I agree 100%, dose recommended amounts see algae blooms, cut it back and all is good.

I personally dose Zeovit at about 75% of the recommended. Found this to be effective so far.

on zevoit.com you put your tank parameters and it ends up only being like 20% what they tell you to dose on the bottle saves a guy a lot of cash

For what it's worth I run 25% the recommended doses for zeovit already. It was a good start in reductions but it levelled off at two weeks at NO3=10 and hadn't decreased further and in fact I'm feeding less than when I started so I feel that the two systems in concert should be doing much better. The real kick here was when I doubled up the media's and the nitrates started increasing again. I think if you're going to do it homogeously I would cut back on the amounts or maybe do maybe more zeolites with just a thin layer of pellets.

It's OK I set out to see what would happen if I did this and now I know. I'll continue to post results as I go, one method had a pretty good run so I'll put out the same sort of run for separating and we'll see how it goes.

Wow!!! BlueTang 20%

Tony 25%, I am going to start rethinking things here. I am into saving some $$$$

Thanks for the heads up guys!!!

It's not just the $$$ savings (which is nice of course) but I think the tank reacts better also. If I actually do the recommended dosage per volume for one day I will notice a slight film algae over everything the next day.

I do have that, always had... I just replaced my zeolites, so I am in the process of my 10 day zeobak and food dosage. But I am cutting that back also as per you guys.

when I start dosing everything else, I will cut way back. Maybe this film will be gone for good.

I can say the my skimmate has changed from a green to a very brown color. A good sign of lack of algae.

Quick update. About a week ago I separated the pellets and put them into a phosban reactor, fed by a Maxijet 1200, throttled back on the reactor (not quite full bore on the pump).

I was optimistic that this would be a beneficial change, however, I am simply astonished at the results a week later.

Last week my nitrate reading was 10, as it had been for several weeks prior.

This week, my nitrate reading is bouncing between 3 and 4 (splitting the difference, let's call that 3.5). WOW.

But it gets better. I tested the effluent of the pellet reactor as well as the zeovit reactor:
- The zeolites are pulling nitrate down, the effluent has a reading of 2 for nitrate.
- The pellets have an effluent reading of zero (specifically, "under-range" on the meter, which means <1.0).

but how are your corals doing? In your opinion is the mulm from the biopellets significant as a food source for the corals?

How much tumbling do you have in the Phos reactor? And did you use the top foam? I have mine fed off my return pump, so am not sure about the flow. They tumble inside. Any more flow and 'm afraid the pellets would float out the reactors top plate holes and into the sump. Which probably wouldnt hurt, as have a screen on pump intake that is to fine for them to fit through LOL

Tony - any noticeable difference in PE on your SPS or LPS? I'm starting to ponder the use of this........

So I've joined the club as well, thanks to a very piggy puffer in my 220. I'm running 2 litres in a converted CA reactor.
It's got a screen of that plastic needle point stuff and 2 layers of Enkamat that seems to work pretty well and not plug up.
But how much flow do you need to tumble this stuff? There's an Eheim 1048 on it now that just barely wakes it up.

All of the Pellets should be churning and moving in the reactor, more flow the better. My pellets are turning and flowing around my reactor with heavy flow. Pellets that are just tumbling on the top is not enough flow.

I'm not sure. The mulm that gets released is fairly sizeable, unfortunately I don't have anything that eats large things right now - just some photosynthetic gorgonians for the most part.

However, some of the fish go nuts over it, in particular my lavender tang seems to love it.

I played with the flow so that there was just the slightest bit of tumbling. I actually thought at first it might be better not to have too much tumbling but it started to clump together, so now I think some slight tumbling throughout might be better. I'll try to take a video of it maybe.

I replaced the top foam of the reactor with a single layer of Enkamat. It seems to stop at least 99% of the escapees. If I didn't already have the Enkamat I would have sliced the foam in half like Kien did with his.

