anybody notice a different smell when your using NP bio pellets??

thanks,
teddy

YESS!! Your skimmer will stink really nasty! :painkiller:

Anyone have algae problems after starting pellets ?

I started getting several different types within a week of starting the pellets: red stringy stuff (cyano?) and the clear bubbles -some stuck to rock, some on the end of small tethers (like a marine buoy) (Diatoms ?) but worst of all, the Hair algae I'd finally gotten rid of is back with a vengence.

I got a little bit of cyano and some film algae but it went away after a week.

I started dosing Coral Snow a few weeks ago as well. Any chance the combination of the 2 has caused all these algae problems ?

If anything I've found coral snow helps in getting rid of algae, not causing it. I've been using it to help get rid of green and red slime algae, not that its been helping but my corals look fabulous! :wink:

Here's a pic of the lid of the skimmer cup. Not the best picture, but you get an idea of what I'm talking about. Notice the two different colours of skimmate, and you can sort of see the chunky texture.

http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/o...0/IMG_2016.jpg

I have had the pellets for a while but really started running them last week....today the tumble really slowed down since the foam was clogged with mulm...

I turned off the reactor and cleaned the foam, but now my water is all white and the skimmer is really pulling the white foam out.

How to prevent this in the future?

My buildup of film algae was starting to slow down nicely as the tank matured a little. Since starting the pellets yes the film is coming back much quicker and all sorts of different algaes are showing up. Maybe it's just me but the corals seem to be getting a tiny bit more colorful and the hair algae (it's not fine hairs more chaeto in appearance but much finer) that is growing quickly seems to be dying some too.

I'm only just past a week running them but have not seen any mulm or buildup. My water has the same clarity (quite clear but appears less so because of all my microbubbles) and my skimmate production has definitely improved.

Either slice the sponges in half so they're thinner, or hit up Michael's or Walmart or similar and look for "quilting mesh" (about $0.75/sheet probably) and replace the sponges with that. WAY better, you won't believe the difference.

Well, I have been runing the pellets with 2x TLF 150 reactors for over 3 months and just start to see the great result since I turn off my UV. I am going to upgrade them to Deltec FR-509. Can i just transfer the content of the 2 x TLF to Deltec? Will it cause any bio restart?

I just upgraded from a Vertex 15 to the Vertex 20 :biggrin: I just dumped everything from the 15 to the 20 and topped it up with new pellets and it didn't skip a beat. I tried to preserve as much pellet and water as possible.

thanks

How important it is to have the pellet outflow going into the skimmer?

I have a gravity-fed skimmer directly from my overflow so it will be quite awkward for me to have the pellet outflow feeding the skimmer intake.

Ive been running the pellets for a few more weeks now....having a really bad hair algae outbreak.

My GSP are brighter than ever yet my LPS and SPS are suffering...any thoughts?

Seems strange. I've added pellets to two tanks now and can't say my SPS nor LPS really showed any difference before and after. Could there be someone picking on them?

My guess is it's better to outflow into an area near the skimmer outtake, but not mandatory.

just want to share experience with pellets
 

hi there i purchase a bag of NP Bio pellets few months ago from Paul..
Here is a quick video of the phosban reactor with pellets, i used Quite one 2200 pump to have that tumble i want. i have a 75G tank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnMGzUh6Qow
Thanks for watching...:mrgreen:

teddy

why am I getting such an algae outbreak everytime the pellets start going?

Biopellets without Skimmer?
 

Hi, what are your thoughts about running a biopellet reactor without a skimmer? I want to reduce N & P, as well as provide some food for the frags.

I'm considering running biopellets on my 30gallon frag tank. There's only 1 fish in there, and he's adding to the bioload, so algae is growing in that tank.

From what I read, the main reason for needing a skimmer is to oxygenate the water, as the bacteria uses up the oxygen. I have a maxijet 400 w/ venturi running in my sump to oxygenate the water already, plus my drain sometimes sucks down a gulp of air, and flushes a bunch of micro bubbles into the sump. So i'm thinking that should be sufficient for oxygenation?

