O.C.'s Pellet questions and answers!

[Finley]

Ian,

I've been reading the instructions on the pellets and it does mention UV will slow down the bacteria.
So if continue running the UV the pellets will still do their thing, just more slowly....

What would you or others recommend on the UV issue.

Thanks,

Chris

[gobytron]

I've been following a thread on Reef Central about these pellets and the genral consensus is that U.V. should really only affect this product if the U.V. is on the inlet and not the outlet...

[loveless]

Ok, its been five weeks today since starting the pellets. And I dont think i am experiencing what everyone else is.

[IMG][/IMG]

This test was taken today after a 10% water change. Tank water on right and reactor output oh the left, doesnt really matter. High nitrates aside, they should be different correct???

Info.

-330gal ish tank

-Vertex reactor on mj1200. Pellets tumbling nicely

-1L of NP bio pellets.

-Tank has been up for about 5 months, and used live rock from old tank.

-Sand was from old tank as well but rinsed thoroughly, safe to say very clean.

The only thing i can think of that might be a contributing factor in the whole picture is that I used this http://www.tetra-fish.com/sites/tetr...id=1276&cid=73to make up a large portion of the initial startup water. It made my skimmer go crazy. It says on the package that it has mucous promoting chemical which I assume is the reason for the skimmer overflow.

Could the mucous promoting chemical in the water conditioner be killing the whole carbon bacteria cycle in my Bio pellets?????

Ian I have yet to try bacteria supp, kinda hard to find, but I did slow down the reactor to no avail.


Could anyone tell me what exactly should be happening.


Thanks
Cam

[Cameron]

updated video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbuPRkYg-FA

[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Originally Posted by loveless

Ok, its been five weeks today since starting the pellets. And I dont think i am experiencing what everyone else is.

[IMG][/IMG]

This test was taken today after a 10% water change. Tank water on right and reactor output oh the left, doesnt really matter. High nitrates aside, they should be different correct???

Info.

-330gal ish tank

-Vertex reactor on mj1200. Pellets tumbling nicely

-1L of NP bio pellets.

-Tank has been up for about 5 months, and used live rock from old tank.

-Sand was from old tank as well but rinsed thoroughly, safe to say very clean.

The only thing i can think of that might be a contributing factor in the whole picture is that I used this http://www.tetra-fish.com/sites/tetr...id=1276&cid=73to make up a large portion of the initial startup water. It made my skimmer go crazy. It says on the package that it has mucous promoting chemical which I assume is the reason for the skimmer overflow.

Could the mucous promoting chemical in the water conditioner be killing the whole carbon bacteria cycle in my Bio pellets?????

Ian I have yet to try bacteria supp, kinda hard to find, but I did slow down the reactor to no avail.


Could anyone tell me what exactly should be happening.


Thanks
Cam

Cam,

I am perplexed as to what is happening in your tank with Nitrates, there has to be some sort of activity that is limiting bacterial colonization of the Pellets...... I would most definitely try to find some Zeobac or Microbacter 7 in order to inoculate your system. You could be dealing with a chemical issue or simply a monoculture in your tank.

[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Originally Posted by Cameron

updated video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbuPRkYg-FA

Cameron,

Great little video, could you email me the file so we can post it to our Youtube channel?

Thanks!

[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Originally Posted by Finley

Ian,

I've been reading the instructions on the pellets and it does mention UV will slow down the bacteria.
So if continue running the UV the pellets will still do their thing, just more slowly....

What would you or others recommend on the UV issue.

Thanks,

Chris

I would not really run the UV unless you are dealing with certain issues within your tank, even on the outlet the UV is counterproductive to any bacterial driven nutrient reduction system.....

Ian

[Delphinus]

FWIW, I have run with the pellets both with UV and without. In fact, I am currently running 57w of UV because due to sloppy QT practices on my part I introduced ich to my established livestock (luckily, the UV seems to be helping). At any rate, the nitrate reduction capacity of the pellets does not appear to be diminished.

Having said that, I would prefer not to run UV at all and plan to disconnect it at some point. It is simply a bandaid in the meantime.

