I cant say my maintenance habbits are terrific... but even with Zeovit, prodibio, etc... You are still going to get minute amounts of algae! I've seen a significant increase in my skimmer's production since starting bio-pellets (only a few weeks though), and algae does not grow nearly as quickly. Most people find bio-pellets worth it. Im liking my results so far.

*** you do have to make sure you go about it slowly... otherwise (if you dump in your full amount right away) you end up with algae outbreaks.

Hey Chris, please keep me updated on how your system with bio pellets is going, I might try to put those pellets in the old Phosban reactor. As you said, I have been reading some people have a problem with algae outbreak in their tank after using them. That makes me hesitate a bit to do it, but I really want to find out if it helps for reducing water change.

is anyone running Carbon and Rowaphos in conjunction ? My large tub of rowa is about to run out, and i was debating trying the bio-pellets. I have 3 Media chambers i could run all there with the hope that because of the Bio-Pellets if would make the Rowa Last Much, much longer. possibly get 4 months out of it.

Thinking maybe, Bio-Pellets, Carbon to pick up anything the pellet leach back into the water, and then Rowa phos to remove the phosphate that carbon leaches back into the water?

Thoughts?

I currently run Carbon, Then Rowa in sequence.

Thoughts?

I have been doing some research lately and as far as I know, you can not use Rowaphos and bio pellets together, but you can use carbon. Please correct me if I am wrong.

All of you were right there is no way to avoid doing water changing.

how it affects them i do not know but there is not a CAN NOT to runing rowaphos with the pellets. battling the algae's myself and i run some rowaphos and carbon with the pellets. Tried it without for a while and was still having cyano <still do occasionaly> so i started the rawaphos back up and it slowed it down a little bit more. cannot say i have ever had a phosphate reading that i can read on regular range phosphate tests though.

My alagee problems are down to one rock so I am wondering how heavily that rock is loaded with crap.

I run rowaphos and carbon together in series along with running an insane amount of BioPellets :)

I am trying to do the same. I run two TLF 150 reactor in series with a MJ400.
But I found out bio pellet stick together in the second reactor. And the water inside the reactor won't drop after I turn off the pump. So water everywhere when I want to change the media. :neutral:

Ya I found out very early on that BPs in TLF150 reactors don't work too well. If you like BPs and want to keep using them I highly recommend a better reactor. They do tend to clump if overfilled in the reactor. The reactor needs really good flow to tumble them. I'm currently using two vertex 20 reactors to run my pellets.

This information helps me a lot :biggrin: