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Wes

Giving Biopellets a go...

Rating: 7 votes, 5.00 average.
16 Comments
by
Wes
, 08-20-2012 at 03:31 AM (12851 Views)
So I finally decided to take the plunge into bio-pellets even though there are mixed reviews out there. I had been debating it for months and trying to read up on the best way to go about it but could not make a decision. There were just too many options and the reactors seemed endless. Then I saw the larger pellets that didnt need to tumble, so I figured I would give it a shot and ordered two 500 ml Reef Interest bags with a Phosban reactor 550. The reactor had nice large grates to allow good flow and I like the 150 so it seemed logical.

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To get these added to my tank, I would need to rework some plumbing. After talking with Marc, the easiest way for me to feed the output of my reactor in to my skimmer was going to be using a new pump for the skimmer. Right now I have everything fed off a manifold and a Dart, but it actually was not enough flow anyways so this worked out well. I still used a manifold feed off the dart to supply water to the Reactor but used a new Eheim to supply the skimmer. This worked out really well as the eheim input casing allows you to easily hook up the output of the reactor to the input of the pump with a small modification.

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As you can see here, I took off the center cap of the intake grate and drilled a hole in it just big enough for some 1/2" tubing. I fit a coupler through it and secured it with a small piece of extra hosing. This allowed me to simply snap the hose on to the front of the eheim to send the waste strait to the skimmer. The Reactor came with adapters and valves to make the hookups really easy and after throwing a valve/union on the output of the eheim i was ready to go.

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In this last pic, you can see everything hooked up in my sump. Its a bit dirty, I know, but there is a lot down there! The top blue arrow is the feed line for the Reactor off my dart manifold and just to the right you can see the old feed line for the skimmer with the red x. The bottom left arrow is the new feed line for the skimmer where the reacor and eheim are sitting. Overall it came together pretty well, only problem is I have to dial in this stupid skimmer again! I have some Prodibio Bio products I will be using to help get things going and will update with how its working a bit later.

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Updated 08-20-2012 at 03:41 AM by Wes

Categories
‎ Plumbing , ‎ Water Chemistry , ‎ Equipment

Comments

  1. Midnight's Avatar
    Very cool, What type of skimmer do you have? Is that a beckett style skimmer?
  2. Wes's Avatar
    Its a Super reef octopus xp3000ext
  3. melev's Avatar
    Make sure you dose bacteria regularly. I know you are using Prodibio, which is every 15 days. Don't forget to add it, as it's really important with biopellets. If you have MB7 on hand, you can dose that on alternate weeks as well.

    I like the connection to the Eheim. It looks like it can get effluent water as well as water from the grated coverplate. Nice solution.
  4. Midnight's Avatar
    I have never dosed bacteria, but My bio pellets seem to be dwindling. Does dosing the bacteria kick start things or help give bacteria diversity?
  5. melev's Avatar
    You constantly add new bacteria to the tank when running NP pellets. Feeding is important, and bacteria. Some people dose it every three days, I try to get it done every 10 days. I've got Prodibio so I'm dosing that every 15 days - that's a write-up coming soon.
  6. Articfox32's Avatar
    Is it important to Dose bacteria? I have been running bio pellets for 3 months and this is the first time I have Hurd that I needed to dose them. What do you dose it with melev?
  7. Midnight's Avatar
    So Marc, you are doing both the Prodibio Dijest and the Prodibio Bioptim? I am assuming that you order the PRO boxes as they are menat for the larger tanks?
  8. melev's Avatar
    Articfox32 - At the very least, use Microbacter 7 every two weeks.

    Midnight - Yes, I'm using the Pro size vials.
  9. stangchris's Avatar
    ive been running bio pellets for over a year and never dose bacteria ..... now my tanks are heavilystocked with coral and fish, but ive never dosed bacteria...... nitrates stay undetectable
  10. maroun.c's Avatar
    I believe the logic behind dosing bacteria is a very valid one, in the end you are feeding bacteria and allowing it to multiply much faster than in a tank without carbon addition, the risk is having a bad strain of bacteria develop and be more efficient than good strains so eventually taking over. In the end we have loads of bacteria strains in our tanks but still why not maintain diversity by adding some more bacteria.
  11. Midnight's Avatar
    Well I ordered some Prodibio BioDigest from Premium Aquatics, None of the LFS's had it. I dosed some MB7, 1 capful per 50 gallons. I was dosing it regular for the first two weeks then stopped because I didn't think I needed it anymore. The MB7 is a pain to dose daily, especially since you have to turn the skimmer off for four hours.

    Question Marc, since I am running pellets I do not need to dose the Bioptim also?

  12. melev's Avatar
    I'm actually using the full gamut of Prodibio in my tank, so I'm using Bioptim as well. If you need some, I can send you a box as I have plenty.
  13. Midnight's Avatar
    See, now I am just confused. Everyone is doing something a little different. I guess I will need to wait for the article.
  14. melev's Avatar
    I'll see about getting that posted this week. In the meantime, I'll get some Bioptim in the mail to you. Remind me on Monday please.
  15. Midnight's Avatar
    Hey Marc that would be great let me know at manca how much shipping was and I will hook you up. I take it that one does not use nearly as much Bioptim? I guess I will stop asking more questions until the article come out. Since this blog entry started, I have been researching the hell out of the Prodibio and Zeovit methods and everyone has altered their method in some way. So there seem to be no definitive baseline on the subject. The Zeovit seems to have great results but it is a daily dosing regime and I wouldn't expect a tank sitter to do that for me.
  16. melev's Avatar
    Exactly, Prodibio is easier to dose. And yes, there are different amounts to dose per regimen, but the descriptions on the smaller packs can be misleading. Especially the multipack; it has 5 different products in it but the instructions are written as if they were all equal.

    You can buy me a margarita. They're gonna be cheap.