Bio-Pellet?

as a person new into this hobby should i aim to get a bio-pellet reactor? or stick with gfo and carbon reactor i have?

also was thinking maybe running all three. if one pump has the gfo and crabon the other pump can handle bio-pellet

 

Stick with GFO & Carbon for the time being.

A bio pellet reactor CAN be a swell addition once your tank is established and has or will have a heavy bio load. BP reactors can wreck havoc in an established tank with lots of fish and coral that has a decent amount of nitrates by decreasing it TOO quickly! The bio pellets also will introduce nutrients back into your system (this is OK) but you'll need a skimmer that's +1 for your environment to make sure it will now be able to handle that as well.

So, depending on what kind of set up you have (or intend to have) you may or may not need one. If you plan on having a ton of fish and would like to feed heavily, so they're all fat n happy, then yeah, it could be a good idea, also dependent on the size of your tank.

In a sm or med size reef, you "shouldn't" need one. Money would be better spent on a great skimmer from the get-go.

Also, it will help us out a lot if you give a description of your entire system before asking why you may or may not need something. I'm just saying, not being a jerk. You'll end up with more thorough replies.

 

I agree with Fat. Keep it simple.

 

agree with above but after having the bacterial oxygen depletion i had with bio pellets i say stick with gfo an carbon forever, and if you don't have a refugium add one if possible .

 

Well said pink, well said. Simple yet effective.

 

If your are planning on running bio pellets there will be no need to run gfo. once the bacteria builded up in your bio pellet reactor it will take care of your phosphates as well. just be careful like other have said your have to take it slow to much to fast could harmful.

 

I agree except that you can control the amount of Bio pellets you are running. ie. you don;t have to run the "recommened" (remember recommended by people who make money from your buying more pellets) dose. In fact, I am only about 4 weeks in with pellets on my 100 gal and I used a quarter of the regular dose. My Cyano went away very quickly and my skimmer did start doing more. If you do this, just make sure the pellets continue to tumble or you could run into what pink did. Not fun at all! Also, there was a link around here somewhere with a thread that tested 4 tanks, one running vodka, one with just carbon, one with just GFO and one with bio pellets. The pellets kicked the socks of the other 3. If you do bio pellets, you won't need GFO anymore. Pellets take both nitrates and phosphates out of the system and need both to do so optimally. WOW, this reply got long..... good luck!

 

my pellets where tumbling fine. i was using a aquamaxx bio pellet reactor. that did a great job at tumbling pellets. my pellets were also at about half of what size they were when i started using them. they needed a refill. my nitrates were almost zero.... and still are after weeks of turning the pellets off and just wet skimming. while using pellets i still had phosphates and had to use gfo or the liquid phosphate remover to remove them.
for those who are thinking of using pellets i say tread lightly. they are not the answer. look how many threads are out there where people had problems, and thats just the people who will admit to failure...
the owner of a local fish store warned me against them. i wish i had listened. he said he wouldn't use them to many people had told him of problems from them. a few weeks later i added to his list of people.

 

I feel that the bio-pellets work well if used correctly. Some people have had trouble with lack of oxygen due to their tanks being overstocked. Once the bio-pellets were added, the bacteria combined with the overstocked tank depleted the oxygen. It is never a good idea to overstock your tank and even a worse idea if you are using pellets unless you compensate for the oxygen used by the bacteria.

 

Sorry you had a bad experience. Frankly, there are way to many success stories versus credible crash stories. Yours is one of the first credible crashes I have heard of. There are also many different brands of bio pellets out there so lumping them all together is probably not the right thing to do either. The instructions to the bio pellets i used said to stop running GFO. Again, many different pellets would have several other instructions but it appears, in the case of the bio pellets i use, that you need both Phosphate and nitrates to run them and lowering one more the the other is not the way to go. If you run very low Nitrates (wet skimming could do that, but many would say it also removes many more beneficial bacteria at the same time) then bio pellets wouldn't help you because they need the nitrate for the bacteria in the reactor to "consume" the phosphate. Out of curiosity, which type of bio-pellets were you running?