Has anyone else NOT had success with biopellets?

[EddieJ]

I am 10 weeks in running EcoBak pellets and my nitrates have not budged from 20-25. There is plenty of PO4 as that ranges from .03 - .07. I am running 1500ml which is a little over the recommended 1200ml for my 250 gallons. I have adjusted the flow from 150gph to 115gph per advice from Jon Warner. I have not had any problems with cyano or cloudy water. The output is right by the intake to my skimmer which is a PM Bullett 3 pulling all sorts of nasties. I regularly clean my sump and really don't see anywhere a nitrate factory can be hiding. My only thought would be my overflows. But in theory I should have no trouble bringing these nitrates down with a carbon source. Guess I am just stumped. I have used Vodka and the Zeovit system in the past with success..

[wgraham]

just hang in there it took me awhile for mines to come down to zero. But in the process my PO4 was up to .17 and nitrates was at zero with the pellets. Put an algae scrubber with the pellets and now my nitrates are zero and PO4 is at .03 to .06 at the most and I feed a lot.

[fijisrfr]

I tried them for four months, nitrates also never budged. All I really got was a small cyano outbreak, bacterial slime on the sumps water surface, slightly cloudy water (at night with the blues & UV on the water had a green bioluminescent glow)& some STN on some of my acros. After 4 months I took them off line & a week later my water is back to crystal clear. Nitrates stay @ 10 and I can live with that!

[DSPs]

I tried bio pellets for 3 months on my 35 cube and I recently gave up and sold the reactor and everything to a friend to see if they work for him,.maybe I should have waited longer but they were suposed to kick in within 4 weeks and in 3 months I didn't even notice a drop at all with nitrates, I was using thrive crush pellets with a Phosban 150,Im not knocking pellets because I have friends that use them and I know they work they just didn't work in my system

[wgraham]

I thought the same thing, at first my nitrate was at about 20ppm and PO4 at .37 before I started using bio-pellets. I was losing SPS left to right and a friend of mines was using them and had great PE on all of his SPS. So I gave them a try. Like I said before my nitrates went down to zero and my PO4 went down to .17. I had an algae scrubber on the tank but it started leaking. So I was without it for about a month before I repaired it. I tested my tank parameters ever weak and PO4 would go down. Put the algae scrubber back on line and everything started to take off like crazy all of my SPS has good PE and I very happy with the bio-pellets. I have 3 tanks tied together a 300 gallon a 135 gallon and a 75 gallon. The 300 is the display and 135 full of rock and the 75 is where my algae scrubber dumps into.