I still think all you bio-pellet guys are being thick skulled. All looking for answers elsewhere when its right in front of you.

In this thread we have 3 examples of people who ARE running biopellets who are claiming of this unknown variable that is unidentifiable. Most of you guys starting running these back in the spring when they became avaliable to the market and before that had no issues. Think about it. What has changed since than?

These are not a fixed variable that you can control. Were talking about a product that results in depriving the system of nutrients and how do you know how much is being let into your system? Because some jerk off says so? Your better off grabbing the bottle, pouring yourself a glass and dumping an unmeasured dose into your system.

Once again I will say it, you guys are making your systems to complex. And I have seen more people crashing tanks over these pellets than I have seen success stories. People look at sps way to complex of a coral to keep, thinking you need this and that.

how come the people that loose corals have to keep adding chemicals to they r tank...and they dont even know whats wrong

We are not thick skulled, I have found many articles supporting them, and I follow the usage of how these articles state, plus what the manufacturer now gives in the bag. With people that state they don't work, there are also people that will state they do work. In regards to crashing, I have not read one thread stating a tank crash, Issues maybe related or not to the pellets, but I haven't seen a single statement of tank crash due to pellets.

One thing I noticed is my clams where not extended, so I took the advice previous stated that it may be flow. I have alot of it. With 2 Vortech MP40W's and 2 Koralia #4's with wavemaker, there is alot of movement.

What I did is back off the Koralias 25%, and changed my Vortechs that were running on short pulse mode at full tilt, creating a wave to running at 66% on Reef Crest Mode. Now the clams are extending, its only been about 15 minutes, but they are looking normal.

Maybe I am blasting things way too much, Hmmmm, again i will now leave this and see what happens.

Funny how you said this. Just got off the phone with my friend and he said use a different metaphor that could be understood a bit better:

Do you take a unwrapped chocloate bar off the shelve, eat it, get diagria and eat more because you believe that this isn't the cause? Or do you look back and realize that you were fine before you ate it and it is the actual issue.

I would start with flow. That is alot of flow and if I remember your tank is like a 4-5' tank

I'm not going to rip apart your post but if you actually believe they they had nothing to do with it, i rest my case

You know honestly, I would LOVE it if I could point the finger at the bio pellets because then I would have my smoking gun. I would agree that they may be the cause for some peoples issues, however, they were not the cause of mine. We all know that this hobby isn't an exact science and we all draw our own conclusions based on our own experiences and what we see in front of us. I have been running bio pellets since late December of last year which is probably longer than most people here. In my opinion that's quite a lot of bio pellet usage prior to my SPS event. I did briefly consider taking them off line during my event but decided not to because of the fact that they had been running for so long without issue. Granted that was a bit of a gamble. Sure enough, the remaining SPS and new SPS recovered and thrived without me even touching the bio pellets. Through the whole event they helped to keep my Nitrates and Phosphates low. I know because the pellets are the only NP reducing agents currently at work on my tank. I don't run a 'fuge or dose any zeo or VSV. Now that things have made a recovery I have doubled my bio pellet usage to 3 liters in fact, whereas previously I was only running 1.5L.

Personally, I find the use of bio pellets far from complicated. I realize that a lot of people are having troubles with them and to be honest, I have no idea why. Again, all those damn variables I suppose. Me, I have them churning in two reactors daisy chained with a 300gph pump that allows them to tumble gently. That's about it. I don't fidgit with it, i don't stress about how many or how few pellets are in there. To me it is simpler than running carbon! Carbon I just randomly change every month or so without even knowing if it is used up or not. At least with the pellets I can see it being used up.

Update on SPS:

Well I can honestly say that things look better on the SPS homefront. Some of the SPS I think is far too gone, so they may not recover. But that is only a few, the rest of my SPS is showing signs of growth. Nice white tips and decent polyp extension. So I think things are looking up there.

Other things like my candycanes, brains and other softies are reinflating and looking very happy.

I do think that maybe I have the coral and SPS issues under control now. I changed by removing all dosing and doing a larger weekly water change. Seems to be doing well for me, and I am not dosing anything extra now for supplements. Also cut back on the ZEO additives.

Only issue now, as stated in another thread, is my zoa eating Hippo Tang! But if I need to lose the zoas but can keep the rest alive, then I can live with that.

thanks for all the past advice everyone, it was appreciated.

Good to hear! Darn those Hungry Hungry Hippos!!

I did chuckle at that quote! It is discouraging about the zoas, as with all the other things going on, they flourished, now that it seems things are showing signs of improvement, then now them. My hippo Tang is beautiful, and I doubt she will eat the SPS, so I guess I will live without zoas. I would sell them, but they are on my LR and I can't get them out. Oh well!

I think the big things was water changes, since doubling up the water change every week, I now see good signs. And my parameters are spot on, without adding anything extra. So a lesson here is water changes are important, the more the better. I should also say, maybe the second skimmer is helping also, as that is the only other thing different.

If this all hapened in the summer, then temperature is maybe what is causing the problem.

or temperature swing.

BTW, Prime does not remove ammonia, nitrates, nitrites etc from the water, it juste neutralize it and it only work for 24 hours. It is said to neutralize heavy metal but I would really like to see someone try it with copper and a copper test.

I doubt it's going to help your sps though, if you say that your water is perfect.

There's an interesting article about RTN i found awhile ago. RTN is pretty much like looking at a dead guy and saying "he died fast". How did he die? that's totally different. Corals get sicks much the same as people, lots of different diseases caused by many different things. We all have slightly different parameters in water, dosing with different chemicals etc, so saying one thing causes it doesn't seem to be effective. There's very few things known about RTN, but we do know that stressed corals are more likely to get affected. Corals can regrow, even RTN'd corals, so according to this the best thing for RTN corals is high flow, stable parameters and fragging if possible.

Ineteresting article though, i'm sure some of you have found it:
http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/eb_jl_111598.html