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Fat starfish

Bio Pellet help

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by
Fat starfish
, 09-15-2011 at 04:28 AM (3009 Views)
Hey everyone,

Need some help. I've been running Biopellets in a phosban reactor for a month now with no reduction in nitrates. Flow is strong in the reactor.

My parameters are:
Nitrate 25ppm salifert
phosphate 0.00ppm Hanna
Alk 8.0 Hanna
Calcium 430 Salifert
Nitrite 0 API
Ammonia 0 API
Mag 1350 Salifert

The tank is about 3 years old. Nitrates have always been around the 25ppm, I have good water flow, two MP40's, very shallow sand bed, good rock placement ( not many dead spots) I stir sand every week and do 30 litre water changes each week with ro/di water (0 TDS) Red sea Coral pro salt. My tank is 600 litres. I run GFO, Carbon and Biopellets. I have filter socks which I stuff with cotton wool and change the Wool out every two day's.

I have seen a few article that state if your phosphates are too low, Biopellets won't work. Is this true?

Thanks for your help in advance.

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Updated 09-15-2011 at 05:20 PM by melev

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‎ NEED HELP STAT!

Comments

  1. Fat starfish's Avatar
    I also forgot to add that I run a Titan trigger skimmer with the outlet of the Biopellet reactor near the inlet of the skimmer.
  2. Myhahockeykid's Avatar
    Yep, the biopellets NEED to pull out phosphate along with nitrate. I'd pull the GFO (slowly) and even if they rise the pellets will pull them back down. I run the pellets and have 0 nitrates on a salifert (my sps are very light colored due to the lack of nitrate even though I feed 3x a day with frozen and then liquid coral foods every other night). My phosphate is 3 ppB. You need phosphate to get out nitrate with the pellets.
  3. stangchris's Avatar
    the gfo is ok to use. ive been using them for about a year and never seen them completly remove phospahtes. ive been using gfo with no ill effects. in fact the makers of np biopellets recomends using there po4x4 in conjuction with pellets. http://www.po4x4.com/Site/. what pellets are you using, how many ML of pellets. also there is a chance your flow could be to strong, and you could be blowing off the bacteria. people forget the pellets are a bacterial filtration thats alive.
    Updated 09-15-2011 at 10:41 AM by stangchris
  4. jlemoine2's Avatar
    From what I been told my local club chemist, bacteria growth with biopellets will drop nitrates 10.5ppm for every 1ppm of phosphate. 1ppm of phosphate is quite a bit by our standards. I would also stop using GFO as Myhahockeykid suggested. It might also be prudent to feed your fish more to help generate those phosphates.
  5. Fat starfish's Avatar
    Thanks for your help guy's,

    I'm using the two little fishes bio pellets. 400ml

    I'm gonna take the GFO online for a few day's and feed more to see if it makes a diffrence?

    I assumed that the bio pellets slowly de solve and that is how the bacteria gets into the tank to consume Nitrate?

    what level of po4 should I be aiming at?
  6. melev's Avatar
    The biopellets erode over time as the bacteria feeds off of it. It is going to take weeks, not days. So if you're tank is doing well, don't make big changes. If your tank needs issues corrected, that's different. Any PO4 is better than none, and remember there are two kinds, organic and inorganic. We only test for one kind. Additionally, my tank has read 0 PO4 for the entire seven months I've run biopellets so technically speaking there wasn't any available (theoretically).

    Feed more often in tiny portions, and give it more time. That's my suggestion.