N/P Reducing Pellets ("Solid Vodka") - "Wow" ... 3 month update

[Delphinus]

I am starting a review thread for the new pellet product people are referring to as "solid vodka dosing".

For more background info, check out this thread in the Oceanic Corals vendor forum here: http://canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58523

Some background: I'm trying these pellets on a mixed reef with a high fish load that I feed heavily (Further details at the bottom of this post). Between the addition of a pair of butterflies who get fed frozen mysis daily, and a pygmy eel this fall who has a voracious appetite, I have been noticing nitrates start to climb as high as 30. So I was very interested in this product when it became available.

So why a combination of these pellets with zeovit and not just one or the other? To be honest, I'm not sure. I just wanted to try it. For one, I had been meaning to consider going back on zeovit anyhow - one thing that always impresses me with zeovit tanks is just how clear the water is.

I am certain that these N/P Reducing Pellets would be more than adequate on their own for nitrate and phosphate reduction, I'm just hoping that the combination of zeolites and N/P pellets in the reactor will be an aggressive nutrient reduction system so to allow me to continue the feeding schedules I've established with the tank residents.

So, what's a thread without pictures. This maybe has nothing to do with the product being reviewed, but on the other hand, if an experiment isn't reproducible, then it's not science. So without further ado, here is the reactor I am using:

The exterior shell:


The inner chamber, with zeolites but before adding the N/P pellets:


I meant to buy 5.5" diameter acrylic but was sold 5" by mistake, so I had to add the top flange to keep the inner chamber from wiggling side-to-side excessively.

The original version of this reactor had the water flow over the top edge, I added a PVC elbow for the output and ground down the inside so the inside chamber could still "pump":



I also constructed an intake manifold for the feed powerhead so that dosing is introduced directly to the reactor (not shown is the standpipe that fits into the "T" piece, the standpipe is where the zeovit additives get dropped):



Detailed tank information follows:
- 115g cube tank (30x30x30)
- Approx 80 lbs live rock arranged in a bommie, or "rock island" style aquascape
- 1" sandbed (about a 4" wide strip surrounding the bommie)
- no refugium (previously was running chaeto in a small aquaclear lit by 2x9w PC; but this is now offline, the chaeto was the first algal casualty to the pellets)
- 2 part autodosing for Ca and Alk, Mg dosed manually
- Skimmer: Precision Marine "Bullet 1" beckett
- Light: single 250w DE on 12 hour photoperiod

Fish inhabitants (currently 15):
- Tangs: Zebrasoma desjardini (Red Sea sailfin), Acanthurus tennentii (lieutenant), A. nigrofuscus (lavender)
- Rabbit: Siganus doliatus (penciled)
- Angels: Centropyge potters (potters), M/F pair Genicanthus bellus (bellus)
- Butterflies: pair Chaetodon ulietensis (doublesaddle or false falcula)
- Wrasse: Halichoeres chrysus (canary)
- Dottyback: Psuedochromis fridmani (orchid)
- Eel: Gymnothorax melatremus (golden dwarf moray)
- Trigger: Xanthicthys mento (crosshatch)
- Chromis: Chromis viridis (green)
- Blenny: Cirripectes stigmaticus (ember or scarface)

Other inhabitants:
- Various tridacnids (T. derasa, T. crocea, T. squamosa)
- Various ps gorgonians
- Various zoanthids
- E. quadricolor (rose BTA)

Currently no SPS or LPS (would be butterfly food).


More info to come...

[Delphinus]

So the pellets arrived December 23, here's a gratuitous picture of them in the bag:


I think they look like white lentils.

For a 115g tank, I am running 1/2 litre zeolites, and 1/2 litre of pellets. Both of these are half the recommended dosage for this approximate volume.

Now, the results:
I put the pellets and zeolites reactor online on December 24, after a 25% water change and replacement of carbon.

I am measuring nitrate with a Pinpoint NO3 monitor and I recalibrate the probe prior to each use, currently on the high range setting (10 to 100ppm).

Day 0 (following the water change): NO3 = 17ppm


Today is day 4, and I took another nitrate test.

Day 4: NO3 = 14ppm

So, 4 days in and already appears to be a slight reduction of nitrate.

I will continue to post back results every few days.

[Delphinus]

For what it's worth, one potential "con" to running the pellets in the manner I have chosen is this.

The pellets are porous (as they intended to be). This means when dry they will float. The zeovit reactor I am using has a check valve but it failed after 2 days (possibly due to a pellet lodged in it, I haven't yet had a chance to investigate the reason).

I was initially running the reactor on a 3 hours on / 3 hours off cycle (as per zeovit prescriptions). However with the failed check valve, the water level would drop back down to sump level which is approximately 1/4" lower than the top of the pellets, so 1/4" of the pellets would dry out during the "off" cycles. These would float up to the top of the reactor at the start of the next "on" cycle and ended up in the sump, some of which ended up getting sucked up into the sump return pump and spat into the display tank.

I'm not worried about the pellets in the main tank, they will eventually dissolve, but it's disappointing that there is a non-zero percentage of pellets are not in the reactor as was intended.

