N/P Reducing Pellets ("Solid Vodka") - "Wow" ... 3 month update
 

I am starting a review thread for the new pellet product people are referring to as "solid vodka dosing".

For more background info, check out this thread in the Oceanic Corals vendor forum here: http://canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58523

Some background: I'm trying these pellets on a mixed reef with a high fish load that I feed heavily (Further details at the bottom of this post). Between the addition of a pair of butterflies who get fed frozen mysis daily, and a pygmy eel this fall who has a voracious appetite, I have been noticing nitrates start to climb as high as 30. So I was very interested in this product when it became available.

So why a combination of these pellets with zeovit and not just one or the other? To be honest, I'm not sure. I just wanted to try it. For one, I had been meaning to consider going back on zeovit anyhow - one thing that always impresses me with zeovit tanks is just how clear the water is.

I am certain that these N/P Reducing Pellets would be more than adequate on their own for nitrate and phosphate reduction, I'm just hoping that the combination of zeolites and N/P pellets in the reactor will be an aggressive nutrient reduction system so to allow me to continue the feeding schedules I've established with the tank residents.

So, what's a thread without pictures. This maybe has nothing to do with the product being reviewed, but on the other hand, if an experiment isn't reproducible, then it's not science. So without further ado, here is the reactor I am using:

The exterior shell:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010001.jpg

The inner chamber, with zeolites but before adding the N/P pellets:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010002.jpg

I meant to buy 5.5" diameter acrylic but was sold 5" by mistake, so I had to add the top flange to keep the inner chamber from wiggling side-to-side excessively.

The original version of this reactor had the water flow over the top edge, I added a PVC elbow for the output and ground down the inside so the inside chamber could still "pump":

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010005.jpg

I also constructed an intake manifold for the feed powerhead so that dosing is introduced directly to the reactor (not shown is the standpipe that fits into the "T" piece, the standpipe is where the zeovit additives get dropped):
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010006.jpg


Detailed tank information follows:
- 115g cube tank (30x30x30)
- Approx 80 lbs live rock arranged in a bommie, or "rock island" style aquascape
- 1" sandbed (about a 4" wide strip surrounding the bommie)
- no refugium (previously was running chaeto in a small aquaclear lit by 2x9w PC; but this is now offline, the chaeto was the first algal casualty to the pellets)
- 2 part autodosing for Ca and Alk, Mg dosed manually
- Skimmer: Precision Marine "Bullet 1" beckett
- Light: single 250w DE on 12 hour photoperiod

Fish inhabitants (currently 15):
- Tangs: Zebrasoma desjardini (Red Sea sailfin), Acanthurus tennentii (lieutenant), A. nigrofuscus (lavender)
- Rabbit: Siganus doliatus (penciled)
- Angels: Centropyge potters (potters), M/F pair Genicanthus bellus (bellus)
- Butterflies: pair Chaetodon ulietensis (doublesaddle or false falcula)
- Wrasse: Halichoeres chrysus (canary)
- Dottyback: Psuedochromis fridmani (orchid)
- Eel: Gymnothorax melatremus (golden dwarf moray)
- Trigger: Xanthicthys mento (crosshatch)
- Chromis: Chromis viridis (green)
- Blenny: Cirripectes stigmaticus (ember or scarface)

Other inhabitants:
- Various tridacnids (T. derasa, T. crocea, T. squamosa)
- Various ps gorgonians
- Various zoanthids
- E. quadricolor (rose BTA)

Currently no SPS or LPS (would be butterfly food).


More info to come...

So the pellets arrived December 23, here's a gratuitous picture of them in the bag:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010009.jpg

I think they look like white lentils. :lol:

For a 115g tank, I am running 1/2 litre zeolites, and 1/2 litre of pellets. Both of these are half the recommended dosage for this approximate volume.

Now, the results:
I put the pellets and zeolites reactor online on December 24, after a 25% water change and replacement of carbon.

I am measuring nitrate with a Pinpoint NO3 monitor and I recalibrate the probe prior to each use, currently on the high range setting (10 to 100ppm).

Day 0 (following the water change): NO3 = 17ppm


Today is day 4, and I took another nitrate test.

Day 4: NO3 = 14ppm

So, 4 days in and already appears to be a slight reduction of nitrate.

I will continue to post back results every few days.

For what it's worth, one potential "con" to running the pellets in the manner I have chosen is this.

The pellets are porous (as they intended to be). This means when dry they will float. The zeovit reactor I am using has a check valve but it failed after 2 days (possibly due to a pellet lodged in it, I haven't yet had a chance to investigate the reason).

