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

[whatcaneyedo]

How do these look for some before and after pictures? I tried experimenting with biopellets on and off a little bit about a year ago. At first I used the minimum recommended amount which I ceased after a month. The second time I used 1/3 of the recommended minimum amount which I also removed soon after. In each case almost immediately my soft coral bleached and some of my LPS faded in colour. These montipora faded a little bit as well but while the other species slowly recovered once I ceased using the pellets these montipora have not. They're both sort of in stasis, they aren't recovering and they haven't yet died completely.

My system is 5 years old, 240gal, lit ~8hrs daily with 250w 14K Phoenix bulbs on HQI ballasts, I do 10% weekly water changes with IO, Seachem and some Mg salts. 1 cup of carbon changed monthly and 1 cup of GFO changed every two months. Supplementing is done by Kalk and Ca Reactors. Aside from a variety of fish food no additional products are used. Nuisance algae and slime consists of valonia and a little cyano in the sand. Water chemistry is this today and only fluctuates a little bit from month to month (I keep records):
Ca 430 ppm
KH 10 dkh
Mg 1300 ppm
Nitrate and Phosphate undetectable for years with hobby grade kits
Salinity 1.025
Temperature 78 F

I'm thinking there are three things that I can do. I could retrieve some frags of these from some friends tanks and try to start over with them. I could continue the waiting game to see if what I have left will eventually recover. Or I could try some kind of bottled miracle product if someone could recommend one to me.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/Montipora.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9099.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/Montipora3-1.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9104.jpg

[Reef Pilot]

Why would you use bio pellets if your nitrates and phosphates are undetectable?

[whatcaneyedo]

I was following the hype about them on this site and on RC which is still going on today. I thought that by using them I would no longer need to use GFO. I thought that some of my acro frags which have never done much growing would suddenly take off like the others. It now seems common sense to me too that I never should have bothered with them. If its not broke don't fix it... well I tried to fix it and I broke it.

[Reef Pilot]

Well, they worked for me, but in my case I had nitrates as high at 100 ppm. Down to less than 20 now. Really cleaned up my tank, too. No algae or cyano. I just have LPS and softies, and they all seemed to like it.

I have heard of corals getting bleached after bio pellets. Perhaps they need a trace amount of nitrates/phosphates, and the bio pellets depleted them too much.

Also, more recently, some people have reported coral bleaching and dying after use of Kent carbon.

[whatcaneyedo]

My carbon and GFO come from BRS. Both were purchases a year ago, the GFO is the regular granular and the carbon is fine lignite.

I believe that over depletion of nitrate and phosphate was the case too. However I do feed my tank heavily. 1/6 nori sheet daily, Formula one pellets 3 times a day (amounting to 1/2 tsp I think), a cube of PE Mysis 3 times a day and a 1"x2" slab of silversides or krill every second day.

[Zoaelite]

My guess is they are too far gone.

Your system is clearly doing very well, time for some new frags :razz:. I had the exact same problem when my ALK was raised too much while running the pellets, lost that exact same green cap and burned the crap out of all my tips.

Biopellets went in the garbage alllonngggggg time ago.

[Reef Pilot]

Wow, and I thought I was a heavy feeder. Surprised you can keep your nitrates down with that.

I have seen pics of your tank,... very nice.

[Casey8]

My carbon and GFO come from BRS. Both were purchases a year ago, the GFO is the regular granular and the carbon is fine lignite.

I believe that over depletion of nitrate and phosphate was the case too. However I do feed my tank heavily. 1/6 nori sheet daily, Formula one pellets 3 times a day (amounting to 1/2 tsp I think), a cube of PE Mysis 3 times a day and a 1"x2" slab of silversides or krill every second day.


whatcaneyedo, you are my friend :razz: I don't think you are overfeeding them. They are just like humans. If you feed me once or twice a week, I still survive but am I happy ? I don't think so ! Maybe I can maintain my weight without needing to hit the gym everyday :mrgreen:
Anyway, I used to run bio pellets for about 6 months and the last couple months I had used, it almost killed/bleached all my sps corals. Since I switched to Vodka dosing, I can say I am happier than ever before. No algae, phosphate or nitrate. I don't even need to clean my front glass everyday like I used to. My cheoto cannot even grow an inch bigger in a month.

[Reefie]

Have you tried dosing Potassium?

My Monti Caps were getting bleached and weren't growing and I read on the ZEO forum to try K-Balance.

I was on the full ZEO, but have switched to the Vertex Bio Pellets about 2 months ago.

Since then they have coloured up and are growing new ridges.

http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/zv-kbp0250/ZEOvit+Pohl%27s+K-Balance+Potassium+-+250ml.html

I only dose half the amount because I dose some other ZEO stuff.

It might not hurt to give it a try?

