Before and after biopellet photos. How do I bring my montipora back to life?

[whatcaneyedo]

Heres a little update. Things have improved more in the last month than they did in the year preceding it. I'm getting noticeable growth in my green and orange montiporas again. The green with purple rim has improved in colour (more vibrant) as has the purple polyp montipora (not pictured because I'm lazy).

What I did: I lowered my alkalinity to 9 dkh from 10, I set my temperature to a steady 78F and I began dosing 1-2 drops of Lugol's Solution each day. I used to use the seasonal temperature variation function on my neptune controller which allowed the tank to peak at 82F in the summer and drop to 76F in the winter. Although it wouldn't fluctuate by more than 1 degree F in a day I suspect that the winter low was adversely effecting my corals recovery. With regards to Lugol's, I used to use this product for several years but stopped about 2 years ago after reading some of Randy's articles. I'm not sure if my tank was necessarily deficient in potassium or iodide but dosing it does seem to be helping. Or maybe its just coincidence, I don't know.





This is one of the small frags that I salvaged. I believe it was one of the ones pictured on page 1.




In this older picture you could see how pale the green with purple rim montipora was versus how it looks now.

[tang daddy]

I have ran biopellets in my tank for over 1 yr with no I'll effects, however I found that running the high efficiency gfo from BRS stripped the water so fast that I lost a few acros aswell as brown outs in my others. After removing the H.E. Gfo things are back to normal.

There are some reports that bio pellets can cause cyano and other bad things like hair algae by releasing nitrates back into the tank. Some of this maybe true..... Although they do work and work well.

There have been numerous discussions about running biopellets and some say the return of the pellet reactor should go to the skimmer so that the waste can be skimmed out while others will say it should go near the return pump so when it breaks down can feed corals aswell as the fish.

I tried feeding mine to the return pump and had cyano algae from time to time, recently after a long discussion and looking at the display tank at JL, Jeff swung my decision and got me to reroute my bio pellet return to my skimmer. To my amazement my skimmer produces 2X the skimmate and it's very thick nog. Also no more trace cyano anywhere.....

I must say I am very happy that I talked to Jeff as he always has a wealth of knowledge and is always up to par with the newest equipment, also I run an algae scrubber that I am extremely happy with. Running the biopellet and algae scrubber in unison has given my tank a great combo for stripping nitrates and excess phosphates from the tank in a slow form that won't shock the sps.... Also I would like to add that I do dose Brightwells MB7 to introduce a newer bacteria culture every 2 weeks.

Hopefully you don't through biopellets out the window, maybe it was the gfo that stripped the phosphates so fast that yourmontis suffered, a few members have stated that gfo strips water clean fast which is why on a smaller system like mine I decided to go with a more natural route....

[Bblinks]

Couldn't agree more, nice post dude.

[whatcaneyedo]

Theres just one problem with that theory for my situation. According to my written records I've been using GFO steadily since 2008. In 2008 when I first tested phosphate in my tank it was .75, then with rowaphos I slowly made it undetectable. Since then I've maintained it low by changing out 1 cup of BRS GFO every month or two (My system contains about 240gal) In May 2010 everything looked the best it ever has and I received TOTM on this forum. In August 2010 and then again in March of 2011 I removed the GFO briefly and tried Biopellets. The first time it was 350ml and the second time 100ml. In each case I experienced bleaching immediately among the soft coral and then the montipora shortly after.

The Biopellets reactor wasn't discharged towards the return pump, just into the sump. My return pump draws about 2000gph and the skimmers pump might draw around 1000gph (PM Bullet 3 with Iwaki 70RT). So that could have been a contributing factor. However I think the main reason was that the tank was already an 'ULNS' with excellent growth, colour and undetectable nitrate and phosphate before I added the pellets. The pellets then stripped the last bit of Nitrate out which caused the coral to bleach.

I'm too Dutch to throw anything out so I sold the biopellets last year.

As I stated earlier, I had my system dialled in and running perfectly... then I tried to fix what wasn't broken... and then broke it so to speak. Now I'm trying to get things back the way that they were before the pellets.

[Bblinks]

I guess if that's the case, the pellets made the tank become ultra ultra LNS and if your alk was a bit elevated it can cause bleaching as this is what I experienced but what I don't get is given the length of time the pellets were online I don't think they will be colonized yet so I really can't see it being anywhere near functional unless you were boosting it with mb7 or zeobak or some other alternative source of bacteria. Since every thing is doing well again I think its best to just leave it alone. Stay with the good old fashion rowphos and carbon.

BTW I do highly believe in running your alk at a lower level when you have low nutrience, it just seem to be easier to cope with for sps since they don't have too much nutrition stored.

[tang daddy]

The biopellets take some time to colonize and get working fully as Rich mentioned.

Another thing is the gfo and high efficiency gfo are very different, but either way it's easy to shock and sps system regardless of it being any of the fantastic fours..... Biopellet, Carbon, GFO and VSV.

With that said I am like you and will stick with what I know which is bio pellets and ATS.

Atleast your sps is making a comeback like mine....

Happy to hear things are settling down and please keep us updated on progress!