What's Your Problem With Bio-Pellets?

[t.trezona]

I would like to start a discussion about problems people have had that they attribute to the use of Bio-Pellets. Trying to find some common pathways, either in systems, setup, or use that is causing the adverse effects. I have a relatively new system set up and running for about 8 months. 180 display. 300gal total. I use an Octopus reactor with a fairly slow tumble of about 2 cups of W-M pellets. I have a sump with multiple chambers. Tank overflows go into chamber 1. My Reeflo skimmer pump draws from chamber 1, as does a separate pump to the Bio-pellet reactor. I have a 1 1/2 inch T connected to a bulkhead fitting at the sump for the skimmer input. One side of the T is from the sump, the other is the effluent form the bio-pellet reactor. That means 100% of the reactor output goes directly into the skimmer input. Setup was about 1 month after I fired up the whole system, which is a mixed reef with predom Acros and is thriving. Nitrates and Phosphate are minimal. Had very minimal algae growth during cycling. Virtually none detected since. Beautiful coral colorating and prolific growth. So far I'm happy with the system. What's your take on this?? What's your problem??

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Cyano is probably the most commonly reported problem when people use pellets.

There are many reasons I do not use them, but these might be considered "advantages" of other types of organics, rather than "problems" with pellets. In any case, here's the list of what concerns me about them:

1. Harder to quickly control and adjust dosing than soluble organics.
2. More tendency to potentially cause cyano than some soluble organics such as acetate.
3. More expensive and requires equipment purchases for use (although a doser for soluble organics also costs if you use one)
4. Not as easy to control where and when the dosing takes place in the overall reef system
5. The released organics are perhaps not as widely bioavailable to reef creatures as things like acetate or ethanol
6. Possibly more of a concern for hydrogen sulfide production during a power failure.

[t.trezona]

Originally Posted by Randy Holmes-Farley

Cyano is probably the most commonly reported problem when people use pellets.

There are many reasons I do not use them, but these might be considered "advantages" of other types of organics, rather than "problems" with pellets. In any case, here's the list of what concerns me about them:

1. Harder to quickly control and adjust dosing than soluble organics.
2. More tendency to potentially cause cyano than some soluble organics such as acetate.
3. More expensive and requires equipment purchases for use (although a doser for soluble organics also costs if you use one)
4. Not as easy to control where and when the dosing takes place in the overall reef system
5. The released organics are perhaps not as widely bioavailable to reef creatures as things like acetate or ethanol
6. Possibly more of a concern for hydrogen sulfide production during a power failure.

Not sure why you feel you would need to quickly adjust?
I don't think there is any significant dosing in the tank. I'm guessing most of the bacteria that reproduce metabolizing the pellets go out my skimmer. Don't know for sure.
Is there some evidence that significant pellet organics are released into the system?
Definitely a potential problem with power outage. That's why I am in the process of installing a switch that will cause my pump to stay off when the power comes back on. I have installed a set of valves that allow me to flush the reactor effluent down the drain when I power up. When clear, back to system.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The fact that many folks get cyano remote from the pellets proves, IMO, that the pellets do in fact release organic matter. Since no one has ever tried to measure it, the hypothesis (and that is all it is) of purely localized organic additions, while seemingly attractive, seems to not hold up in reality.

I've adjusted doses of soluble organics many times. I want to do it quickly when I do it. Is that a big deal? Perhaps not, but there is obviously a lot better control than with pellets that take substantial time to get coated and growing.

[doctorgori]

...it a trade off ...I think what the doctor is also implying is known methods vs .more guess work with the pellets...

I thought about dosing vinegar but I'm not diciplined enough to monitor & adjust...
I used pellets & A reactor and might have simply got lucky: my tank looks pretty good...I saw a lil cyno but nothing a change in flow didn't take care of

...I think this topic is a good one...we need a survey...more data ..et:
Which pellets/brands worked best, which reactors, et....

Those long threads on both the solid vodka dosing and vinegar/vodka dosing are full of data, just albeit unorganized

[doctorgori]

I've adjusted doses of soluble organics many times. I want to do it quickly when I do it. Is that a big deal? Perhaps not, but there is obviously a lot better control than with pellets that take substantial time to get coated and growing.

hmmm...make me wonder if you can dose Vodka while using Bio-pellets?
best of both worlds?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

hmmm...make me wonder if you can dose Vodka while using Bio-pellets?
best of both worlds?