[raceit]

Hey Guys, so you I read on the forums where some guys are talking about the water being stripped from bio pellets. How do they determine this, what numbers are they looking at?

[Reef Supplies]

I've seen this too many times :-(

IMO BP's should only be used if Nitrates and Phos are to high. The number 1 rule in BP use is slowwwwwwww. Start it slow...looks like that's what you did. I would start at 1/4 but 1/3 aint bad.

Something else is happening here...hmm odd.

[Bblinks]

Hey dude, I had the same thing happen to me a while back due to a spike in alk. I went from 7-8 dkh to 11dkh and right of way I lost 4-5 colonies. IME and also a few reliable sources, when running the pellets I try to keep my alk arund 7 ish, just like all the other probiotic system(zeovit, prodibio, etc) once your no3 and phosphate are getting close to zero with an elevated alk levels it is much easier to bleach your sps. Also I think if you have a good habbit of keeping your water prestine condition, not overfeed and over stock, I don't think you shouldn be runing pellets. I have quite a few fishes in the tank and I like to feed heavily so the pellets really keep things inline for me. I feel that if some thing is working for you there is no need to change any things.

[whatcaneyedo]

I checked my records from 2010 and 2011. The first time I tried the pellets in 2011 my KH was at about 11dkh and the second time in early 2011 it was 8-9dkh. However I usually keep it up at about 10dkh as it helps to keep the systems pH a little bit higher. ~8.1 in the summer and ~7.9 in the winter.

I haven't tried potassium yet but I think I'll give it a shot. My other two Montipora colonies are still a bit light in colour but at least they continue to grow.

I have several fish with eating disorders so I need to ensure that they are well fed. My CBB will experiment by nipping at new coral if it doesn't get 3 feedings a day. The powder blue tang will consume soft corals if it doesn't have a constant supply of nori. And the snowflake moray gets a little too adventurous if it isn't sated three times a week.

[Reefer Rob]

I don't think it's still the bio-pellets. The orange monti you brought me is doing well. I don't really want to say Nudis, but could it be possible?

If your colony doesn't perk up in 6 months you could break a piece off mine.

[Bblinks]

I checked my records from 2010 and 2011. The first time I tried the pellets in 2011 my KH was at about 11dkh and the second time in early 2011 it was 8-9dkh. However I usually keep it up at about 10dkh as it helps to keep the systems pH a little bit higher. ~8.1 in the summer and ~7.9 in the winter.

I haven't tried potassium yet but I think I'll give it a shot. My other two Montipora colonies are still a bit light in colour but at least they continue to grow.

I have several fish with eating disorders so I need to ensure that they are well fed. My CBB will experiment by nipping at new coral if it doesn't get 3 feedings a day. The powder blue tang will consume soft corals if it doesn't have a constant supply of nori. And the snowflake moray gets a little too adventurous if it isn't sated three times a week.

Hmmmm intersting, so are you still running pellets or not? If you are why don't you try to lower the alk to 7-8 and leave it for a bit and see what happens. Potassium level and iodine both can be measured, as much as we like it is only speculation if we don't test. With amount of fish and your feeding schedule I don't think you have any issue of producing nitrate and phosphate but I am still convinced it has some thing to do with mass nutrience reduction and elevated alk level.

[freezetyle]

what kind of reactor are you running the pellets in?

aside from lowering your alk like Bblinks suggested, you could lessen the amount of pellets in your reactor. I think i remember reading your tank journal a while back and you liked to tinker/DIY things. you could always repurpose an old calcium reactor or mod a tlf reactor to function like a recirculating biopellet reactor

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2140954

[whatcaneyedo]

I stopped using the pellets last March (2011) when things started to decline. It took several months for my sinularia and sarcophyton to recover but these montipora continued to worsen to the point that they are now.

I haven't seen any nudibranches. My other two montipora colonies while faded, continue to grow and have not recessed. They received slightly less intense light which I attribute to their survival.

[Coleus]

i experienced that when alk is high the montipora does bleach fast. However, only the purple but not the red and green

[Madreefer]

I did a tank reno about a month ago and gave some red monti away and threw alot out. It's doing pretty good in my tank and growing well and if you want you can have a chunk. Let me know

[1eyedjyde]

If you do another reno and are just tossing out some of that monti just let me know and i'd be glad to take some of your hands. :biggrin:

I did a tank reno about a month ago and gave some red monti away and threw alot out. It's doing pretty good in my tank and growing well and if you want you can have a chunk. Let me know

[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.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9219.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9220.jpg

This is one of the small frags that I salvaged. I believe it was one of the ones pictured on page 1.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9224.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9226.jpg

In this older picture you could see how pale the green with purple rim montipora was versus how it looks now.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh109/whatcaneyedo/IMG_9118.jpg

[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!