The pellets are also small enough to fit through the holes of the reactor and fall through to the outside chamber when the inside chamber is "pumped."

So there is a case to be made to suggest running these pellets in a separate reactor with a strainer on the output, such as a Phosban reactor.

[StirCrazy]

Hey Tony, how are you explaining the reduction happening so fast when the manufacture says it will take two weeks for the bacteria to build up on the pellents and start giving you a noticable reduction?

Steve

[don.ald]

i understand you want the NP to tumble, but just a thought: could you put the NP loosly in a media sack and agitate them with the daily cleaning of the zeolites? since you are using both zeo and NP would this maybe be enough?

[Tom R]

With Zeovit you have to change out the rocks every 8 to 12 weeks. Are you going to also change out the N/P Pellets at that time?

Tom R

[RuGlu6]

Thank you for starting this thread Tony,
You are doing a favor to all of us by testing these pellets, because if they Do work it will be huge step forward in reef keeping.

I spend a lot of $ monthly to fight NO3 and PO4, so i hope this will work as advertised!

[andestang]

This is great Tony. I can't really tell from the pic of your reactor, but do you have an inner chamber like how I made mine which actually holds the zoevit media so it doesn't bind during shaking ? Maybe you could make a separator plate for inside the inner chamber or it looks like these pellets won't bind during shaking you can modify so they are on the outside of the inner chamber by drilling appropriate size holes for water flow. Make sense ?

[andestang]

Ok not funny, the pic of the inner chamber didn't load when I first read the post back to this

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by wayner

So are these pellets suppose to replace the need for zeo rocks in a zeo reactor?, or are we taking different types of bacteria here., if this is the case, then I suppose one would have the option to just dose a color enhancing product or anything else for that matter without the need to pump the reactor daily and change out rocks periodically as these pellets disolve over time..

Sounds easier, but maybe I don't have this down right just yet?

Hi Wayne: Yes. And No.

Here's how I see it. It's probably the same bacteria that colonizes the zeolites as well as the pellets. The pellets are really more of a direct replacement for vokda dosing, which is a sort of "halfway to zeo" method. Vodka dosing is adding a carbon source so that bacteria can consume the carbon and the "side effect" is reduction of nitrate and phosphate, but it involves daily dosing. Supposedly the best vodka dosing is a mixture of vodka and then occasional vinegar and occasional sugar as well; the problem is none of those come with "reef tank dosing instructions."

These pellets are a passive carbon source so it eliminates the need for daily dosing of carbon (via vodka or whatever).

So if your only goal was nitrate (and/or phosphate) reduction, you should theoretically be able to run these pellets on their own.

So this begs the question, why am I doing both these and zeo? And the answer is something I don't really have firm grip on. Both methods intrigue me; so why not try both? But one reason I can enumerate is the water clarity you get with zeo. Zeo tanks never fail to amaze me for their water clarity, you can pick out a zeovit tank at a glance for their water clarity. The colours pop more too if you have SPS, but I don't, so I can't really say that it makes my corals colour up more, but I dig the water clarity.

So (I wonder how many paragraphs in a row I can type in that start off with "So"), I hope to see a "best of both worlds" in this approach.

Hope this makes sense.

Originally Posted by RuGlu6

Thank you for starting this thread Tony,
You are doing a favor to all of us by testing these pellets, because if they Do work it will be huge step forward in reef keeping.

I spend a lot of $ monthly to fight NO3 and PO4, so i hope this will work as advertised!

No worries and I agree. NO3 and PO4 are the biggest nuisances, when I saw these pellets come available I knew I had to try them. Not many new products get me very excited, I tend to think a lot of them are overhyped, but this one really does seem promising. And although it's pricey, it's really in the same ballpark as things like GFO for PO4 reduction, but it does nitrate too, so in the end it may actually be a slightly more economical option. I hope so anyhow.

Originally Posted by andestang

This is great Tony. I can't really tell from the pic of your reactor, but do you have an inner chamber like how I made mine which actually holds the zoevit media so it doesn't bind during shaking ? Maybe you could make a separator plate for inside the inner chamber or it looks like these pellets won't bind during shaking you can modify so they are on the outside of the inner chamber by drilling appropriate size holes for water flow. Make sense ?

Hey dude, save some of the good stuff for me there! Yeah, as you figured out, I put an inside chamber in the reactor. I'm a little miffed at the store I got the smaller tube from, I distinctly asked for 5.5", we talked about how it would have to form a tight fit inside a 6" tube and blah blah blah and he said he had a broken tube so could sell me 12" of it - otherwise he'd charge me for a full tube so after all was said and done, even though I wanted more like 14"-15" I settled on 12" (although that still yields close to 3 litres if my math is any good, so it's fine in the end) but I was just so annoyed when I saw a 1/4" gap all around when I put it all together. I don't have a router so making the top flange using a table saw and a dremel was an interesting and noisy exercise (and a little bit dangerous .. little bits of acrylic were flying all over the place being spat out by the table saw) and the end result is ugly to boot. But oh well, it's functional, and that's the more important aspect.