:rofl: agreed. Its like magic! And now in a colorful bag! I gotta admit though, the stuff kept my algae at bay.

Well .. actually, been sort of thinking about this on and off all day. And, .. I think I am going to discontinue the Zeovit/Zeolites reactor after all. I just took out 1/4 of the zeolites, will wait a bit and repeat and wait, and so on, until it's empty.

The reason being this. More or less I've been off the zeovit system anyhow since I left for vacation and kind of never really got it going again after coming back. So I hadn't been dosing or agitating it much for two weeks. My 4 year old kid today was playing with my nitrate meter and it jogged my memory to calibrate it as it's been a while and do some tests. I found that my nitrates are no longer zero but instead hovering around 6 or 7. Ok, not bad, but, being that it was zero a while ago, not great either. So I checked the pellet reactor output and it still seems to be zero. I checked the zeovit reactor and it's outputting 9. :neutral:

So ... that's not what I want to see. I realize that it's my own fault for letting the zeolites maintenance routine slide a little, but I think it's the impetus to fully commit to the pellets. As long as the pellets stay fluidized it seems that they are far less work overall and no messing around with additives to keep the reactor working as advertised.

Sorry Zeovit! I gave it my best shot.

Well, it is a good thing that the pellets were there to pick up the slack. :lol:

im still convinced the new bag contains some pellets.

No kidding. Now I'm wondering if I should get the TLF reactor going again just so I can ante up the pellets. I'm not sure if I have a spare powerhead is the problem, well, not until I take the zeolite reactor offline altogether, since that one is fed by a MJ12. I have a couple MJ12's without impellers, I need to remember to buy a bunch of new ones next time I order from somewhere..

oh ffs, go get your self a used washing machine already and plumb it in. 50 gallons worth of agitation vibration..


Hmmmmm, mini washer.... I really should be a millionaire at this point.

:lol:

Tony, I have already done this, its been about a week... running 2 Deltec 509 Fluidizers now, they are inline with a MJ 1200 running 2.5L of NP BioPellets.

I am a very happy guy.

and so it begins..

Hi Rick, did you just quit the zeolites cold turkey or did you phase them out? Did you notice any reaction of the tank? Or did you time it to coincide with the time you increased the pellets?

thanks

Hey Tony, I quite cold turkey. It was time to do my 80% change out, but got tired of it, so just removed it and bought the second Deltec fluidizer and put another 1L of pellets in at the same time.

So I haven't seen any ill effects, all is good. My Pink Birdnest keeps getting whiter and whiter as each day goes by and the pink is starting to really come out in it. It was brownish before, as you know I am not really testing nitrates and so on. Basing my results on coral responsiveness and happiness.

I can also say zoa's are popping color much more along with all my happy SPS

For those with LPS or Softies, I have some colt, brains, frogspawn, etc... I can say that all of them are also quiet happy with the BioPellets. Others have asked this, so I thought I should post. Good extension and fullness on everything.

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in copepods? also a build-up of mulm in their skimmer?

Has anybody experienced cloudy water after starting the NP pellets? I started a friend's tank and his water is very cloudy. The reactor got clogged and it didn't tumble inside the reactor for about a week so i'm not sure if this contributed to it.

Hmmm, no cloudiness for me per se, but when the pellets would clog up and then get unclogged they would release so much mulm that the tank would go white. That's why they need to be fluidized so mulm can be shed as it is produced.

Freezestyle, yes and yes. :)

Update:

It has been just over a week, since adding the second Fluidizer with another 1L of pellets and completely removing the Zeolites/Reactor. I did seperate the inline of both and have been running both fluidizers seperately for a couple days now. Just found them to tumble better. So I am now running 2.5L of Pellets.

Anyways, starting last night the skimmers are going crazy, and the tank is looking even brighter/cleaner.

I just cleaned the skimmers late last night.

http://www.tanktopia.com/personalimages/skimmer1.jpg
http://www.tanktopia.com/personalimages/skimmer2.jpg

Not surprised that you ended up separating them. :) But dude that is AWESOME to hear otherwise. :) I can't believe how excited I am over a stupid little pellet. I want more! More! MORE! Must .. buy .. 'nother .. reactor !!! :lol:

I noticed mine are producing microbubbles like crazy lately. Is that happening to anyone else?

HEHEHE... Aren't we like little school girls, giggling over a boy... Damn these pellets. but yes, you need another reactor... Also you need to get rid of the foam, much better flow, no plugging of mulm and no cleaning.

Edit: oh yeah, no bubble issues with me, but I have my fluidizers just before a bubble trap before going to the return pump

no micro bubbles but i too have ditched both foam pads.. running foamless now!

I notice that my water is on hazy side, but only one week in using the pellets. Not useing any foam in the reactor and the pellets are tumbling nicely .

I'm using the Vertex UF-15 reactor with no foam. Works very well with an MJ-1200. Pellets tumble nicely and no bubbles or mulm clogs.

The bubbles aren't causing a problem for me in any way because it just stays in the sump but to me it's still noteworthy that they are there. I wonder what it means or what the cause is.

It looked like somehow I was getting an air bubble trapped under the bottom sponge. I finally managed to get some quilting mesh a couple days ago, so I took the opportunity last night to replace the bottom sponge. Also I was running spongeless on the top already, but every so often the reactor would burp and I'd get a few pellets into the sump (and sometimes all the way up to the display tank) so I decided to put a top layer of the mesh in as well.

