Who is having success with the biopellets?

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

OK one year update on using EgoBak Pellets.
I have 180 gallon mixed reef tank. That I could not keep clean for more than a day or two. So Jon sent me some EgoBak to try out. I started with 1L of pellets in May of 2010 and in November of 2010 I added 500ML more because I used up 500ml in six months. Now in July I need 1L again. I do have them tumbling ever so slowly.
My tank in the last year has been very clean. Now I have been all most out of EgoBak for the past two weeks and I do see some brown showing up on my tank. Yes I did call Jon and ordered more 1L. I hope to have by Friday.
EgoBak Rock my Tank! This is one of the best products I have used in this hobby in more than 15 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Way to go Jon Warner!

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

Remember that pellets need to tumble ever so slowly. I have mine tumbling all most to a stall. The slower the better. If they move to fast all you are doing is washing off the bacteria and they will not work.

Curtie44 · Jul 5, 2011

I started with 1000ml of EcoBak pellets back in Aug of 2010 with high hopes of finally tackling my nitrate problem. So far I have not seen any significant reduction in nitrate. No matter what I do I am always around 15-20 ppm No3. About the only change I saw was a huge cyano bloom. In March I supplemented my reactor with 500ml of the BRS pellets and have not seen any improvements. I was dosing MB7 all along, except for about a 2 month stretch when I ran out and didn't get an order placed. I'm not sure if I should continue running them 'till they are completely exhausted or just take them off line now because obviously they are not working for me.

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

Curtei44 are your pellets tumbling very slowly all most to a stall? If not then you have to much flow and you are washing off bacteria. The pellets can not seed that way.

Just Clownin Around · Jul 5, 2011

i use wm on my breeder setup and was able to remove about 60 to 70 lbs of live rock. had the going for about 6 months and just had to top off the reactor. i use a nextreef reactor and am happy. my skimmate production more than doubled and it comes out like tar. smells like well you know.

Curtie44 · Jul 5, 2011

buganddoug said:
Curtei44 are your pellets tumbling very slowly all most to a stall? If not then you have to much flow and you are washing off bacteria. The pellets can not seed that way.

Yes, very slowly tumbling, using a NextReef SMR1 reactor with a MJ1200.

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

Okay give this a try. Try to slow down the pellets even more all most to a stall. give it a week or two and see if your numbers are coming down.

Dowtish · Jul 5, 2011

I starting using Ecobak from WM with a new setup. I starting running them right after the tank cycled. I have yet to have any detectable nitrates and my phosphates are 0.00-0.03 (hanna checker) for 6 months now. I feed heavy and have 12 fish and plenty of coral in a 80 gallon tank in 6 months. I have had no algae of any kind on my rock. I also run sumpless and use a canister filter for the pellets....tell me these things don't work!

Curtie44 · Jul 5, 2011

buganddoug said:
Okay give this a try. Try to slow down the pellets even more all most to a stall. give it a week or two and see if your numbers are coming down.

I'll give it a try. I have an MJ400, maybe I'll swap it out with the MJ1200 I'm using now. That should slow things up considerably.

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

That sounds good Curtie44.
A good starting point for pellets is 100 gallons per hour. The size of the reactor and the amount of pellets will make that starting point go up or down.

OMG Corals · Jul 5, 2011

Been running brightwell katalyst for over a year now. Very happy with the results. No detectable levels of nitrate or PO4. Very happy corals and I can feed my fish without causing an algae bloom

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk

buganddoug · Jul 5, 2011

A good friend of mine is running 500ml of WM Pellets and has a MJ 400 with his reactor. He put a valve inline to slow his pellets down. He now loves pellets and took off line the GFO. That was about 6 months ago. He was ready to give up on pellets untill he did what I told him for about six months. LOL

Curtie44 · Jul 6, 2011

buganddoug said:
That sounds good Curtie44.
A good starting point for pellets is 100 gallons per hour. The size of the reactor and the amount of pellets will make that starting point go up or down.

I put the MJ400 on the reactor tonight and now there is no tumbling at all...I'm not sure the 400 is going to work here. I'll probably have to put the 1200 back on and throttle it back with a ball valve. I'm going to give the 400 a few days to see if it causes the media to clump together. If it does, I'll switch back to the 1200; if not I'll let it go for a few weeks to see what happens. Even with the 1200 on without any restriction, the surface just barely moved. It was such little movement that I was concerned that there wasn't enough action. I'm skeptical that flow is having any influence on the lack of performance in my situation but I'm willing to experiment.

buganddoug · Jul 6, 2011

If you have been using GFO that will also slow down the seeding of the pellets. I would put back on the MJ1200 and use a valve to throttle it back so you can fine tune your reactor with the pellets.