biopellets- who has had luck with them

bowkry · #1 10-02-2010, 02:40 PM

I am running vertex or was, I did slowly add them. No I used to run zeo so I know do not go by there labels 1/4 what they say. All I was adding exta, sponge power, and amino acids 2 drops every 3rd day, and I only feed my tank ever second day, use ro water so the only place the algae came from is bad salt or the pellets, and it the same salt I been using, The only thing I have changed I added a few frags and a wave box

SeaHorse_Fanatic · #2 10-02-2010, 02:56 PM

Did a snail die or something else?

bowkry · #3 10-02-2010, 03:30 PM

no nothing has died Oh sory I lost a tiny tiny goby I think he got sucked into the wave box but he was under an inch or my flamehawk ate him

kien · #4 10-02-2010, 04:36 PM

They seem to be working for me. Ive been using them since January and my nitrates and phosphates are still near zero. I have a huge bio load and feed 2 times a day (flakes and frozen). I do not use any additives other than alk and calc. I run them in a vertex-20 reactor and have a mix of the original bio pellets and vertex pellets.

whatcaneyedo · #5 10-02-2010, 05:52 PM

I tried out 100ml of Vertex pellets on my 200gal system for the month of August. I started with undetectable levels of nitrate and phosphate and that did not change. However because I ceased running GFO (normally I run a cup monthly) my macro algae which was in stasis exploded with growth. I had a minor bacterial bloom that lasted about two days. Around the middle of the month most of my soft coral began bleaching and some of my LPS began loosing color. By the end of the month I removed them and went back to GFO because the softies were completely white. The whole time I did notice an increase in skimmer performance and an increase in cyano on my sand. Everything else appeared to stay the same. Its been a month since I've gone back to normal and some of my softies still haven't completely recovered but the LPS are nearly 100% again. Most of the cyano has disappeared.

I also change 1 cup of carbon monthly and did 5-10% weekly water changes. I run a calcium reactor and a kalkwasser reactor but otherwise don't add anything except food to the water. Occasionally I'll add Selcon, Garlic or Vite Chem to the food.