Regarding monocultures .. I believe this is a key issue with a few tanks that are not showing dramatic nitrate reduction in the timeframes that others have seen. Plus, nitrate can be bound to substrate (rock and sand), once this happens, it can take a much longer time to see a reduction in the water column readings because as soon as it is removed from the water (ie, by bacterial uptake), it is replaced out of that bound in the substrate. This is not too uncommon, and the solution really is just patience for the most part.

However a bacterial supplement idea has merit. When I started pellets I ran both zeovit and pellets and saw a tremendous reduction of nitrate in a very short order of time. However, I realize now this was due in part to the systems running in parallel and that zeovit requires you to actively dose bacterial strains. When I ran the two systems together, I could test nitrate at the input and at the output of the pellet reactor and could see a noticeable difference (in fact, I would get zero readings in the effluent). Since disbanding zeovit and just staying with pellets, the difference now is more subtle. This makes sense to me: the daily added bacteria was consuming nitrate in a frenzy, but was not a sustainable culture. Thus when stopping the dosing, my tank in fact showed an increase in nitrates and took close to a month or maybe even a little over a month to start showing a decrease once again. Only now about two months after do I get close to zero readings again.

Thus I offer the 2 lessons learned:
1) If you want a faster reduction, you can consider a bacterial supplement such as Zeobak or LB7 or similar product. But ...
2) The flipside is that unless you are comfortable redosing these on a permanent basis, when you STOP dosing it, the bacterial cultures will have to adjust themselves to a more self-sustaining population and this will take more time.
3) The pellets DO work on their own, they are far less troublesome and maintenance intensive than other systems .. the worst case scenario is you may simply need to wait for it to establish. Thus (like with many things) patience is a virtue and all that good stuff.

HTH..

[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

FWIW, I have run with the pellets both with UV and without. In fact, I am currently running 57w of UV because due to sloppy QT practices on my part I introduced ich to my established livestock (luckily, the UV seems to be helping). At any rate, the nitrate reduction capacity of the pellets does not appear to be diminished.

Having said that, I would prefer not to run UV at all and plan to disconnect it at some point. It is simply a bandaid in the meantime.

Regarding monocultures .. I believe this is a key issue with a few tanks that are not showing dramatic nitrate reduction in the timeframes that others have seen. Plus, nitrate can be bound to substrate (rock and sand), once this happens, it can take a much longer time to see a reduction in the water column readings because as soon as it is removed from the water (ie, by bacterial uptake), it is replaced out of that bound in the substrate. This is not too uncommon, and the solution really is just patience for the most part.

However a bacterial supplement idea has merit. When I started pellets I ran both zeovit and pellets and saw a tremendous reduction of nitrate in a very short order of time. However, I realize now this was due in part to the systems running in parallel and that zeovit requires you to actively dose bacterial strains. When I ran the two systems together, I could test nitrate at the input and at the output of the pellet reactor and could see a noticeable difference (in fact, I would get zero readings in the effluent). Since disbanding zeovit and just staying with pellets, the difference now is more subtle. This makes sense to me: the daily added bacteria was consuming nitrate in a frenzy, but was not a sustainable culture. Thus when stopping the dosing, my tank in fact showed an increase in nitrates and took close to a month or maybe even a little over a month to start showing a decrease once again. Only now about two months after do I get close to zero readings again.

Thus I offer the 2 lessons learned:
1) If you want a faster reduction, you can consider a bacterial supplement such as Zeobak or LB7 or similar product. But ...
2) The flipside is that unless you are comfortable redosing these on a permanent basis, when you STOP dosing it, the bacterial cultures will have to adjust themselves to a more self-sustaining population and this will take more time.
3) The pellets DO work on their own, they are far less troublesome and maintenance intensive than other systems .. the worst case scenario is you may simply need to wait for it to establish. Thus (like with many things) patience is a virtue and all that good stuff.

HTH..

Very well written and looks to be bang on, good call Tony.

Ian
O.C.

[DiverDude]

ok, noob question here....the term "monoculture" has been used a bunch of times in this thread and each time I hear myself saying "and just what the hell is monoculture?"

Clearly it is a singular strain of bacteria of some sort but which one and why is it so relevant to NP Pellets ?

Enquiring minds what to know !