Bio pellets or GFO?

[tomreefer]

I am thinking of adding a reactor to my 40 breeder and not sure which direction to go. I am leaning towards bio pellets and what reactor would be good? I have a SCA-301 skimmer if that makes a difference.

[Mrramsey]

I run gfo... I am assuming you are reducing PO4 to get rid of algae? I run the BRS dual reactor with GFO and GAC.

[tomreefer]

Yes want to reduce PO4 which I think is causing some algae in my tank. I heard pellets though reduce nitrates and PO4. I am wondering what is causing the algae is it usually phosphate or nitrates or both?

[JammyBirch]

I have the same skimmer, it's a beast...I run GFO reactor from two little fishes, it's nice too. My opinion is that bio pellets are dangerous to a system. They're old school and have been known to trap "stuff" that will decay and increase nitrate, also grows algae.

Run a beefcake CUC, the skimmer CUC combo is great for detritus management, and the GFO will knock down the phos in a matter of hours...

[tomreefer]

Whats a beefcake CUC?. Yeah I love this skimmer. Awesome especially when I got it they had a huge sale on it. Was kind of nervous because it was cheap. Ok so I should invest in TLF reactor and run GFO?

[BeanMachine]

I have the same skimmer, it's a beast...I run GFO reactor from two little fishes, it's nice too. My opinion is that bio pellets are dangerous to a system. They're old school and have been known to trap "stuff" that will decay and increase nitrate, also grows algae.

Run a beefcake CUC, the skimmer CUC combo is great for detritus management, and the GFO will knock down the phos in a matter of hours...

I think you mean bio balls, not bio pellets... two entirely different things.

[tomreefer]

bio pellets I maybe getting. Heard they are easier to use than GFO am I correct? I heard though with bio pellets u need a good skimmer which I think I have

[JammyBirch]

Whats a beefcake CUC?. Yeah I love this skimmer. Awesome especially when I got it they had a huge sale on it. Was kind of nervous because it was cheap. Ok so I should invest in TLF reactor and run GFO?

Sorry what I mean is to get a CUC consisting of some nassarius, cerith and dwarf cerith snails. The key being the dwarf cerith snails, they are tiny, hide in the sand during the day and man do they get it done. I clean my glass once a week in a few small spots tops, those dwarfs are working like crazy in there.

I also have 2 bumblebee snails that are carnivorous like the nassarius, they clean up the left over fish food.

How big is your tank? Mine is 25 gallons, I probably have close to 75 cerith and 6 naus...everything is working pretty good.

By the way the pump on that skimmer has a pretty long output port, if you cut it off to be flush with the acrylic hole it fits through it works even better. It's a really simple mod for this skimmer. I tried it the way it came for a month then modified it, it was significantly better at filling the column with bubbles and captured even more stuff in the cup.

[JammyBirch]

I think you mean bio balls, not bio pellets... two entirely different things.

Ah yeah...sorry.

[Scranton]

I run gfo and carbon brs dual reactor and I love it. Hardly have to scrape the glass

[BeanMachine]

bio pellets I maybe getting. Heard they are easier to use than GFO am I correct? I heard though with bio pellets u need a good skimmer which I think I have

Well they work in entirely different ways. I wouldn't say they are easier. Still require a reactor... but you don't have to change them out like you do with GFO say monthy, merely top off the reactor as the bacteria consumes the pellet (food source). Some can get away with only bio pellets without the use of GFO, while others still need to use the GFO to remove the remaining phosphates that the bacteria can't process fully.

Whichever you choose do as much research as possible, and start with quite a bit less than recommended as starting with too much initially will cause problems.

I have my pellet reactor's output really close to the intake of my skimmer.

[FraggledRock]

To do what?

Remove phosphates?

[doctorwhoreefer]

Biopellets +1

I've used gfo, gfo and bp, gfo+bp+bacterial additives, bp+bacterial additives, gfo+ba.
Observations were a couple months at least for each.

When using gfo+ba I found it a bit too easy to strip the water column and had necrosis on several occasions, I might say to the same degree running gfo alone resulted in this as well. Corals were still ok in the end, but it was an unnecessary bump in the road after taking the leap of faith and removing gfo altogether, relying only on the biopellets. This went on awhile, but then I discovered an amazing tank on a forum, and biodigest was suggested by this guy. I have found biodigest to be the most efficient of the additives I've tried, at colonizing the reactor. I will say the only one that I probably didn't try was bacter7. Also I'm currently using ecobak plus, which are different than their first gen, and most of the other first gens because it's multiple carbon sources. It may have some pha in it, but if so I would imagine very little since it performs quite differently than the first gen. I've yet to try other brands though because of this very reason. The all in one pellets are reportedly good at gumming things up, and the round ones are harder to tumble...

A recirculating reactor is a must. I would say once you put it on your tank, just turn down the effluent to a trickle. It'll balance itself out to the system. After doing this long enough I'm pretty convinced it's the best, most sure fire way to prevent ANY possibility of stripping the water.

[jason2459]

I used biopellets on my 55 and worked well. I then moved on to and prefer dosing vinegar. If PO4 is really high to start with then some GFO to get it down a bit works well.

[jonwright]

Bio pellets for someone posting in the "new to hobby" section?

How old is the tank? If its less than a year old could be the regular algae bloom that will go away on its own.

Personally I'd up the algae eaters before I started tweaking with chemistry that I didn't fully understand.

[jason2459]

I don't see anything wrong with carbon dosing on a system less then a year old.

[whosurcaddie]

Vinegar and GFO.