Bio Pellets?

Coralline, Poolkeeper1 has had his bio pellets running for that period of time and has an Immaculate tank. his just gently tumble and his water looks non existant. I have had mine running for approx 3.5 weeks and I can already see a noticeable change in my water. it appears much cleaner. mine gently tumble in a dual brs reactor.

also, if you are running a ULNS (Ultra Low Nutrient System) you need to keep the ALK low. he keeps his in the 8 DKH range or you will rusk burning the tips of the acro's. I can speak first hand for this as my ALK went thru the roof recently and with the pellets kicking in, i burned up several of my corals. I am now just below 8DKH hoping my corals recover.

 

great info ...i have never read about keeping the dkh low and this sounds important.
my dkh always runs on the high side 12-14 (running kalk) is there a way to bring the dkh down and keep it lower?

 

Very much appreciated Pickupman!

Can someone elaborate on the reason you keep the alk lower. Do the bio-pellets in some way exponentiate the alk effects.

For some reason I can not wrap my head around the need to run a lower alk. Sorry for the hi-jack mirandacollc. : I get that you get alk burns, but why and how does the alk level of 7-8 affect the pH. If you change one parameter value will not the rest react accordingly. What is the target magnesium level???????

 

No worries corriline. Anyone else not being able to open video?

 

The short answer is that no body knows what the mechanism is for alk burn with ULNS. There are some guesses, but no data. This is not a bio-pellet thing, this is a low nutrient thing.... which of course bio pellets can put you in that catagory, but don't think of it as a issue with bio pellets.

Bottom line is that IF you have excellent water quality, and IF you have excellent light, and IF you provide excellent nutrition.... THEN if you jack up your Ca and Alk then perhaps you can achieve excellent grwoth. However, there is no need at all to have your ca and alk jacked way up. The Great Barrier Reef was built on natural sea water with natural levels of Ca and Alk.

Ca is not so harmful, but Alk can be. Keeping Alk levels at more reasonable levels gives room for error. Your kit maty tell you you have 14, but you might actually have 16. I always shot for the middle of the recommended range just for safety alone. 7-11 is recommended by most chemistry gurus out there. I wanted to stay right at 9.

You don't have to do anything to lower it, just stop dosing a little over time and let it naturally fall. However, don't do anything quickly. You have plenty of time.... you can just let it come down over time and none of your inhabitants will be the wiser.

Oh ya... and while alk can effect PH... PH is not a function of Alk... it is a function of many variables... my PH was always a rock solid 8.3 at 9dkh.

 

Sorry... last thing about elevated Alk.... most coral farmers do not jack their numbers up. For economy most around my neck of the woods went by NSW. So if my alk was jacked way up, then most stuff I brought home would be burned... and acclimation for a few hours is not enough. Nothing likes drastic changes. Something to think about.

 

Been running Ecobaks 3 months now in a next reef reactor with slight tumble(though supposedly isn't needed for these).

PO4 is 0 and NO3 is at 1ppm. Been this way for some time even before bio-pellet introduction. I'm seeing tissue color loss at the base of my Acro's and on two particular Frags overall color. My KH has been 7.85 for weeks without much fluctuation, maybe .2. I rose it to 8.6 over the last few days and will try running it there to see if there's any change.

Corailline had a link with a brief discussion of the correlation between bio-pellets and alkalinity. I can't provide it with my Phone. Supposedly it isn't possible to overdose with bio-pellets but if that's the case, why do the instructions state an amount to use for a given size tank?

 

Good point!

 

work?

 

Yep... and that's about all the flow I had on my pellets. Just enough to know they were not clumped together.