The MR-1 isn't as nice of a tumbler as the Vertex because of the bottom plate design (have now seen both reactors in action so have a fair basis of comparison). The MR-1 has a circular/slotted style openings and it seems that this causes an uneven upward flow whereas the phosban reactors and vertex have drilled bottom plates. I think this does make a difference so I think I will be at some point switching to a Vertex instead.

Rick - actually at some point I'd kinda like to see what the Deltecs look like in action as well. Maybe someday I could show up with a coffee or something? What's your favourite Timmie's concoction?

So.. anyhow, another update. I finally finished pulling the trigger on the zeolites last night, after removing them about 250ml at a time every couple of days for the last week. In the spirit of wanting to increase the pellets at the same time to compensate for any potential loss posed by the zeolites removal, I put my phosban reactor back on, so I can have two reactors running pellets now. I bought an Odyssea pump from Red Coral on Friday, put that on the MR-1, and switched over the MJ12 to the phosban. Only I took the sponges out of the phosban and put the mesh in there too. WOW, does that ever work awesome. Between the bottom plate difference and the sponge removal, the pellets are dancing like berserk in the little reactor.

So now running close to 2l total.

You can come over anytime, Yum, timmies Iced Cap. I work from home, so anytime will work.

Some videos of the pellets doing their thing in the two reactors.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n..._reactors2.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n..._reactors1.jpg

Thanks for that video Tony ...I have been trying to figure out a good rate for the tumbling but wasnt sure .....
what size of pump are you using for your reactors and are they daisy chained together???
Thanks
Shawn

Ya, Mine tumbles like that too. I was running carbon in series, but it blocked flow to much. Need another pump I guess...

I am running them independently of one another.

The TLF150 (smaller reactor) is fed by a MJ1200 powerhead. When I first started this I ran the pellets in that reactor with a MJ12 pump but didn't get anywhere near that level of agitation with the pellets. The only thing that has changed is I took out the bottom sponge and replaced it with a piece of quilting mesh. I used 3 small zap straps to hold the quilting mesh to the bottom plate so it wouldn't move around.

The MR-1 reactor is fed by an Odyssea 500gph pump ($30 at Red Coral :D ). This same pump is feeding their Vertex reactor on their SPS tank. It is tumbling the pellets on their system quite nicely (more so than mine is). I think the difference is the bottom plate design, although it may also have to do with the fact that the MR-1 uses 3/8" tubing while the Vertex uses 1/2" PVC - so the Vertex will have faster flow capabilities with the same pump.

For what it's worth, I was running a MJ12 on the MR-1 up until this weekend, with a smaller pellet volume in there, and the tumbling was about the same. So given how many pellets you have in the reactor, the MJ12 powerhead can be an adequate pump to drive the pellets. I would guess the threshold to be around 500ml - 750ml of pellets.

Oh wow, can people actually SEE my videos? I just tried watching one from my work computer and it's so dark I can't see anything. It was not like that on my home laptop when I posted them last night. :( Maybe I will try replacing the videos tonight using a spotlight to shine on the reactors to get a better quality video. Sorry folks!

Video's are fine.

The Vertex UF-15 with an MJ 1200 tumbles the same, maybe a little harder.

On our Zoanthid frag tanks I was running a TLF 150 with carbon and decided to try the Pellets in the TLF. I was having a tumbling problem with the TLF so I tried a mod that seems to work fine. I took out the sponges and the bottom red plate and glued the plastic tubing in and am blasting water from the pump straight to the bottom. It seems to be working perfect and a very easy mod if all you have is a TLF 150.
Kevin

Interesting. So it's just glued into the top plate or did you take out the top plate too?

I left the top red plate but the hard clear tubing that goes down to the bottom red plate kept coming off so I glued it into place and it seems to be working perfect.
Kevin

good idea on this mod Kevin. this should create enough direct flow to keep the pellets tumbling nicely.

I woke up this morning with a cloudy tank. The pellets were barely moving. The hoses had started to plug again. After cleaning the hoses the pellets are tumbling again.

Anyone know if the cloudy is bad for my tank?

this happened to my friend
 

same thing happened to my friend. his pellets stopped tumbling, got clumped together and all the hoses and holes got gunked up. He couldn't get the pellets to stop spitting out cloudy white stuff and it appeared some of his corals were reacting badly to it. finally we took it offline and had to wash all the pellets to get the gunk off them. apparently took a long time to clean them. They are now dried and i'll start them up again next week with the mod mentioned above.

my pellets didnt gunk together at all and tumbled very nicely as soon as I cleaned out the hoses. Corals and fish all look ok.. just the water is v ery slightly cloudy. I will do a water change tonight and hope everything is settled by morning.

I have had several tank "whiteout blizzard" conditions as a result of pellets clogging. It is unsettling to see, but the tank inhabitants didn't seem to care (actually my fish seem to eat the "snowflakes"). My skimmer seems to pull it out and the water is clear within a couple hours. Also I have a filter sock - one thing since adding the pellets is I have to clean out my filter sock way more often, so I'm pretty sure it's pulling the stuff out too.

It seems to not take very long after the pellets have settled for the mulm to accumulate to "biblical plague of locusts" levels. Seems very important to make sure that lines, sponges and meshes aren't clogging up and finding the right combination of reactor, pump and/or reactor mods so that they are always churning.

No need for a water change, the skimmer will pull out the bacteria (mulm) which is harmless.