I can't really say. All I have are gorgonians and zoanthids in this tank (and clams). I have a pair of butterflies that were slowly turning the tank into a FOWLR so everything else got moved into my frag tank until I decide what to do with the butterflies.

I found it wouldn't tumble in the zeovit reactor but then I was agitating that thing manually. The wider diameter of the circle probably means it would need a step up in pump driving it to tumble it..

Looks like the pellets work great for reducing nutrients, and safer than carbon dosing. I'm wondering if there's any use for this in a system that already has low nutrients.

I know it produces bacteria that provides food for corals, but won't live rock be doing essentially the same thing? Bacteria-plankton should be sloughing off the rock in the same manner, it's just not as obvious.

Still on the fence... but this looks very interesting.

What are you guys using on the TLF reactors to get these thing tumbling? MJ1200?

I've just T'd off my Sump return. A Little Giant 4

I use a maxijet 900 on mine and they tumble. I did have to mod the sponges though (cut them down very thin like enkmat).

Absolutely there is use for these in an already low nutrient system, I can now feed more and more often resulting in even happier fatter fish. The beautiful part of the pellets is that they are only used up based on the amount of nutrients in the system to sustain the bacteria. If the nutrients are low the pellets will deplete very slowly and the bacteria populations will be smaller.

MJ1200 is what I am using and works perfectly.

Crap, I threw my foam out. It was nasty LOL.
Anyone have a little chunk of Enkmat?

I can mail you some Dan, PM me your address and I'll toss a bit in an envelope. What are you running it in, a phosban reactor (just so I know to give you a big enough piece - what I have leftover are just tiny scraps).

OK Tony, Enough already!!!

Because of your results, I have now dug out my Deltec Fluidizer and moved the NP BioPellets into there with a maxi-jet 1200. Then leaving the Zeolites alone in the reactor. I am sure glad I didn't sell that with everything else I got rid of.

All is now setup. I am just kidding, keep it up! Thanks for the testing.

For everyone else who doesn't know, I had the pellets in a carbon bag ontop of the zeolites in the reactor. Since moving them, as per Tony, the zeolites are easy to mix manually and the biopellets are continually mixing in a fluidizer.

I hope I see the results Tony is seeing, I will let everyone know.

Rick

Im running mine for 2 weeks in a TLF reactor at the moment. Until I read this thread today I was only using a MJ400 and had little flow and the pellets were all clumped together with no tumbling at all:sad: Just threw on a MJ1200 and now they are rolling like dice! looks cool to boot lol Ill update if I notice and changes with my system. Lately Ive been fighting cyano since I upgraded my lighting system.

The pellets need to churn very aggressively, the more the better.
this is very important for the pellets to work properly.

Perfect! thanks for the info. I am also running my tlf with no foam disc at the top. Is that a good idea?

The only risk that I can see is that some will escape the reactor...

I got mine churning nicely now, they weren't before when in the bag in the ZeoReactor.

I have reset up my timing cycle of 3 hours for the ZeoLites, and then using the alternate time and run the BioPellets. So basically there is always one running, not both at the same time.

We will see what the results will be.

I am running pellets since Dec 30/2009 so it has been more then a month.
No Zeo rocks, just TLF media reactor driven by MJ1200,

Bare Bottom, (some, very little sand in the sump) 65 Gal tank. running 50% of 500 ml bag as per manufacturers recommendation.

I had never seen any mulm :question:.

I did notice extra SPS PE but LPS are not showing any more polyps then unusual. My Po4 was and is at the lowest detectable level of the Elos kit.
I don't have No3 kit. Some hair algae that i have in the sump (right were the pellets are) seems to be without any changes.
So i decided to increase the flow a week or so ago and had pellets removed from TLF reactor and put in to a container where my DT return line discharge.
Still no mulm. So i bought a Zeo bak to supplement bacterial growth.

So far i don't see it worth my $73..

I wonder if i am doing something wrong?
Should we come up with a list of questions and e-mail to manufacturer?
.

Have you given the reactor a shake at all? What about the output sponge, is it clean or does it have white gunk in it?