If I do run biopellets, I would use a TLF150 reactor and not use that many pellets anyways. Therefore there should not be an excessive amount of bacterial mulm floating around.

So other than the oxygenation issue, is there any other downside to running biopellets without a skimmer?

Thanks in advance.

Simply put - it won't work. Period. Don't try it.

Here's why. The whole point of carbon dosing is to export nutrients from your system. The bateria consume the N&P and are then exported from your system through skimming. If you don't skim them out, the bacteria will eventually die in your system and release the Carbon/N&P back into your water colomn. This creates a really bad bacteria cycle and can potentially lead to a tank crash.

There is no magic to the use of biopellets. The N&P will stay in your system until you remove it. If you don't skim it out, you are just adding carbon to the system and removing nothing.

To answer a question posted earlier - you really need to direct the effluent from the biopellet reactor directly into your skimmer. Ideally it would be a direct link between the two systems. If you simply direct the effluent in the general direction of the skimmer intake, the system will be less efficient and you will have more bacteria in your water colomn. This bacteria will die leaving the carbon in the water colomn (where it was previously only in the reactor) and the whole system will not be as efficient. Even with a good skimmer some bacteria will end up in the water colomn (which may be a good thing) but you really want to minimize this.

- Brad

Brad is absolutely right. it is imperative that the outlet from the pellet reactor is pointed at the skimmer intake where the excess bacteria can be taken out of the system. It is like harvesting chaeto from your fuge every month, if you don't harvest the chaeto, it will simply release the absorbed n and p back into the water column as it dies off.

Just to move this discussion further along, exhibit A by the most excellent Gary White:

http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5770

In particular, this post:

http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.ph...1&postcount=11

and...

http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.ph...3&postcount=12

and onwards...

Skimmer or nothing my friends, but for more reasons than the obvious :D

Thanks for the input guys. In light of this information, I've now chosen a different direction to go with for my tank.

Thanks!

This is a very interesting detail. When I started running pellets the instructions for the pellets vaguely mentioned this point (directing reactor effluent towards skimmer intake) but a) they really didn't put any emphasis on this and b) They did not explain why.

In the setup I had, it wasn't practical to do this and using pellets got me bad algae problems and I stopped using them and have not restarted. On the new tank I'm planning, I will have a proper sump and will bring pellets back online but I can't see how I could make a direct connection between the pellet reactor output and the skimmer intake since this would mean that the skimmer's flow rate would have to be no more than that of the flow needed in the reactor to make the pellets tumble properly.

I have to assume then that simply "directing the effluent to towards the skimmer intake" is sufficient. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has a direct connection between their pellet reactor and their skimmer intake !

to run your reator efluent to your skimmer you would hard pipe a stub on the skimmer intake and drill a ton of holes in the stub. put the reactor outlet line to the stub. this way all of the reactor water is going to the skimmer as well as an uptake of whatever else is needed.

TLF MOD IS GREAT!
 

This is a FANTASTIC mod for bio-pellets. I had issues with tumbling and I did exactly as pictured and wow! My pellets are churning amazingly. I am using a MaxiJet 1200 full open.

For those who can't afford or won't spend on the higher end reactors this will help you out!

Thanks for posting this!

I love this mod, i have it on my TLF 550 and it's working great with a MJ1200. I have to remove the little inlet pipe to be able to slide the unit out, but rarely have to get in there so no biggy.

I used to have mesh across the top part, and it would get cloged in mulm frequntly and reduce flow. I've taken it off, and get a couple beads escaping on a startup now, but don't have to start it as often, so it's worth it.

As for output...
I put my output into my refugium. I have a THICK pod population living off the bacteria, and my algae eats up the N+P. The algae also re-oxygenates the water. I couldn't see any reason why this would be a bad idea. Any reason why running through the skimmer would be better?