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FlammySnake

The Battle with Nitrate, The Role of Biopellets, and The War on Phosphate

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FlammySnake
, 07-11-2011 at 08:14 PM (2094 Views)
December 2010- My losing battle with Nitrate reaches an all time high, at an excess of 80ppm. An executive decision is made, and a spare phosban reactor is commissioned to begin running two little fishies npx pellets.
February 2011- Nitrates retreat to 20ppm, but not without taking its toll. In an event forever to be known as the St. Valentines Day Massacre, the reef begins a trend of sudden death starting at 1 am, ending at 5 am. Casualties include all mollusk life, one fish, and multiple coral colonies. Suspiciously enough, all hermit crabs survive, unscathed.
July 2011- Re-evaluating the water change regimen in prior months, weekly 20 gallon changes have finally worked with the Biopellets. Nitrate has been defeated. Finally at 0ppm per API test(which is honestly good enough for me).

Now, the question is, will I be able to mantain this without the Biopellets and only the water changes?
And how should I go about finishing off this cyano once and for all? Gfo? Even more water changes?! Every problem solved brings about the next battle in line.

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Updated 07-12-2011 at 11:47 PM by melev

Categories
‎ Water Chemistry

Comments

  1. melev's Avatar
    If you run biopellets, don't use GFO. Why would you stop using biopellets now that the NO3 is zero? I run them and love that my PO4 and NO3 continue to read zero month after month after month. I don't have to worry about overfeeding my tank, ever. Macro algae grows well, yet no nuisance algae in my reef.

    For cyano, I would run Chemi-Clean. Siphon out all you can before treating the tank, then dose it and let it kill the stuff. Your skimmer will pull out all kinds of nastiness 72 to 84 hours later. http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-get-rid-of-it
  2. FlammySnake's Avatar
    The cyano has only been around for the past few months, and it leaving coincided with the biopellets being taken off line for a few weeks. During said time, nitrate was stable. And with my 20 gallon a week water changes, roughly once a month the entire volume of water has been exchanged. With the nitrate gone, I would really like to eliminate phosphate from the system before restarting the biopellets.
  3. melev's Avatar
    Biopellets should get rid of both, but you can use Phosphate Control (or Phosphate Rx) to turn them to a solid and export the stuff via your skimmer. Biopellets take a few weeks to populate with bacteria, so I don't know that waiting to put them online is a good plan.

    I just got in some new BioSpheres from Reef Octopus to try out, and they recommended I keep my current pellets online, and run these as well then at 3 weeks, turn mine off.
  4. FlammySnake's Avatar
    I've actually tried mixing different pellets(tlf and vertex) and found the tlf pellets didn't get air bubbles attaching, hardly floated, and didnt clump, the vertex however did the exact opposite.
  5. melev's Avatar
    I was told BioSpheres don't have to tumble. Vertex do. So... the need for another reactor.
  6. matt_longview's Avatar
    Marc this is a question about your comment more than the situation. So considering biospheres don't need to tumble, what's the optimal gph to send around them? If it can be low enough, biospheres may be an excellent alternative for picos and nanos that don't need hundreds of gph heading through a reactor.
  7. melev's Avatar
    Checked the packaging of the BioSpheres and it says "keep them simmering" so that isn't exactly tumbling. I'll get a new reactor next week to install them on my system.
  8. Mits's Avatar
    Tumbling was always my problem with pellets. I could barely get them to move in a Phosban reactor 150 with a Maxijet 1200.
  9. melev's Avatar
    That's because that isn't the right reactor for NP pellets. You want a reactor designed to fluidize pellets.
  10. Mits's Avatar
    Yeah, right when I was giving up on the Phosban reactor I started seeing articles about pellet reactors hitting the market.