I would not suggest running the pellets on an off/on schedule. They need to be run 24/7 regardless of what is happening with your zeo. The pellets can start to go anoxic very quickly at the rate they use oxygen.

The pellets use up the dissolved oxygen so quickly and is exactly why the manufacturer suggests to point the out put of the reactor into the intake of the skimmer. The skimmer will then re-oxygenate the effluent.

Ian

So what you guys are saying is that I can run Zeolites in a phosban reactor with a MJ1200 instead of buying the Vertex reactor?

If so, that will save me some $$.

K, I will run them continuously. Thanks.

You do need the reactor for the Zeolites, as they need to be tumbled 1-2 times daily. We are using fluidizers or phosban reactors for the NP BioPellets. They are much lighter and tumble quite easily using a MJ1200

Anyone has a good result for just using NP BioPellets alone? I know Kien has but wonder anyone else has.

I am thinking of hooking this up with my TLF and the output will run right into my skimmer.

I really hate changing out Carbon and Rowa.

The pellets alone work great; however, you will still want to run carbon as the pellets alone will not make up for what carbon does. Carbon helps soak up impurities like chemicals, dyes, tannins, metals, odors, etc.

Ian

I am planning on running 2 TLF reactors. One with carbon and the other with vodka pellets. Could one MJ1200 provide sufficent flow to accomplish this and still "tumble" the pellets?

Depends on how much carbon and how much in pellets you plan to run. Daisy chained together with one MJ1200 might not cut it.

thx for reply.

Yes shaking every day. Both sponges were thoroughly cleaned on Dec 30, now obviously some debris but still enough flow for pellets to tumble.
No white gunk/mulm at all.

Also i wanted to mention to you that in one of your posts you say that pellets covering the zeolites with bio film , "what if" hypothetically it is the other way around ... that it is zeolites covering the pellets?
Because in my case i have no zeolites and i see no white mulm/gunk...

At this point i am seriously questioning the pellets ability to reduce P or N, perhaps in case when they are combined with zeolites they provide food for bacteria that already exists on the surface of the zeorocks. But that alone would not justified the cost, there are a lot of bacteria food around and its not what we want from it.

Oh well, another "miracle" will see how it goes.
One thing i know that i will not be buying another bag of it any time soon.

You will not see the mulm in large quantities or at all if the pellets are tumbling aggressively as the bacterial mulm is constantly being abraded off the surface of the pellets. If the were just in passive flow you would likely see large amounts of the mulm being produced.

The easiest way to tell if they work is to test your tank for nitrates, phosphate etc. Then test the effluent from the pellet reactor...

Doing this test myself the effluent from the reactor has always been zero or close to it.

I've been running it for 13 days. The tank with bryopsis, I'm not seeing any difference in. One of the other tanks that had alot of bubble algae, and cyano I'm seeing differences in. The bubble's are disappearing, and the cyano is getting worse,but not much. I'm not sure where the cyano came from but my urchin has been missing in action since just before the cyano showed up. I'd much rather deal with cyano than all the bubble algae so I'm happy. I don't test for phos or nitrates. I've got so much algae in these tanks nothing ever shows up, so I quit wasting my time.

The one major upside I'm seeing is polyp extension. My sps always had a bit of extension, but now it is unreal. A couple of the SPS now have noticeable growth on them. I've got 3 non photosynthetic gorgonians that really haven't ever grown, sometimes they're open most of the time they aren't. In the last week their polyps have been open full time, and new branches are sprouting everywhere. I haven't seen any improvement in the areas I was looking for help in, but the side effects are worth it to me.

I built my own reactors. I used 700 ml pop bottles, cut the bottoms off, covered them with plastic window screens secured with rubber bands. A hole was drilled in the cap so a power head (MJ1200 and Rio 600) friction fit through the hole. To keep the pellets out of the pump a small piece of screen was put over the threads and the cap screwed back on. Works really well. Cost was about twelve cents and 3 minutes of work.