Anyone still using biopellets?

[pompeyjohn]

If so please describe your system, and which media you are using. Thanks.

[pompeyjohn]

I guess not.

[tanacharison]

I was one of the few on here that used them and stopped over the summer. 

[pompeyjohn]

Was your tank bare-bottom and primarily SPS? My experience with them was in a such a system. Maybe it was the lack of sand, or maybe it was how stripped the water was, but that tank was really hard to keep in balance.

[tanacharison]

Mixed reef with sand. I found it also really hard to keep stability in check. I also hated them in the plumbing set up I had at the time and I often sent biofilm into the display during maintenance. I would do it again but the entire system would be built around them. 

[pompeyjohn]

Interesting. I never had the biofilm issue. I wonder if having a remote large deep sand bed would have helped with the stability. I feel like there is still potential for them to be a great solution. Like you said though, you need to build the entire system around them.

[Tamberav]

I used to use them so I could overfeed the system, worked fine but it was another thing to maintain. I would use again if I decided to set up a mandarin tank so I could overfeed like crazy and make pods breed. Haven't needed anything that strong otherwise.

[_ST]

Yes, in my old 60 gallon setup before I decided to add a display refugium. The tank was running for 6 months successfully with no fluctuations whatsoever. Only decided to add the display ‘fuge cause I felt like it haha.

 

Tank was primarily a mixed reef, had the biopellets running since day one of the setup and was one of the best investments I’ve made in the hobby in terms of keeping down nitrates and phosphates. I overfed as much as I wanted to, fish and corals were thriving and growing like no other and started the tank with dry rock, along with an over sized Skimmer and filterfloss for mechanical filtration. Never had any algae problems except for bryopsis, but I figured that out by dosing small amounts of hydrogen peroxide to the tank until it was completely gone.

 

Recently getting back into the hobby and starting up a 20 gallon Nuvo Peninsula, I am once again incorporating Biopellets as I had such great success with them before. I believe in order to utilize them properly, one must install the reactor and biopellets day one of the initial startup, let the tank cycle and let the biopellets run nitrates to zero without any water changes. I also believe people use too much initially when adding to an established system, causing it to go into shock since this creates a form of imbalance to an already established tank.

 

I forgot what brand I used before, I only remember the logo having two fish, koi fish I believe to be swimming around each other but I may be completely wrong. The brand I’m using now is Two Little Fishies NPX bioplastics in an Auqa Gadget Desktop sized reactor.

 

Hope that helps~

[Sancho]

well shit  I guess i just bought a reactor for nothing

[_ST]

4 hours ago, Sancho said:

well shit  I guess i just bought a reactor for nothing

Lets be positive here!!! Lol

 

im all for biopellets, and I’ll still encourage you to use them. Just start off with a very small amount to get the bacteria rolling and not stripping the water of so much nitrate and phosphate too quickly. How big is your tank and what are your parameters? What are you keeping and what brand are you planning to use?

[pompeyjohn]

8 hours ago, _ST said:

Recently getting back into the hobby and starting up a 20 gallon Nuvo Peninsula, I am once again incorporating Biopellets as I had such great success with them before. I believe in order to utilize them properly, one must install the reactor and biopellets day one of the initial startup, let the tank cycle and let the biopellets run nitrates to zero without any water changes. I also believe people use too much initially when adding to an established system, causing it to go into shock since this creates a form of imbalance to an already established tank.

in your 20 are you going sand or barebottom?

[_ST]

On 2/16/2018 at 10:49 AM, pompeyjohn said:

in your 20 are you going sand or barebottom?

Sorry for the late reply, I could’ve sworn I wrote back but guess not lol.

 

Just like in my previous setup, I am using sand. I never liked the bare bottom aesthetic tbh plus the albedo effect given off by the sand makes the tank look much, much brighter.

[banasophia]

On 2/16/2018 at 1:56 AM, Sancho said:

well shit  I guess i just bought a reactor for nothing

Did you get the biopellets up and running? If so I’d love to hear how it’s going. Just read about them today and I’m hoping they might be good because I do love to feed my fish and my sun corals!!! Thinking of trying it out in my Biocube 16. 

[paneubert]

I ran biopellets in the past, and I plan to run them again when I set up my 40B.  So count me in as another (apparently rare) user on this site.  The tip/trick I would make sure you know is that they are best utilized by having the output either directly into, or very close to a skimmer.  They will work fine however you use them, but getting the biofilm from them into a skimmer is going to give you peak performance.  

[banasophia]

@paneubertThanks so much! After checking around I decided to go with NOPOX instead... same idea (feeding denitrifying bacteria) but the guy that thought it would be a better option for my tank (my fish sitter while I was on vacation) explained that the biopellet reactors need more maintenance, pellets can get stuck, and NOPOX is pretty simple to dose once/day. I removed the chaeto and light from my back chamber, added some additional matrix media instead, and ’m on day 3, we’ll see how it goes. 🤞