You can, but I don't know if that is as good as vinegar alone.

[t.trezona]

We need more people to weigh in on this. Can it be that there is a common thread with respect to cyano and how the system is set up? How about total pellet volume vs tank volume? How about how vigorous the tumble is? How about plumbing? How about skimmer use? Etc, Etc.
I have run mine for more than 6 months without noticing any significant reduction in pellet volume so it would seem to me that the amount of organics that are being released into the system can't be very much. The organics in the huge amount of food I dump into the tank is vastly greater than any minimal portion of pellets fractured off or metabolic end products released into the system.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do not know how many such folks will stop by this forum, but there are many threads on these topics in other forums, and perhaps you can glean something from them.

[Crazyfingerz]

Hmmm, I recently started running Bio pellets about a month and some and the results have been ok for me. i sometimes see a little cyano but usually last a day before it just disappears. I'm still monitoring the tank to see if i would run in to any problems but so far so good.

[loftism]

I just started a tank and have been using bio-pellets from day 1. Are we certain that people are experiancing cyano outbreak? My experiance was a huge bacteria outbreak at first, i was changing sock 2X a day and skimmer was mad. During this time my rock(started with mostly dead rock) went from white to tan. I assume the change was due to bacteria colonization. I used 1000mg of bio pellets with is almost 2X what i should have on an established system at 120G. The directions indicate start slow and ramp up to about 500mg per 100G. I suspect if i had followed the directions i would have had minimal issues. Now everything is perfect rock is getting back to white(bought handfuls of snails) and have low to no detectible NO3 or Phosphates.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Originally Posted by loftism

from day 1. Are we certain that people are experiancing cyano outbreak? .

I'm not sure what you are exactly asking, but it is certain that a reasonable number of folks report a cyano outbreak on initiating these plastic pellets, and some have stopped them for that reason. It is also true that some do not see any cyano.

Vodka also tends to cause cyano in some, but not all tanks. Vinegar does not seem to (or has a much lesser tendency to do so).

[heckeng]

I have been using BP for around 5 months now and am using about 3/4 the recommended dosage and have seen positive results. My cyano that I DID have has disappeared. I know I feed more than I should but I am trying to keep my fish health as well as the corals. So far the BP seem to be allowing me to do that. I never had any cyano outbreak after starting them, but MAY have had a mild bacterial outbreak as my tank went through a slight cloudy phase for a couple days.

[Malign Reefer]

To new for me...

[t.trezona]

I started basically from day 1 as well. Started with 500cc in 300 gal system. Never had slime. Never had strings. Never had cyano. Never had clumping. Never had algae. Nitrates not detectable. Virtually unable to grow Chaeto at all. Feed heavily. Curious.

[jamey1015]

I used 200 grams of Katalyst in a modded Nextreef reactor and had a terrible time with cyano , my nitrates were <5 and phosphates .02 or less I ran them for 6 weeks waiting for cyano to clear up and it never did as a last resort I did start dosing bacter7 to see if it would help and did nothing. I had cyano so bad there were thick sheets of it covering the sand but they would disapte at night only to immediately take back off once the lights were back on. I wrote Brightwell with the problem and they informed me my nitrate and phosphate levels were too low to support the pellets.

I took them offline and the cyano cleared up in about a week or so never to never reappear so that was my experience with it.

I'm sticking with the occasional carbon a small amount of gfo and weekly 20% water changes in my sps dominant 180.

It seems from what I got from them the pellets are perfect for tanks with a ton of fish and/or non-photosynthetic corals were the nitrate levels are really high from feeding and waste, another thing to note is the pellets need both nitrate and phosphate to colonize the bacteria on themselves.

[barjam]

They caused cyano for me and actually killed a very large milli colony. In my case I didn't follow directions though and I wasn't directing the output to the skimmer input.

