N/P Reducing Pellets ("Solid Vodka") - "Wow" ... 3 month update

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by wayner

So are these pellets suppose to replace the need for zeo rocks in a zeo reactor?, or are we taking different types of bacteria here., if this is the case, then I suppose one would have the option to just dose a color enhancing product or anything else for that matter without the need to pump the reactor daily and change out rocks periodically as these pellets disolve over time..

Sounds easier, but maybe I don't have this down right just yet?

Hi Wayne: Yes. And No.

Here's how I see it. It's probably the same bacteria that colonizes the zeolites as well as the pellets. The pellets are really more of a direct replacement for vokda dosing, which is a sort of "halfway to zeo" method. Vodka dosing is adding a carbon source so that bacteria can consume the carbon and the "side effect" is reduction of nitrate and phosphate, but it involves daily dosing. Supposedly the best vodka dosing is a mixture of vodka and then occasional vinegar and occasional sugar as well; the problem is none of those come with "reef tank dosing instructions."

These pellets are a passive carbon source so it eliminates the need for daily dosing of carbon (via vodka or whatever).

So if your only goal was nitrate (and/or phosphate) reduction, you should theoretically be able to run these pellets on their own.

So this begs the question, why am I doing both these and zeo? And the answer is something I don't really have firm grip on. Both methods intrigue me; so why not try both? But one reason I can enumerate is the water clarity you get with zeo. Zeo tanks never fail to amaze me for their water clarity, you can pick out a zeovit tank at a glance for their water clarity. The colours pop more too if you have SPS, but I don't, so I can't really say that it makes my corals colour up more, but I dig the water clarity.

So (I wonder how many paragraphs in a row I can type in that start off with "So"), I hope to see a "best of both worlds" in this approach.

Hope this makes sense.

Originally Posted by RuGlu6

Thank you for starting this thread Tony,
You are doing a favor to all of us by testing these pellets, because if they Do work it will be huge step forward in reef keeping.

I spend a lot of $ monthly to fight NO3 and PO4, so i hope this will work as advertised!

No worries and I agree. NO3 and PO4 are the biggest nuisances, when I saw these pellets come available I knew I had to try them. Not many new products get me very excited, I tend to think a lot of them are overhyped, but this one really does seem promising. And although it's pricey, it's really in the same ballpark as things like GFO for PO4 reduction, but it does nitrate too, so in the end it may actually be a slightly more economical option. I hope so anyhow.

Originally Posted by andestang

This is great Tony. I can't really tell from the pic of your reactor, but do you have an inner chamber like how I made mine which actually holds the zoevit media so it doesn't bind during shaking ? Maybe you could make a separator plate for inside the inner chamber or it looks like these pellets won't bind during shaking you can modify so they are on the outside of the inner chamber by drilling appropriate size holes for water flow. Make sense ?

Hey dude, save some of the good stuff for me there! Yeah, as you figured out, I put an inside chamber in the reactor. I'm a little miffed at the store I got the smaller tube from, I distinctly asked for 5.5", we talked about how it would have to form a tight fit inside a 6" tube and blah blah blah and he said he had a broken tube so could sell me 12" of it - otherwise he'd charge me for a full tube so after all was said and done, even though I wanted more like 14"-15" I settled on 12" (although that still yields close to 3 litres if my math is any good, so it's fine in the end) but I was just so annoyed when I saw a 1/4" gap all around when I put it all together. I don't have a router so making the top flange using a table saw and a dremel was an interesting and noisy exercise (and a little bit dangerous .. little bits of acrylic were flying all over the place being spat out by the table saw) and the end result is ugly to boot. But oh well, it's functional, and that's the more important aspect.