I was initially running the reactor on a 3 hours on / 3 hours off cycle (as per zeovit prescriptions). However with the failed check valve, the water level would drop back down to sump level which is approximately 1/4" lower than the top of the pellets, so 1/4" of the pellets would dry out during the "off" cycles. These would float up to the top of the reactor at the start of the next "on" cycle and ended up in the sump, some of which ended up getting sucked up into the sump return pump and spat into the display tank.

I'm not worried about the pellets in the main tank, they will eventually dissolve, but it's disappointing that there is a non-zero percentage of pellets are not in the reactor as was intended.

The pellets are also small enough to fit through the holes of the reactor and fall through to the outside chamber when the inside chamber is "pumped."

So there is a case to be made to suggest running these pellets in a separate reactor with a strainer on the output, such as a Phosban reactor.

Hey Tony, how are you explaining the reduction happening so fast when the manufacture says it will take two weeks for the bacteria to build up on the pellents and start giving you a noticable reduction?

Steve

i understand you want the NP to tumble, but just a thought: could you put the NP loosly in a media sack and agitate them with the daily cleaning of the zeolites? since you are using both zeo and NP would this maybe be enough?
:idea:

With Zeovit you have to change out the rocks every 8 to 12 weeks. Are you going to also change out the N/P Pellets at that time?

Tom R

It's just a guess on my part but I was sort of hoping that with the combination of zeo and these, that the addition of the bacteria to the reactor would explain this.

It does mean that I don't know if it's the zeo or the pellets responsible or if it's both. I don't have a way to quantify how much reduction is attributable to either.

Maybe. One thing the pellets are good for is sloughing off a bacterial film which the manufacturer claims is good coral food. A sponge on the output or a filter sock would impede this, or possibly get clogged.

Zeovit also makes this claim.

I have noticed that when I agitated the reactor that more of this film is released than when I was running zeovit before on its own. So there seems to be some truth to this aspect. Whether it's as good as they say it is for corals though, ... too early for me to speculate on. :)

Having mixed the two together though ... I do have a problem down the road when it comes time to replace zeolites. The pellets don't stay put as a layer on top, the agitation fully homogenizes the mix so I'll be picking out zeolites one pebble at a time when the time comes. We'll see how much I hate that. Putting a sponge in the chamber to separate the two substrates seems defeating. So I still wonder if in the long run these are better off in their own reactor, or passive in a high flow area in the sump in a loose filter bag. But we'll see how it goes.

The manufacturer claims no need to replace the pellets but just let them slowly dissolve, theoretically dissolve into nothingness over 6 months. So the plan is to keep the pellets but just pick out the zeolites.

So are these pellets suppose to replace the need for zeo rocks in a zeo reactor?, or are we taking different types of bacteria here., if this is the case, then I suppose one would have the option to just dose a color enhancing product or anything else for that matter without the need to pump the reactor daily and change out rocks periodically as these pellets disolve over time..

Sounds easier, but maybe I don't have this down right just yet?

Thank you for starting this thread Tony,
You are doing a favor to all of us by testing these pellets, because if they Do work it will be huge step forward in reef keeping.

I spend a lot of $ monthly to fight NO3 and PO4, so i hope this will work as advertised!

This is great Tony. I can't really tell from the pic of your reactor, but do you have an inner chamber like how I made mine which actually holds the zoevit media so it doesn't bind during shaking ? Maybe you could make a separator plate for inside the inner chamber or it looks like these pellets won't bind during shaking you can modify so they are on the outside of the inner chamber by drilling appropriate size holes for water flow. Make sense :silly: :drinking: ?

Ok not funny, the pic of the inner chamber didn't load when I first read the post :confused: back to this :drinking:

Hi Wayne: Yes. And No. :lol:

Here's how I see it. It's probably the same bacteria that colonizes the zeolites as well as the pellets. The pellets are really more of a direct replacement for vokda dosing, which is a sort of "halfway to zeo" method. Vodka dosing is adding a carbon source so that bacteria can consume the carbon and the "side effect" is reduction of nitrate and phosphate, but it involves daily dosing. Supposedly the best vodka dosing is a mixture of vodka and then occasional vinegar and occasional sugar as well; the problem is none of those come with "reef tank dosing instructions."

These pellets are a passive carbon source so it eliminates the need for daily dosing of carbon (via vodka or whatever).

So if your only goal was nitrate (and/or phosphate) reduction, you should theoretically be able to run these pellets on their own.

So this begs the question, why am I doing both these and zeo? And the answer is something I don't really have firm grip on. Both methods intrigue me; so why not try both? But one reason I can enumerate is the water clarity you get with zeo. Zeo tanks never fail to amaze me for their water clarity, you can pick out a zeovit tank at a glance for their water clarity. The colours pop more too if you have SPS, but I don't, so I can't really say that it makes my corals colour up more, but I dig the water clarity.