[willybub]

here is the FAQ for the vertex bio pellets, has some nice info

http://www.vertexaquaristik.com/Port...lets%20FAQ.pdf

[stangchris]

Ive been using bio pellets for over a year now........ when i started them it was in a tank that was a year old and had high nitrates, i dosed WM pellets according to tank size and didnt gradually add them over time. out put is in zip tied to front of the intake .In 24-48 hours i got a nice bio bloom, tank water went milky white for 48 hours. at the same time skimmer was pulling nasty sour white skim(lasted until bloom cleared). after that i noticed hair algae dieing rapidly, then cyano came.. my theory is yes there are organics released but i think its from algae decomposing. when i slack on keeping an eye on when i need to top off the pellets i notice algae blooms. then i top off and cyano returns, cyano seems to cycle through and i control it with KZ coral snow.
another problem ive noticed is trace elements seem to striped faster and i would have to dose potassium, iodine and trace element product to keep my SPS( tank is mostly SPS) from getting pale. for the last month and a half ive been using KZ sea water complex(Meerwaser) and coral still looks good. i also run a high capacity gfo to help with phosphates with no problems.
im sure more water changes could help with elements but i work full time and go to school full time. so water changes are 10 gallons a month on a 85g system.

[t.trezona]

After reading nearly all threads on Biopellets I believe it is essential that 100% of the reactor effluent feed into your skimmer input. The skimmer must be very efficient. Otherwise you are simply adding excessive carbon to your system. So far I have had no Cyano. Hopefully it stays that way. That's the only common thread I see so far. Anybody else?

[heckeng]

Isn't that the whole purpose of dosing vodka or adding bio pellets? Add carbon to the system so that you can grow enough beneficial bacteria to use up the algae causing by products of feeding? The only issues a person should have are making sure you don't add too much carbon source and have it out of balance with the excess nutrients you are trying to get the bacteria to consume AND removing the dead bacteria after they have consumed that excess nitrate and phosphate so that it doesn't simply get re-introduced to the system. Also, as far as having a top of the line skimmer, I don't think that is necessary. Most of what any skimmer removes from the water column is dead bacteria, so any skimmer will simply remove more, it doesn't have to be a super skimmer to do that. What would need to be "upgraded" is your skimmer maintenance to make sure the skimmers performance doesn't go down faster since it will be building up slum in the skimmer neck and collection cup faster.

[t.trezona]

The issue here is common problems and how they were prevented or solved.

[karsseboom]

I had bad cyano in my tank a while back. I bought some chemi clean and it wiped it all out in 2 days. Since then I have not had one single sign of any algae in my tank but maybe some diatoms. The p04 and nitrate is always zero no matter how many more fish I add. Now the tank is to the point where the cyano can't come back becuase there is nothing for it to live on. The biggest problem I see with pellets is it drives down the nutrients way to low and your tank starts having issues. I like vodka cause it seems like a middle point of the 2 methods. The best thing to do with pellets is to run like half the recommended dosage.

[doctorgori]

Originally Posted by karsseboom

I had bad cyano in my tank a while back. I bought some chemi clean and it wiped it all out in 2 days. Since then I have not had one single sign of any algae in my tank but maybe some diatoms. The p04 and nitrate is always zero no matter how many more fish I add. Now the tank is to the point where the cyano can't come back becuase there is nothing for it to live on. The biggest problem I see with pellets is it drives down the nutrients way to low and your tank starts having issues. I like vodka cause it seems like a middle point of the 2 methods. The best thing to do with pellets is to run like half the recommended dosage.

^^^ and that brings up a good point....
looking back, I now wonder if those sps & xenia I lost was because the water was too clean...

Now I feed moderatley (I use frozen, Nano & pellets)...while my tank won't grow xenia, it does grow GSP, albeit very slowly....

I do use GFO & Carbo in conjunction

[t.trezona]

Originally Posted by karsseboom

I had bad cyano in my tank a while back. I bought some chemi clean and it wiped it all out in 2 days. Since then I have not had one single sign of any algae in my tank but maybe some diatoms. The p04 and nitrate is always zero no matter how many more fish I add. Now the tank is to the point where the cyano can't come back becuase there is nothing for it to live on. The biggest problem I see with pellets is it drives down the nutrients way to low and your tank starts having issues. I like vodka cause it seems like a middle point of the 2 methods. The best thing to do with pellets is to run like half the recommended dosage.

This is an interesting issue. Makes most sense to me to start with a volume of pellets well below the recommendation. Then ramp up if and only if you need to. The concept the you can't OD makes some sense in theory, but in practive people seem to be having issues with that. I started very low and ramped up slowly. I have had no issues doing so. Nitrates and Phosphate undetectable.