ZEOVit or not to ZEOvit?

[Milad]

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.

[fkshiu]

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.

[christyf5]

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

[Myka]

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.

[Milad]

what is GFO?

[fkshiu]

Originally Posted by Milad

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.

[Milad]

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

[globaldesigns]

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.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Milad

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

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.

[ottoman]

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