So (I wonder how many paragraphs in a row I can type in that start off with "So"), I hope to see a "best of both worlds" in this approach.

Hope this makes sense. :)

No worries and I agree. NO3 and PO4 are the biggest nuisances, when I saw these pellets come available I knew I had to try them. Not many new products get me very excited, I tend to think a lot of them are overhyped, but this one really does seem promising. And although it's pricey, it's really in the same ballpark as things like GFO for PO4 reduction, but it does nitrate too, so in the end it may actually be a slightly more economical option. I hope so anyhow. :)


Hey dude, save some of the good stuff for me there! :) Yeah, as you figured out, I put an inside chamber in the reactor. I'm a little miffed at the store I got the smaller tube from, I distinctly asked for 5.5", we talked about how it would have to form a tight fit inside a 6" tube and blah blah blah and he said he had a broken tube so could sell me 12" of it - otherwise he'd charge me for a full tube so after all was said and done, even though I wanted more like 14"-15" I settled on 12" (although that still yields close to 3 litres if my math is any good, so it's fine in the end) but I was just so annoyed when I saw a 1/4" gap all around when I put it all together. I don't have a router so making the top flange using a table saw and a dremel was an interesting and noisy exercise (and a little bit dangerous .. little bits of acrylic were flying all over the place being spat out by the table saw) and the end result is ugly to boot. But oh well, it's functional, and that's the more important aspect.

Tony Thanks! and keep up the Good Work :biggrin:

I just picked up a 1 litre bag from Tony. I have placed 500ml in my zeolite reactor with 1 litre of zeolites. I have my reactor running on a 3 hour interval and I mix the reactor twice daily.

As I am running 100% Zeo, and Tony is running some Zeo also, I will post with him on what I see. Is this ok with you Tony, as we can keep this in one thread then?

For me I don't have any issues, but want to see what kind of results I will see with color colorization and growth.

I will keep you posted.

Really excited to see how these work out, I will keep tuned but thanks for spending the time and writing this up Tony (Guess there's a reason they selected you to mod :lol:).

As much science as there is in reef keeping I kind of enjoy looking at my tank like stew in a giant crock pot (As odd as this might seem). You have to have the meat and potato's but adding little things here and other stuff there is what makes your special blend. It's almost like a 6th sense just there, hard to explain.
Levi

Well :lol: i thought i would be able to hold it for at least 6 month and see how it works for others....

Could not hold any longer and picked up a 500 ml bag of bio pellets today.
I don't like testing and dosing thats why i decided to try this new product.

Like was mentioned before these pellets are promising and make a lot of sense, no dosing is a definite plus.

At any rate , i just simply placed it in TLF media reactor, the flow is whatever it is from MJ 1200 power head.

I do keep SPS and i do have some nuisance algae so that means i have both P04 and N03.
I do Not dose anything (well sometimes magnesium, strontium and occasional kalkwasser) and there is no change in my tank other then pellets.

I will contribute what i can to this new product research

Basically exactly the same for me. No real SPS, a Birdsnest, Digitata and Acro. Only the Digitata is ok, but brown. Lots of Hair algae, fingers bleed trying to prune. Hope the pellets will work. Should be here this week

Shipped today! :mrgreen:

So the pellets do release a lot of mulm as per the manufacturer's claims. It's quite noticeable after a reactor pumping. I'll see if I can capture this on picture or video. Might be a bit tricky on account of the (lack of) lighting under the stand but I'll give it a go!

How did you make out getting a picture of the mulm?

Not great on the photo, but here's one that sorta worked out:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/P1010011.jpg

It looks like mostly salt creep but I did wipe down the chamber before the picture so almost all of the white bits are mulm. (I see I missed a few spots, only showed up under the flash :redface:)

um.. all three you mentions are real sps.:wink:

Steve

I was meaning alot alot of them LOL, thye just 3 tiny frags, they are lost in my 150g

K, want to report on things.

After 3 days (or 2 1/2), I am seeing more mulm from my ZeoReactor than prior. As I had an established 1.5L ZeoReactor, I already had bacteria colonization, so this probably sped up the process in the NP Bio Pellets. I am just guessing here.

Anyways, after mixing the reactor just now, I can see much more mulm being pumped into my display prior to not having the NP Bio-Pellets. Prior to the Pellets I never saw anything, but now I actually see it coming out of my returns with a bunch of micro bubbles (from the pumping action I guess)

I wasn't sure how good things would work, as I have the pellets in a carbon bag in the reactor, but all seems good. And when it is time to change the zeolites, I won't have to pick through things like Tony. HAHA!

This is good, will keep watching things and see what happens. I haven't tested anything yet, will wait a few more days before doing this.

So you didn't do any measurments before adding the pellets? Would be interesting to see if you get the same results as Tony.

