although I liked running rowaphos/phosban, I did not like the two little fishies phosban reactor. I was allways paranoid a hose would pop off and have water all over the basement floor. HOB filter's are nice and clean since there are no hoses. There's no sump so I have to keep my equipment minimalistic. So instead I'm going to buy a box of rubber gloves and daily throw on a glove to mix up the zeolites by hand in the HOB filter. There'll only be a cup of zeolites so i could just wiggle my fingers in there and that'd get the job done i think ;)

As for the water changes affecting the trace concentrations, I don't know if that's such a big deal because the salt mix is putting the trace back in. The zeovit guide says that the water changes are in order to replenish trace elements, and not really to export nutrients. If needed, I could just increase my daily dosing of the 4 core supplements. I only need like a drop of each anyways.

I'm going in to Gold's today to see if they have the little starter bottles in stock. If the entire thing doesn't work, I'm only out 70 bucks or so. Not bad considering some of the other expenditures out there.

Use a chopstick, lots of detritus really needs to be powered out of crevices and I don't think gentle currents will really stir it up.


As for the water changes, its not just the trace elements that need to be replenished. With zeovit, I do believe they actually want you to reduce your water change frequency/volume. Because you're adding all of the bacterial population, food for them and then whatever else (sorry I can't remember exactly what else you're supplementing with), you'd be disrupting those populations and their food source every time you did a water change.

I just can't see zeovit really benefitting you in this case and it would probably be a waste of money as you wouldn't see the results you were looking for.

Just my two cents :wink:

Christy, why don't you think it would benefit him? Because it's such a smaller tank volume than those who generally use Zeovit? I'm on the steep Zeovit learning curve as well, so....just curious! What about a 55G? Does anyone think there's a realistic minimum tank volume to make Zeovit worthwhile?

thanks for the chopsticks idea. I'm going to forge ahead and see if it works. I think there's about a 50% chance. As for it being a waste of money I'd be getting just the little bottles so it's not much of an initial purchase.

We'll see.

it's not the size of the tank that makes it questionable, it's the fact most nano's usually lack a protein skimmer and have larger water changes. Your 55 gallon would probably work if you have efficient skimming and follow the prescribed maintenance.

I'm planning on trying something that isn't proven so I know results won't be guaranteed because it won't be a "standard" zeovit system.

I don't think it would benefit him in the way he wants to use it.

Think of it this way. You have a nice glass of koolaid all tasty and sweet but you can't drink it. You can only look at it and follow the directions on the box. Then you dump half out and put water in. Now its all diluted and probably tastes like crap. So you add more sugar and more koolaid powder to hopefully get it right, but you never know. Then you have to dilute it again. Rinse. Repeat.

Hmm thats a crappy analogy. What can you expect at 8:30am? I think I need coffee too :razz:

All I can think of is what a huge waste of money to have to be constantly dosing zeovit to get those levels just right, only to be dumping it down the drain on a weekly/biweekly basis because you don't have a skimmer.

The zeovit principle is based on constant dosing. It only takes a couple minutes etc but you're dosing daily regardless to keep the system intact. If you're going to disrupt the system by removing half of the dosage through water changes and then dilute it and toss some extra in to hopefully make up for it, I don't really understand how it can be beneficial for your tank in the way its supposed to.

Its not that he can't do it, I just don't think he's going to get the best bang for his buck.

the zeovit guide prescribes 10% water changes for "heavily stocked aquariums" anyways, and at least a 5% water change. Water changes aren't "detrimental" to zeovit.

and we all do your kool-aid analogy anyways in our reef tanks. We do water changes and there are all sorts of supplements in our salt mixes that we can't track and we have no clue where they sit after a year or so.

what I'm expecting is less algae in my tank. I had used phosban before and still have frustrating problems. I'm not worried about more coral growth, polyp extension and all those other etceteras zoevit brings. I just don't want algae in this tank after it's been up for a couple months. If it does that then I'll be extatic.

No, I did run ultralith for awhile though and the dosing regime is hugely important to make it work. I'm away from home during the week and only home on weekends. I was having my boyfriend dose the tank when I wasn't there. However, he had extended periods where he was away for 2 or 3 weeks at a time during the time I was running the ultralith system and I could see that it just wasn't really "kicking in" not in the way that Wendells display tank at OA did. I attribute this to not being able to dose the tank properly and on a regular basis.

As well, I have a fair bit of detritus build up on the bottom of my tank (barebottom) which is not only unsightly but who knows whats brewin in there. So I was doing 10% weekly waterchanges at the time to siphon it all out. I'm not sure what they actually prescribe but I would imagine its much less than that. They almost reccommend that you run a sort of "closed" system and water changes are only for trace element replenishment like someone mentioned earlier.

I'm going to try it again if I ever move back home on a more permanent basis as I do believe it works (see Jason McK's zeovit tank photos for clear evidence, its amazing). I just need to follow the rules a little more closely :wink:

ok I scanned through the zeovit forums and zeovit works just as great in a nano. The larger water changes are just fine. What has to be changed is the dosing frequency. Dosing less often. Basically about half as often.

I'm starting to get excited about this; It's gonna work :)

As for running it in a HOB filter, it's done often. Just have to knead it like kneading carbon. Or use a chopstick like christy said. The two little fishies reactor is overkill since it holds 3/4 L of zeovit, while I'd only need 1/4L.

Today is my 100% water change with RO/DI now that the rock's no longer leeching nitrates. I'll see if it's in stock at Gold's today and probably be running it very soon.

Will you be documenting your attempt with zeovit? Photos maybe?

So um ..sorry, I'm a little confused. You're not running a skimmer on this system? Or are you? Funny you should bring this up, borne out of frustration for not getting fst enough progress on my tank build - out of spare parts I had lying around, I slapped together a 20g reef nano system this weekend. It's cute, it uses a Hydro Alkaseltzer or whatever it's called as the sump return, a seio for tank circ and a superskimmer 60 that I was going to meshmod. I was thinking, I wonder how zeo would work on a wee little tank like this. So your thread was rather timely! :lol:

Have you thought about running a small skimmer on your setup? I thought one of the reasons Zeo/Ultralith/Prodibio/Reef-resh type systems work so well is that the skimmers are constantly removing the nasties. I mean, sure, on a small system you can just change out the water on a weekly basis or whatever, but I thought the whole point with the dosing and skimming of a bacterial based system is that things are replenished and removed on a more steady-state type situation.

The wee little Euroreefs are the shizzle! A mesh'd Euroreef, that's a winner. I can't wait to see these guys hit the market! :)