Biopellets, yes or no?

[whatcaneyedo]

I tried 1/4 of the recommended minimum amount, the flow wasn't directed straight into my skimmer and I lost several montipora and acropora colonies that I had had for years. I'll never touch them again and I won't recommend them to anyone.

[reefermadness]

The output of my bio pellet reactor goes to my return pump.... I dont think that was your problem.

[whatcaneyedo]

Originally Posted by reefermadness

The output of my bio pellet reactor goes to my return pump.... I dont think that was your problem.

I don't believe it was specifically that either. But thats the only thing I did outside of the recommended procedure so I thought I should mention it. I believe it was the biopellets in general that caused me to go from this to this.

[subman]

I also set them up on mine and my son's tank and was a complete disaster. In my son's tank he lost most of his fish and all the corals and in mine I didn't lose anything but it took months to get things back to normal. I am a non believer as well.

I will say I was misinformed on the proper way to start them on a system and I also didn't do enough research on them. I will take a good part of the blame in my disasters but I'm still never putting them in anything again.

[kien]

Well, I didn't mean for this to turn into yet another thread on the merits (or lack thereof) of the bioPellets. Was just looking for a head count LOL. We all know that there has been plenty of discussion on the subject. Yes, you can easily destroy your tank if you don't use these properly. However, the same can be said about ZeoVit, prodibio, vodka, LED lights, auto top off systems, calcium reactors, dosers etc.

[Stones]

I'm still on the biopellet bandwagon. Been using them in the 225 reef for well over a year but they did very little until I suffered a pseudo tank crash and ended up with some nitrates. After I had readable nitrates on a test kit, I could visibly see the pellet level dropping in the reactor every few weeks.

I also suffered a major bryopsis and turf algae outbreak immediately after firing up the biopellet reactor. However, the tank was fairly new at the time, being only a few months old and most of the problem algae seemed to be located on the Aquaroche man made live rock so this could also have been source of the problem. I took the biopellet reactor offline for a few months to see if this was perhaps the source of the outbreak and the algae problem persisted and possibly even got worse lending further credence to the biopellets not being the cause of the issue.

I've read about a few cases where biopellets caused a massive tank crash. I'm not certain what these systems nitrate and phosphate levels were prior to running biopellets but I'm assuming after the initial bacterial colonization of the biopellets, higher levels of nitrates and phosphates were fairly rapidly stripped from the system causing major RTN or color loss in predominantly SPS corals. Never heard of anyone losing any fish until this thread though.