I didn't do any measurements, as Nitrates & Ammonia are not a real problem in my tank... I am seeing what this does for growth and color. But I must say the mulm production seems better than the zeolites. Time will tell.

I think I might take some before pics and then do a comparison with some after pics.

Day 10 (or call it "week 2" - planning to continue testing on a weekly basis, but with this post I'm resetting to Sundays), nitrate is at 12.

Should be noted that bioload increased since last numbers I posted, added a lavender tang and a crosshatch trigger. I fed them like crazy the first few days to make sure they were eating and getting a fair share leftover from the tankmates feeding frenzy. So there was likely a slight slowdown in reduction or even an increase in nitrates for a bit. Now that they're pretty much in there with the rest of them I'm reverting to regular feeding schedule.

How are the new additions making out Tony?

Better, a lot better. The tang had me really worried for a bit (really got a rough hazing) but the aggression has abated and he's healing and eating and so both are doing really well.

Update from me also... I seemed to have a slight algae on my sand, thought what the #$@#%#$%@#$... Anyways last night I found the intake pump for my skimmer was almost totally plugged. I am such a dummy, I noticed the outake for the skimmer was almost bubbless, thought to myself "Wow, water is changing and no bubble in water output", but in reality hardly any water was entering the skimmer. Another clue would of been the lack of skimmate, but again I thought "Wow, cleaner water means less skimmate"

I tookt the intake pump out, took it apart and it was completely jammed up with baby snails on the intake port, they must of liked eating the sludge on there. Something to keep an eye on.

Anyways, skimmer is now going crazy, to catch up on water cleaning.

On the BioPellets, I am seeing more mulm production and can notice an increased extension on SPS polyps when I pump the reactor.

Probably too soon for anything else, but will keep you posted.

Small update on bio pellets.

Just to reiterate, i have a fare share of SPS and all are in good color and growth, no real algae problem.
I don't use ZEO so still waiting for a "mulm" to develop.

The only noticeable and welcomed effect i can report is water clarity and even better polyp extension.
On the pellets themselves (they are in TLF reactor) i don't see any changes just some air bubbles and some dark spots forming (bacteria?)

Got my pellets today. I placed the outflow line from the reactor up to the bulkhead strainer that feeds the skimmer pump, so virtually all the effluent should go to the skimmer. Now to wait and watch.

Just curious as to why you placed your outflow there instead of the return pump to the DT? That's what I did because your way I would think that the skimmer is removing your good mulm as well as the bad stuff from your tank.

Your reactor is a ?

I'm using a Phosban Reactor 150 and I noticed that the sponges (both top & bottom ones) are getting gummed up. Did I not clean it well enough prior to this use or is that the "good mulm"? Any of you guys have this same experience?

Thanks

I read on their web site that they recommend the outflow from the reactor be placed before the skimmer to limit the amount of bacteria entering the system.
I am using the pellets in a Bulk Reef Supply reactor. It's only been running for a few days and I have no mulm yet.

I guess I forgot or missed that part. Will rearrange both my systems right now.

Thanks for doing this.
Cheers

Week 3 start
 

So, I said I was going to just take readings every Sunday from now on but yesterday was day 14 and I couldn't help myself, I just had to knoooooooow.

So, day 14 readings: NO3=10

So all in all, the nitrate reduction continues.

The mulm production is insane, the reactor becomes milky white after agitation. A lot of it is getting skimmed out I think, the skimmate production doesn't seem to be faster but the skimmate is much darker than before.

Also I'm having to swap out my filter socks (100 micron) roughly twice as often as before. Before it was once a week, now it's easily twice a week.

So the stuff is definitely there in the water column, but luckily I don't see it as particulate. It would be really interesting to see how SPS would react to it, if they would have greater PE or not. The gorgs in my tank don't seem much changed but they are being pestered by butterflies so I am not getting full expansion on some anyhow.

Your experiences seem to be mirroring what many others are noticing with these Bio pellets. They seem to be holding true to what they are intended to accomplish! :mrgreen:

?
 

On their website I didn't notice any recommended flowrate through this media. Are there any specifics on this

I'm going with the zeovit suggestion for zeolites of 100gph per 100g of tank (115g tank and using a 100gph powerhead which is slowed down some because it's lifting water into the reactor which is 24" tall).

I'm not sure there's a hard and fast science to it though. My recommendation is "not too slow and not too fast." :lol: Yeah I know that's not very definitive but that really is sort of how I approach it though! :) Hope this helps.

I think you want the pellets gently tumbling a little to make sure no anaerobic areas develop. Other than that I don't think there is really a recommended flow rate. I guess it depends on your reactor etc. I have a ball valve on the tube from my pump to the reactor to fine tune it so the pellets move just a little.