Long term success without carbon dosing

[naesco]

Originally Posted by reeferfulton

Need some help here .

I have had my tank setup now for 2 months . I have had 5 fish in there now for about 2 weeks .

My nitrates with (elos kit) have been undetectable and still measuring .02 phosphates with the hanna checker.

I have purchased a full setup to run Biopellets , and also have a reactor and GFO on standby as well.

My questions are .

1.IF you Do carbon dose ( vodka , vinegar , biopellets ) when did you start and why ? nitrates where creeping up on you ?

2. Anyone running a lps/sps reef with fish medium stocked long term without any sort of carbon dosing . ? If so what levels of Nitrate are you happy with

feedback would be great .

Seems from the reading I do I am finding alot of people are running biopellets without really knowing why .Thus i am asking what people are doing

thanks

It is an unecessary expense and maintenance when you do not have problems.

But what you need to know and subject to the size of your tank and the size of your fish, you should only be adding one fish per month. The reason is that the biological filtration does not get out of wack.

Going to a lfs and coming out with a wack of fish is a newbie major error which most of us made when we started. The result was dead or diseased fish, high nitrates, and persistant (I am going to quit the hobby) algae problems.

Slow down. Patience is the key to success, not biopellets
Wayne

[freezetyle]

not necessary,
but if you were looking for options it really depends on how hands on you want to be.
bio-pellets for the most part are set and forget. just make sure you are keeping them topped up and have the effluent of the reactor running into your skimmer intake.

vinegar- little bit more slack then the other methods, you can fine tune your dosage to where you you will limit algae while avoiding mulm build-up.
should be dosed daily via hand or pump

vodka/vsv mix- same as above but should be dosed by hand

zeovit/fm zeolith/ brightwell neozeo. - more labour intensive, little more expensive.



for what your goals are, and since you already have it, set up biopellets. add a little bit at a time so you dont get a biobloom. if your coral are starting to lighten up too much, feed more food. still getting algae, do more water changes