lit , in the begining they was 100 mg/lit. Skimmer colect every day big amount of stinky (very very stinky) skimmate and is cleaned daily, filter socks are cleaned every 48 hours, they get cloged with bacteria. No bacterial bloom, water transparency is excellent, no bad issue with corals whatsoever, all are open, PE are excellent, I dump loots of food in aquarium daily and nitrate did not rise... now they work as they should work.

Did not post latelly because I take care of nitrates what was my main issue last few months, now I take care of second issue: aiptasia infestation, get zapper from PaulB (thread: electrocuting majano) and zapping almost all aiptasia in last few days. Highly recomend this device, is number one invention in reef keping history ,lol

Second there was question here, mostly with Dave trouble where I simply can not help, dont know the answer for his trouble so there is no reason to post.
Click to expand...

Yes bluereefs, you are definitly a "betatester"........ :lol: and I'm glad to hear of you! :thumbsup:

But, you are forgiven...... you where busy zappin' those aiptasia :blown:

I love the invention of PaulB, I already built his contraption, and I'm still setting up my tank!! :lol:

thank you for letting us know of your progress

Ivan
 
please help if you can:

Here are my tank specs: 120g starphire, 72x18x22, super reef octopus 3000sss skimmer running @ 6.5" depth, 30g sump, running carbon, gfo, 500ml biopellets, cheato, 2 vortechs for flow, 13 small fish, 1 torch coral for the clowns to host (havent added any coral yet)

Here is the chain of events:

8/20: tank was set-up. already established rock and sand so very minimal cycle occured.

8/22: started biopellets

8/24: bacteria cloud-skimmer going crazy

8/28: bacteria cloud gone skimmer working normal

9/6: tank is cloudy again

9/14: cloudiness not going away so removed 1/2 of biopellets

9/17: tank clears up

9/20: skimmer stops producing foam

9/22: removed all of biopellets

9/26: tank is cloudy again, no biopellets and skimmer still will not produce foam

just tested the parms @ lunch
sp grav: 1.025
temp:79
cal:460
alk:9.2
mag:1375
ph:8.2
nitrates:0
phos:0

SO CONFUSED, any insight/ideas/solutions for getting the skimmer to work and making the cloudiness go away is greatly appreciated!
 
bluereefs said:
O yes, particulary due to my English language skill :)
Click to expand...

hey, I'm from Belgium..... this is not exactly my "native tongue" you know! :lol2:
I'm sure I made some serious bloopers over here, but I don't mind

And as long as I can read and understand it, I don't care! :lmao:
 
holdyourlight, you have very unusual situation, never come acros similar issue, everytime after the bp are removed cloudines alse disapear in next day or two. I do have serious cloudines in the past during bacterial bloom but after I remove the bp cloudines disapear. Also my skimmers working very strong during all bacterial bloom and they stabilize/back to normal after cloudines disapear. Dont get it why your skimmer do not wont to work and even less I understend how you get bacterial bloom 4 days after you remove the bio pellets??? BTW I use reef octopus super skimmers as well, big 5000/6000 internal model in all aquariums.

Do you maybe use garlic with fish food as a parasite prevention?
 
holdyourlight said:
please help if you can:

Here are my tank specs: 120g starphire, 72x18x22, super reef octopus 3000sss skimmer running @ 6.5" depth, 30g sump, running carbon, gfo, 500ml biopellets, cheato, 2 vortechs for flow, 13 small fish, 1 torch coral for the clowns to host (havent added any coral yet)
SO CONFUSED, any insight/ideas/solutions for getting the skimmer to work and making the cloudiness go away is greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

That is a whole lot of skimmer for the bio-load! Given the age of the tank, I would run carbon to help clear up the water and put back about half of the pellets. The skimmer will not clear the water up, and you are probably not getting much production out of it because it has very little to skim out. That skimmer would be better suited to a tank twice that size. A 5" neck needs some DOC's to keep a stable foam head.
 
HighlandReefer said:
bluereefs,

It would be very intereting to me at least, if you tried mixing in the pellets into 3-5 mm carbonate gravel and use this in your reactor, to see if you could cut back on the amount of pellets you need to use to maintain or reduce nitrate. :)
Click to expand...

Do you have a idea for thread titlle? LOL I can not come to anything smarter except Bio Pellets experiment :D

Just get 20 kg bag of coral sand to my home, hmm granulation are very diverse, most granules are bigger, some are 1 cm big, I would need to sieve them and remove bigger gravel. How many sand I should put in reactor with aprox 700 ml of bio pellets?
 
"NP Biopellets, an experiment for increasing its nitrate reduction productivity" :lol:

Yes trying to get the right size of individual grain sizes can be difficult. A sieve does sound like the best idea. ;)

The patent replaced 25%-75% of the pellet volume with gravel. Perhaps start with a 50%/50% gravel/pellet mix and see how that goes. :)

So 350 ml gravel to 350 ml of pellets.
 
Thank you Highlandreefer, you save my day, I already start to open the thread and my titlle was: Mixing NP bio pellets with calcium gravel, and grounding them too :hmm5: lol
Your titlle look more profesional :reading:

Also thank you for advice, I go now to work, my wife will kick me out of the house, this morning I was planing to made new aquascape and already have reef ceramic big plates ocupied half of the room floor, now I get sand bag, need to sieve him and remove the reactor from the tank, did I mentioned is 21.25 PM here and my TV is betwen two aquarium for experiment, I will be divorced person tomorow :beer:
 
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