Sorry to confuse you, but I use 1/3 rd on my tank, with no skimmer and using tap water.

I should stop giving advice.

I am a firm believer that pellets do work if done properly, so thats the way I'd go. Why remove the rock though? If you have the room, keep the rock and add the pellets...slowly.

I do both. Your live rock is very important to your tank.And after reading this I am going to feed phyto.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-07/eb/index.php

If you tank is already well balanced you must be doing many things right already like diligent water changes.

You should run biopellets and a fuge, I had that set up for almost a year running but now am going to get rid of the fuge and run GFO.

I find that the pellets take care of the nitrates and abit of the phosphates but not all the phosphates, the main reason why I am going to run GFO.

Biopellets can be a good thing or bad, I've heard some stories of it screwing up tanks and when they stopped using it the tank was more stable, abit of cyano can pop up here and there is one good example.

Even in a reactor the pellets can sometimes clump in dead spots so quarterly maintanence is a must. Clean the mulch and clumped pellets in a separate saltwater bucket. Also add abit mb7 2 times a month to keep a healthy biological bacteria.

Some pellets need lots of flow while others like the Warner marine say less flow. I am running the vertex pellets now but will be switching to the Warner marine pellets in the new year!

Thanks for all the replies..... Some really good points by all.

I'm planning to go with bio pellets when Nitrates/Nitrites start increasing.

Merry X-mas!

My Vote is do both if possible, even if you can add a samll refugium to your system you wil help it out, it sdoesn't HAVE to be 30% or more of your total water volume.

I run a thirty gallon cube fuge, with a biopellet reactor, and zeo. I figure you can't go wrong by adding a refugium of any size. Throw extra rock in it, let the small critters explode in growth and numbers, or leave it dark and let the sponges and filter feeders take it over.

I know of a person who used the pellets and bleached out his tank, i also know of a person that used them and got freat results, I decided to split the difference and use 3/4 of the zeo that you are supposed to use, and 1/2 the amount of pellets. It seems to be working for me, just enough so that my colors are super vibrant, but most importantly, not too much so that no algae grows.

Try both if you can