O.C.'s Pellet questions and answers!

[abcha0s]

Originally Posted by GMGQ

Hi, what are your thoughts about running a biopellet reactor without a skimmer? I want to reduce N & P, as well as provide some food for the frags.

I'm considering running biopellets on my 30gallon frag tank. There's only 1 fish in there, and he's adding to the bioload, so algae is growing in that tank.

From what I read, the main reason for needing a skimmer is to oxygenate the water, as the bacteria uses up the oxygen. I have a maxijet 400 w/ venturi running in my sump to oxygenate the water already, plus my drain sometimes sucks down a gulp of air, and flushes a bunch of micro bubbles into the sump. So i'm thinking that should be sufficient for oxygenation?

If I do run biopellets, I would use a TLF150 reactor and not use that many pellets anyways. Therefore there should not be an excessive amount of bacterial mulm floating around.

So other than the oxygenation issue, is there any other downside to running biopellets without a skimmer?

Thanks in advance.

Simply put - it won't work. Period. Don't try it.

Here's why. The whole point of carbon dosing is to export nutrients from your system. The bateria consume the N&P and are then exported from your system through skimming. If you don't skim them out, the bacteria will eventually die in your system and release the Carbon/N&P back into your water colomn. This creates a really bad bacteria cycle and can potentially lead to a tank crash.

There is no magic to the use of biopellets. The N&P will stay in your system until you remove it. If you don't skim it out, you are just adding carbon to the system and removing nothing.

To answer a question posted earlier - you really need to direct the effluent from the biopellet reactor directly into your skimmer. Ideally it would be a direct link between the two systems. If you simply direct the effluent in the general direction of the skimmer intake, the system will be less efficient and you will have more bacteria in your water colomn. This bacteria will die leaving the carbon in the water colomn (where it was previously only in the reactor) and the whole system will not be as efficient. Even with a good skimmer some bacteria will end up in the water colomn (which may be a good thing) but you really want to minimize this.

- Brad

[Bblinks]

Brad is absolutely right. it is imperative that the outlet from the pellet reactor is pointed at the skimmer intake where the excess bacteria can be taken out of the system. It is like harvesting chaeto from your fuge every month, if you don't harvest the chaeto, it will simply release the absorbed n and p back into the water column as it dies off.

Originally Posted by abcha0s

Simply put - it won't work. Period. Don't try it.

Here's why. The whole point of carbon dosing is to export nutrients from your system. The bateria consume the N&P and are then exported from your system through skimming. If you don't skim them out, the bacteria will eventually die in your system and release the Carbon/N&P back into your water colomn. This creates a really bad bacteria cycle and can potentially lead to a tank crash.

There is no magic to the use of biopellets. The N&P will stay in your system until you remove it. If you don't skim it out, you are just adding carbon to the system and removing nothing.

To answer a question posted earlier - you really need to direct the effluent from the biopellet reactor directly into your skimmer. Ideally it would be a direct link between the two systems. If you simply direct the effluent in the general direction of the skimmer intake, the system will be less efficient and you will have more bacteria in your water colomn. This bacteria will die leaving the carbon in the water colomn (where it was previously only in the reactor) and the whole system will not be as efficient. Even with a good skimmer some bacteria will end up in the water colomn (which may be a good thing) but you really want to minimize this.

- Brad

[Gooly001]

Just to move this discussion further along, exhibit A by the most excellent Gary White:

http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5770

In particular, this post:

http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.ph...1&postcount=11

and...

http://zeovit.com/forums/showpost.ph...3&postcount=12

and onwards...

Skimmer or nothing my friends, but for more reasons than the obvious

[GMGQ]

Thanks for the input guys. In light of this information, I've now chosen a different direction to go with for my tank.

Thanks!

[DiverDude]

This is a very interesting detail. When I started running pellets the instructions for the pellets vaguely mentioned this point (directing reactor effluent towards skimmer intake) but a) they really didn't put any emphasis on this and b) They did not explain why.

In the setup I had, it wasn't practical to do this and using pellets got me bad algae problems and I stopped using them and have not restarted. On the new tank I'm planning, I will have a proper sump and will bring pellets back online but I can't see how I could make a direct connection between the pellet reactor output and the skimmer intake since this would mean that the skimmer's flow rate would have to be no more than that of the flow needed in the reactor to make the pellets tumble properly.

I have to assume then that simply "directing the effluent to towards the skimmer intake" is sufficient. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has a direct connection between their pellet reactor and their skimmer intake !

Originally Posted by abcha0s

To answer a question posted earlier - you really need to direct the effluent from the biopellet reactor directly into your skimmer. Ideally it would be a direct link between the two systems. If you simply direct the effluent in the general direction of the skimmer intake, the system will be less efficient and you will have more bacteria in your water colomn. This bacteria will die leaving the carbon in the water colomn (where it was previously only in the reactor) and the whole system will not be as efficient. Even with a good skimmer some bacteria will end up in the water colomn (which may be a good thing) but you really want to minimize this.

- Brad

[wingedfish]

to run your reator efluent to your skimmer you would hard pipe a stub on the skimmer intake and drill a ton of holes in the stub. put the reactor outlet line to the stub. this way all of the reactor water is going to the skimmer as well as an uptake of whatever else is needed.