ZEOVit or not to ZEOvit?
 

i need some advice!!
what im looking to do is enhance my corals a bit and also clear up my water. to me it seems like there is alot of particles floating around all the time, especially after i feed.

so should i zeovit? or use NP pellets?
which is less maintenance? will I need to do something everyday with the ZEOvit stuff? i dont want to be chained to the aquarium. right now i could go for a 3days without touching it.

Zeovit is a pretty hardcore way of running a tank that requires a daily regimen of dosing various things in various amounts. Not a lot mind you, but it is not for the casual hobbyist who may get bored or lazy and not keep up with what to drip in and when. Zeo also isn't exactly cheap. You should hang out on the Zeovit forums a bit to really get a flavour of the commitment and complexities of the system.

Pellets are lower maintenance than Zeo but the focus of pellets is really to reduce nitrates as opposed to creating a truly "ultra-low nutrient system" that Zeo does.

if you really want to try zeovit you don't have to run the whole system. I just used a few items from it, those being coral snow, coral vitalizer and sponge power. I found the coral snow really did a lot to clear my water but if you're finding particles in the water, that won't necessarily be cleared by the use of a low nutrient system, that could just be stirred up detritus and such. I've never figured out how people get that "so clear it looks like there is no water" look in their tanks, they're so incredibly clear. Granted I've seen many photos that looked like that but only one or two tanks in person :wink:

I have hundreds of dollars of Zeovit stuff. I struggled with it for about 2 years. It all started when I purchased the Nano pack on sale. I moved up to using almost all of the additives, the Zeolite rocks, pretty much everything. It took twice daily manual dosing. Shake the rocks twice a day. Can't use GFO, chaeto, etc. I found it to be very finicky...dose a little too much of this and you get cyano, dose a bit too much of that and you get diatoms. I always found I was chasing one alga or another around trying to eliminate it by dosing a bit more of this, a bit less of that. However, the corals looked really good, and growth was good too.

I started working out of province again in February this year. For several months I had a tank maintenance guy coming to dose my tank everyday. This got really expensive, and he didn't understand the Zeo system very well (the average Joe will have no clue what the additives do), so there was more algae than usual. I finally tossed the towel on the Zeovit, put my GFO reactor back online, and HOLY NEON CORALS BATMAN! My tank really perked up when I put the GFO back online. I think that was part due to over-dosing some of the Zeo products (hence the more algae than usual), so the GFO really sucked the phosphate out, and got on top of the algae.

Now 4 months later, the only Zeo products I use are Coral Snow and Spur2.

what is GFO?

Granular ferric oxide - you run it in a media reactor to reduce phosphates. It is incompatible with the full Zeovit system.

I also run half-assed Zeo like Christy and many other people. Like many things in life, I could never bring myself to commit to the whole thing. I guess my wife should feel special.

is that the same as the NP Pellets everyone is using? or different? cheaper? better?

I run the full ZEO system, minus the zeolites... I removed the zeolites shortly after starting to run the NP Bio Pellets. Now I am running 3Litres in my tank with the rest of the zeo system.

With particles, as you are talking about, I would look at your filtration. Are you running filter socks? if not, this would help to remove alot of particles from the water.

Bio Pellets are a means of assisting in the lowering of nitrates, etc.. Also they assist in the clarity of your water.

Zeo is just another way of enhancing coral growth and color, but as stated by others, it isn't cheap.

My recommendation would be to use filter socks, and maybe try the BioPellets... I do like them myself.

GFO is totally different than the NP pellets. I have no first-hand experience with the NP pellets, but I have seen enough tanks running them and read enough to not be impressed. I wouldn't put them in my tank.

Just wonder, could the particles that you seen be very tiny air bubbles?

I would not waste your money on either.

To clear your water you can consider the following.

1. If the stuff is floating on the top like a greasy slick use a pie plate to slowly skim the stuff of the top.
2. Invest in 3 or 4 filter socks and arrange to hang one on the outlet from your main tank. Change often and wash separately in your washing machine. (Remember to put th pods that most often settle in the bottom of the sock back into your sump.)
3. Tape a white paper to the outside of your tank and notice the yellow water. Place some washed charcoal in the water flow and remove when the yellow clears up.

And with the money you save, buy your self one of those beautiful Aussi LPS.

+1

That is good advice aussie LPS are cool and look good in nice clear tanks. :lol:

I have 4 filter socks, i go through all of them in about 1.5 weeks and wash them together. What do you mean about the pods? how do i see them and how do i put them back?

also i do have a oil slick somtimes at the top of the tank, so whats a pie plate?

i think i should get someone to come by and look at my tank to make sure im not losing my mind about the particles.

Carefully turn the used filter sock inside out and you will usually find lots of pods which you can throw back in the sump.

Tip the pie plate so that only the oil slick slowly enters the plate until most of the slick is gone.

i thought pods are really small and you cant see them, was i wrong?

Why throw em in the sump? I collect them all and them dump them into the main tank for a feeding frenzie :biggrin:.

Unless you are REALLY into reefing I would suggest not using the full zeo system, there is far to much behind it if you don't know what you are doing completely.

As others have said Coral Snow, Sponge Power and Coral Vitalizer are all good products that can be used even without the full system. Nothing beats a fresh filter sock and carbon when it comes to water clarity though.

Many species of zoa plankton are microscopic but many others are visible to the naked eye.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepod

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphipoda

this is starting to annoy me, maybe i should make a new thread called why the hell is my water cloudy with particles
im looking at it right now and I can see millions of particles in the water and i can see the rays from the MHs!!!

Sounds like you have a case of the microbubbles. Look very closely, is it particle matter or tiny little bubbles?

I had a similar problem and thought it was debris but it turned out to be micro bubbles. I ended up valving down my return pump to slow down the flow thru my sump and fixed the problem. Does your skimmer have alot of micro bubbles coming out of it?

I'm pretty sure it's particles. My skimmer output is a descent distance and alot lower from my return pump

I find it strange you have an oil slick. I think you may not be skimming the DOC's off the top layer. Perhaps you need a longer linear overflow or probably faster flow through the sump.

In anycase what you are experiencing is not normal and I think it may be a design flaw.

If you point one of your powerheads towards the surface you should be able to create enough turbulence that the oil slick will fix itself, just keep the powerhead permanently in that position.

I also think you have a case of the microbubbles as Zoa Elite suggested. :D Microbubbles can be difficult to distinguish from particulate matter if you don't know what you're looking for. You say your skimmer is a fair way from the pump and lower than the pump...are there any baffles in your sump? Could you post a picture of your sump? Also, if you have an external pump, and there are any leaks in the plumbing between the sump and the pump it will suck little bits of air in, chop it up, and blow those into the display...which sucks.

Mindy is bang on with the external plumping point, look the words right out of my mouth.

Any random salt creep developing around these points is also a good indication of a plumbing leak.

so i dunno what happened but I went and bought some coral snow
First day i didnt notice a change, second day, no change, today i woke up and almost walked through the tank because i didnt see there was water in it! holy moly this is clear all of a sudden.

freakishly clear.
so what else should i be using with coral snow? sponge power? even with no sponges?

o just to add, the particles were the poop from my tangs after they ate sheets of nori
so i stopped feeding nori everyday, just couple times a week.

the cloudyness was cleared up by the coral snow i believe.

I use coral vitalizer with my coral snow, after about 10 days of use you should see an increase in coral coloration (at least I did).