Before and after biopellet photos. How do I bring my montipora back to life?

whatcaneyedo · #1 03-21-2012, 10:22 PM

How do these look for some before and after pictures? I tried experimenting with biopellets on and off a little bit about a year ago. At first I used the minimum recommended amount which I ceased after a month. The second time I used 1/3 of the recommended minimum amount which I also removed soon after. In each case almost immediately my soft coral bleached and some of my LPS faded in colour. These montipora faded a little bit as well but while the other species slowly recovered once I ceased using the pellets these montipora have not. They're both sort of in stasis, they aren't recovering and they haven't yet died completely.

My system is 5 years old, 240gal, lit ~8hrs daily with 250w 14K Phoenix bulbs on HQI ballasts, I do 10% weekly water changes with IO, Seachem and some Mg salts. 1 cup of carbon changed monthly and 1 cup of GFO changed every two months. Supplementing is done by Kalk and Ca Reactors. Aside from a variety of fish food no additional products are used. Nuisance algae and slime consists of valonia and a little cyano in the sand. Water chemistry is this today and only fluctuates a little bit from month to month (I keep records):
Ca 430 ppm
KH 10 dkh
Mg 1300 ppm
Nitrate and Phosphate undetectable for years with hobby grade kits
Salinity 1.025
Temperature 78 F

I'm thinking there are three things that I can do. I could retrieve some frags of these from some friends tanks and try to start over with them. I could continue the waiting game to see if what I have left will eventually recover. Or I could try some kind of bottled miracle product if someone could recommend one to me.

Reef Pilot · #2 03-21-2012, 10:35 PM

Why would you use bio pellets if your nitrates and phosphates are undetectable?

whatcaneyedo · #3 03-21-2012, 10:43 PM

I was following the hype about them on this site and on RC which is still going on today. I thought that by using them I would no longer need to use GFO. I thought that some of my acro frags which have never done much growing would suddenly take off like the others. It now seems common sense to me too that I never should have bothered with them. If its not broke don't fix it... well I tried to fix it and I broke it.

Reef Pilot · #4 03-21-2012, 10:55 PM

Well, they worked for me, but in my case I had nitrates as high at 100 ppm. Down to less than 20 now. Really cleaned up my tank, too. No algae or cyano. I just have LPS and softies, and they all seemed to like it.

I have heard of corals getting bleached after bio pellets. Perhaps they need a trace amount of nitrates/phosphates, and the bio pellets depleted them too much.

Also, more recently, some people have reported coral bleaching and dying after use of Kent carbon.

whatcaneyedo · #5 03-21-2012, 11:03 PM

My carbon and GFO come from BRS. Both were purchases a year ago, the GFO is the regular granular and the carbon is fine lignite.

I believe that over depletion of nitrate and phosphate was the case too. However I do feed my tank heavily. 1/6 nori sheet daily, Formula one pellets 3 times a day (amounting to 1/2 tsp I think), a cube of PE Mysis 3 times a day and a 1"x2" slab of silversides or krill every second day.

Zoaelite · #6 03-21-2012, 11:08 PM

My guess is they are too far gone.

Your system is clearly doing very well, time for some new frags

. I had the exact same problem when my ALK was raised too much while running the pellets, lost that exact same green cap and burned the crap out of all my tips.

Biopellets went in the garbage alllonngggggg time ago.

Reef Pilot · #7 03-21-2012, 11:11 PM

Wow, and I thought I was a heavy feeder. Surprised you can keep your nitrates down with that.

I have seen pics of your tank,... very nice.

Casey8 · #8 03-21-2012, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

My carbon and GFO come from BRS. Both were purchases a year ago, the GFO is the regular granular and the carbon is fine lignite.

I believe that over depletion of nitrate and phosphate was the case too. However I do feed my tank heavily. 1/6 nori sheet daily, Formula one pellets 3 times a day (amounting to 1/2 tsp I think), a cube of PE Mysis 3 times a day and a 1"x2" slab of silversides or krill every second day.

whatcaneyedo, you are my friend

I don't think you are overfeeding them. They are just like humans. If you feed me once or twice a week, I still survive but am I happy ? I don't think so ! Maybe I can maintain my weight without needing to hit the gym everyday

Anyway, I used to run bio pellets for about 6 months and the last couple months I had used, it almost killed/bleached all my sps corals. Since I switched to Vodka dosing, I can say I am happier than ever before. No algae, phosphate or nitrate. I don't even need to clean my front glass everyday like I used to. My cheoto cannot even grow an inch bigger in a month.

Bblinks · #9 03-21-2012, 11:51 PM

Hey dude, I had the same thing happen to me a while back due to a spike in alk. I went from 7-8 dkh to 11dkh and right of way I lost 4-5 colonies. IME and also a few reliable sources, when running the pellets I try to keep my alk arund 7 ish, just like all the other probiotic system(zeovit, prodibio, etc) once your no3 and phosphate are getting close to zero with an elevated alk levels it is much easier to bleach your sps. Also I think if you have a good habbit of keeping your water prestine condition, not overfeed and over stock, I don't think you shouldn be runing pellets. I have quite a few fishes in the tank and I like to feed heavily so the pellets really keep things inline for me. I feel that if some thing is working for you there is no need to change any things.

whatcaneyedo · #10 03-22-2012, 12:11 AM

I checked my records from 2010 and 2011. The first time I tried the pellets in 2011 my KH was at about 11dkh and the second time in early 2011 it was 8-9dkh. However I usually keep it up at about 10dkh as it helps to keep the systems pH a little bit higher. ~8.1 in the summer and ~7.9 in the winter.

I haven't tried potassium yet but I think I'll give it a shot. My other two Montipora colonies are still a bit light in colour but at least they continue to grow.

I have several fish with eating disorders so I need to ensure that they are well fed. My CBB will experiment by nipping at new coral if it doesn't get 3 feedings a day. The powder blue tang will consume soft corals if it doesn't have a constant supply of nori. And the snowflake moray gets a little too adventurous if it isn't sated three times a week.