High Tide Aquatics

biopellets and bacteria problems in sand bed

mediumrare

mediumrare

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Im considering stopping my biopellet reactor because i believe it is what is causing my sand to clump up with bacteria (never had that problem before running one. Anyone have experience stopping a biopellet reactor? I dont want to take the tank cold turkey cause of the saying "only bad things happen fast in reef tanks".
Also, anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with the bacterial clumping of the sand and growing all over the rocks? I have a big peice of live rock that i put in post biopellet reactor start and it is brown and look slimey and coreline algae cant manage to grow on it. Any thoughts?
 
I am not sure but Aquamaxx can be a rebranding of the same product as others like Warner, TLF and ATB. Dr. Tim's works well for me even with a 200gph pump. The other products clump up a lot and I do not have the time to flush it. I am experiencing what you are going through because I switched to TLF. You can increase flow or switch brand.
 
Marc Levenson of Melevs reef suggests that you plumb in your effluent directly into your skimmer pump so that any dead or dying bacteria isn't released into the tank and settled in the sand bed for that reason.

Here is the link he sent me on FB http://www.melevsreef.biz/node/196 and that's what I plan to do. He's been running biopellets for three years and he has had great success with them. That's what I plan on doing so I can feed my tangs.


Brandie
 
euod said:
I am not sure but Aquamaxx can be a rebranding of the same product as others like Warner, TLF and ATB. Dr. Tim's works well for me even with a 200gph pump. The other products clump up a lot and I do not have the time to flush it. I am experiencing what you are going through because I switched to TLF. You can increase flow or switch brand.
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The clumping is not in the biopellets itself, but its from bacteria (or alage) thats growing in the very top of the sand, causing the top few mm of sand to turn into a mat.
 
goldielocke76 said:
Marc Levenson of Melevs reef suggests that you plumb in your effluent directly into your skimmer pump so that any dead or dying bacteria isn't released into the tank and settled in the sand bed for that reason.

Here is the link he sent me on FB http://www.melevsreef.biz/node/196 and that's what I plan to do. He's been running biopellets for three years and he has had great success with them. That's what I plan on doing so I can feed my tangs.


Brandie
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This is what i'd also do if my setup allowed for this. Unfortunately due to stand constraints and small size of my system I am running biopellets in a AquaMaxx mini reactor which has no "out" hose. It just dumps the biopellet effluent out of the bottom of the reactor. I do have the reactor sitting in the same chamber as my skimmer.
 
mediumrare said:
This is what i'd also do if my setup allowed for this. Unfortunately due to stand constraints and small size of my system I am running biopellets in a AquaMaxx mini reactor which has no "out" hose. It just dumps the biopellet effluent out of the bottom of the reactor. I do have the reactor sitting in the same chamber as my skimmer.
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Skimmer probably gets most of it though :) next best thing, haha ^.^

Marc also recommends that the gph be between 300-500 gph to keep pellets from clumping, for the larger tanks. 200-300gph for smaller tanks, but he mentioned you want a nice vertex of pellets going so they work to their max capacity and less bacteria die off. Maybe the pellets aren't spinning fast enough?

I was going to go with the vertex brand of biopellets sold off of BRS. Not sure if the brand would make a difference, but I've heard good things about them, from both Marc and other users.

I also stopped my old BP reactor cold turkey on the 90 and didn't think anything of it. But mine wasn't working as it should because my pellets clumped and I was havin the same matting issues if the sand.


Brandie
 
mediumrare said:
The clumping is not in the biopellets itself, but its from bacteria (or alage) thats growing in the very top of the sand, causing the top few mm of sand to turn into a mat.
Click to expand...

What makes you arrive at that its bacteria making this mat?

FWIW if you are not exporting the bacterial flock from the reactor, you're really not doing it much good.
 
my alk is between between 8 and 8.5 usually. The stupid reactor i have it in makes it hard to export the flock efficiently that's why i want to slowly stop using it.
 
Sounds like you have a cyano or dino issue from the biopellets. You may want to try dosing microbacter7 daily in order to help outcompete the "bad" bacteria. That seemed to help when I was running biopellets.

When I added my new skimmer I lost the space for my biopellets, so I removed them cold turkey. I did start adding some vinegar to my top-off as a replacement for the lost biopellets.
 
my bio-pellet load was so low that i decided to just unplug it. I have been dosing prodobio every 2 weeks. Now onto the next problem...pyramid snails killing my black-foot trochus.

when it rains it pours..
 
have you tried dosing carbon instead of BP? I'm not anti BP but I am a proponent of "simpler is better" and dosing a liquid into the sump in my opinion is one of the most straight forward easy methods of dealing w/ nitrates in the water column. I dose vodka + vinegar, vodka directly into the water & vinegar gets mixed in w/ my kalkwasser and I've been doing this for over 6 months now, blooms happened early on & once when I got carried away with the amount I was dosing (vodka is one hell of a carbon source) but it's been smooth sailing so far with yet a single event where my measurements yield any result for either nitrates or phosphates, I measure at least twice a month with different kits, always zero.
I have no sump, only DT, a crappy skimmer and I don't siphon or clean any of my rocks or sand bed, 5 fish and a bunch of different corals. I am still amazed that I can grow SPS in this tank haha considering how crippled my set up is.
 
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