Torn Between NOPOX or Biopellets

DipSpit · Mar 10, 2017

Hello everyone -

My nitrates have regrettably climbed to around 25ppm - I admittedly to like to feed heavy but I do want to keep these at 5 or lower. I test my parameters with Salifert test kits for all but Alkalinity (Hanna) and Magnesium (Red Sea)

Other levels are as follows:
dKh: 8-9 (Hanna)
Calc: 450 (Salifert)
Mag: 1400 (Red Sea)

Po4: 0 or near 0 (Salifert)
NH3: 0 (Salifert)
Nitrate: 25 (Salifert)
Nitrite: 0 (Salifert)

I have 2 options in front of me if decreased feeding (within reason) will not work:

Dosing Redsea NOPOX or implementing a biopellet reactor.

Opinions?

Matthias7 · Mar 10, 2017

I am currently using a biopellet reactor and I love it. Pretty easy to maintain. That being said I do have nopox on gabby as well but have not had to use it. Biopellets will be more expensive I believe but I don't have to worry about dosing and constantly chasing numbers

ThreeAces_1 · Mar 10, 2017

Im pretty sure the biopellets take a little longer than the NOPOX. I used NOPOX and keep a bottle at all times when my water changes get a little lax due to work and family. If you do want to go with a reactor def look into a nitrate reactor.

Salty1962 · Mar 10, 2017

A BP Reactor does that a couple of months to colonize the bacteria to a level that starts to reduce No3. Until just recently I used a BP Reactor, BR83, and it did help my No3 levels. So well that at some points I've had to add KNo3 to get my No3 @5ppm. You could go NOPX until the reactor started working and then just top off the reactor with more pellets every couple of months. JME
If you don't have a reactor yet, I have mine up for sale

DipSpit · Mar 10, 2017

Salty1962 said:
A BP Reactor does that a couple of months to colonize the bacteria to a level that starts to reduce No3. Until just recently I used a BP Reactor, BR83, and it did help my No3 levels. So well that at some points I've had to add KNo3 to get my No3 @5ppm. You could go NOPX until the reactor started working and then just top off the reactor with more pellets every couple of months. JME
If you don't have a reactor yet, I have mine up for sale

PM'd