come to the dark side, we have cookies and bio pellets! :biggrin:

I like cookies. Well I am going to do a waterchange tomorrow. Pending results I might pick some up.

Just looking into effects on acans and gorgonias

Triple check the parameters too... thats screwy that the devils hand looked so angry in your tank, and in under 120min in my tank had full extention and the red tissue pigment back in it. Somthing aint so straight there. Even more so that you have the more intense lighting setup

One tank with pellets I had my gorgs in and they were fine. The mulm that the pellets shed might actually be good food for them. However this was a very high bioload tank.

Careful with the Acans though. I tried pellets on another tank which was already low bioload and close to zero nitrate reading on a steady basis (I wanted to see if I could "starve" out the caulerpa in there), and it had some very nasty effects on my LPS. All my LPS bleached out as did my carpets. 8 months later my purple carpet is only now showing signs of improving. My Acans bleached out badly as did my bubble coral and I actually lost a few Acans instead of them recovering. To add insult to injury it didn't do boo to slow down the caulerpa infestation.

My take away lesson is that you definitely want a non-zero nitrate reading before adding the pellets. Adding them to an already low nutrient environment can definitely strip too much out too quick.

lol there's cookies, i was not informed of this

What do think all that baking soda was for?!?! :D

I have a healthy collection of LPS (torch, bubble, acans, elegance, frogspawn) that seem to be doing fine living with a years worth of pellets. One thing that I have noticed over the past year is that my zoa garden seems to have slowed down in growth. Still thriving just not spreading as quickly as it once did.

See that is what I am seeing. its a hit or miss with acans. Could always start with a low dosage. Are you still running carbon kien?

btw, you must be cooking alot of cookies to be going through that much baking soda

...Kien where are my cookies, I seem to recall being part of this "Baking Soda Plan".

Laurier have you tried the zeovit LPS supplement? My acans exploded when I started dosing that, I would start slow though if you are going to try as it will add extra nutrients.

I thought about it. But I have stopped dosing everything. Funny thing is my acans are doing awesome, its everything else, well the blasto's and mircomussa are doing great as well. I just want to add some purple gorgonia and some stags down the road once I have all my equipment (still need a ATO and a skimmer).

As for the biopellets, I have been considering replacing the carbon and running them instead

Carbon and biopellets are two independent things. Biopellets are a place for bacteria to colonize that feed off nutrients. It's like adding a bunch of live rock in your tank except they fit in a nice small reactor. Carbon on the other hand remove organics (not just nutrients) which can cause things such as yellowing of water (water always looks "polished" and "clear" after changing carbon) as well as impeding the growth of certain corals (some organics may not necessarily break down into ammonia/nitrite/nitrate and thus might not otherwise be skimmed or metabolized out of the system).

Basically I think carbon should still be run regardless whether you add pellets or not - there isn't really any overlap between the two. Biopellets and GFO on the other hand ... there might be an overlap there.

HTH