I only fill mine about once a year or longer. I pour in as much as the reactor can tumble easily, up to 1000 ml. The pellets gradually gets consumed until there is only a small amount left tumbling at the bottom. I check nitrates about once a month, and they are always zero.
Having said that, when you first start out, you want to go slow, maybe 2 - 300 ml to start and gradually build it up as the bio pellets start to work. That can take from several weeks to a couple months. This is when you should check nitrates more frequently and they should slowly come down to zero.
I decommissioned my bio pellet reactor a couple years ago, just to see what would happen. It took a couple months for the nitrates to gradually build up again. Then it took a couple months after I reinstalled it to get my nitrates back to zero. And my SPS weren't happy about that either.
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