Filter media Gfo vs bio pellets

[Kurkis493]

Did you feed the bio-pellet reactor into the protein skimmer?

The pellets break down over time and something along the lines of "snot" comes out of the reactor. Feeding this directly into the skimmer allows it to get removed from the system. The more of this that makes it into the actual display, the more nutrients you have to feed things like cyano...

I have also experienced bio-pellets to work best with higher bioloads. If you have a 120 gallon system for example with 5 fish and you feed flakes once a day... Biopellets may not be the answer for you.

Sometimes it takes a little extra to kick start things and in this case I have used sugar dosing in the past. Sugar can be stressful on LPS so you need to watch things but I have dosed sugar in my system until I got a small bacterial bloom in the tank. At that point I stop dosing the sugar and allow the bacteria find its way into the reactor where it can feed off the pellets.

I've personally had great success with bio-pellets and some GFO. Right now I use a Zeovit system on my 120 gallon but when I upgrade to a 225+ in the next year or so I intend to go back to biopellets as a cost effective way to carbon dose.

 

[cougareyes]

I did, It's a 210 fowlr probably about 160 water volume, I installed it as a precursor to a heavier bioload. My skimmer is an Eshopps for 300 gallon, it's a work horse, I dumped out with an elbow right at the input. I started with 1/4 recommended for 160 water volume. It's a biomaxx and I had it adjusted to what I thought would be perfect. I am also running chemipure blue, at present my bioload, nitrates, and phosphates may have been too low. Over the years I have obviously dealt with cyano, I've usually been able to determine the cause and course of action, and it usually ran its' course without ever having to treat. This reminded me of fish dying behind the rocks but the balance never came, maybe 2 months was not enough time. Sad thing is I bought 2 setups on sale and now they are in my junk room. I combined my 3 nano reefs to a 90 gallon and just kept my dwarf lion fishes; I now have a fuzzy, fu manchu, and antennata; a zebra is going into quarantine this week. That's a heavy bioload and I was hoping for the help with the biopellets; but now I am very reluctant to add it to my reef.