Bschowa's current build thread (1 Viewer)

[marty9876]

For the refractometer everyone I've ever seen has doom and gloom warning about not calibrating to zero with Ro, warn against it.

With no first have experience I'm talking out my you know what but going pale and such is a common report of low nutrients. That said the ocean has less than anything we could get to in our glass poop boxes and with the soft doing fine makes you wonder.

Focus and double check the basics. Maybe 10% water change a day for 4-6 days. Don't go crazy in any one direction but do something measured and prudent.

 

[LowersMyBP]

How are the pellets tumbling in there? Any chance they are clogging and if that happens, isn't there sulfur-something-another that builds up?

I have never had really low levels, so I can't really help if that is really the issue. I mean, you are only feeding TWICE per day! Marty would say, "for shame!"

 

[Bschowa]

Pellets are tumbling very actively, just below the point where they get shot out of the reactor into the filter sock. The lowest I can get the effluent is 100ml every 3 seconds. I'm thinking going with Marty's reactor might be a bit oversized for my tank (I think it is rated for up to 600 gallons of I remember correctly)

If it is low nutrients that is causing it then perhaps I need some more fish, the amount of frozen I feed twice a day is already way to much for the 2 medium sized and 8 small fish that I have (for reference the yellow tang I got from you is the biggest thing in my tank

Tested all of my chemistry again last night with my api and Red Sea tests and all seemed good. I'm going to change out carbon tonight even though I just did it last week but that's worth a shot. Only thing I'm still unsure about as I don't have multiple backups for is my salinity so I will work on that today

 

[Jonty]

You really need a recirculating reactor for the pellets so you can tumble the pellets and have a reduced and controlled output of effluent.

 

[Jonty]

Bring your alK down to 7 DKH

 

[Bschowa]

This is my reactor setup, the bio pellet is a 6" cylinder which I am finding out is way oversized I will stop dosing Alk and let it drop down to 7dkh

 

[Jonty]

Those are not AIO biopellets FYI

 

[Bschowa]

So that means they shouldn't be stripping my phosphates correct? It's been about a week since I turned off my gfo and I still have yet to see any algae or phosphate in the tank. Do you think I would be better off taking the bio pellet reactor off line and just going with carbon and gfo?

 

[Bschowa]

Duplicate

 

[marty9876]

The typical answer is any form of biopellets can strip the tank, they fundamentally work the same (carbon dosing source). AIO have GFO baked into them and reports are they are more effective on po4. There are plenty of reports of biopellets not being able to keep up along with reports of biopellets stripping systems. Since you had previous success with biopellets I was hoping this would work great for you. With all things in this hobby, what works in one system may or may not work in another. And to keep it interesting, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.

I've read a number of times adding a few more fish really helped helped the colors for folks corals, or at least that's the answer I always liked hearing... Keep at it, you'll figure it out. Just don't listen to Jonty, ever!

 

[eschulist]

I'm going to say too clean with too high of dkh. That GFO reactor has a TON of media.

This was my tank with biopellets, gfo, and red sea coral pro salt (11-12 dkh) Similar dying looking corals, thin tissue, patchy tissue loss, little color. Also was early in the lifecycle of the tank compared to yours.

I switched to the regular salt (7dkh) stopped gfo completely and reduced my pellets. It took a few months to recover but the white corals that had thin white tissue finally thickened back up and regained color. I'm now up to 6 fish (in a 12 gallon tank) and feed frozen food everyday. The biopellets still seem to keep the nitrate and phosphate low with no algae. The dissolving pellets and bacteria are extremely efficient.

 

[Bschowa]

Bring your alK down to 7 DKH

Thanks for the advice, you haven't failed me wrong yet no matter what Marty seems to think lol i did a bit of research and am wondering if your reasoning for this is due to the low nutrient level a higher alkalinity has a worse affects on corals vs if you have higher nutrients you would want a higher Alk

Am I on the right track?

 

[Bschowa]

The typical answer is any form of biopellets can strip the tank, they fundamentally work the same (carbon dosing source). AIO have GFO baked into them and reports are they are more effective on po4. There are plenty of reports of biopellets not being able to keep up along with reports of biopellets stripping systems. Since you had previous success with biopellets I was hoping this would work great for you. With all things in this hobby, what works in one system may or may not work in another. And to keep it interesting, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.

I've read a number of times adding a few more fish really helped helped the colors for folks corals, or at least that's the answer I always liked hearing... Keep at it, you'll figure it out. Just don't listen to Jonty, ever!

That was my understanding as well, and I didn't mean to call you out if that is how you took it, don't get me wrong that thing is a beast and works amazing. In just over 5 weeks of getting it dialed in it has brought my tank from being a algae factory with when I was able to test my nitrates or .23 and phosphates .18 to undetectable

I still have the option of bushing down the size of the intake and effluent lines I'm just nervous I might cause another leak but I think I just need to add another 300gallons of water (just need Kaci to talk to Jonty again since that's all it takes to upgrade or buy expensive equipment with her approval apparently) thanks Jon!

Otherwise your add more fish option is a valid one as well.

 

[Bschowa]

I'm going to say too clean with too high of dkh. That GFO reactor has a TON of media.

This was my tank with biopellets, gfo, and red sea coral pro salt (11-12 dkh) Similar dying looking corals, thin tissue, patchy tissue loss, little color. Also was early in the lifecycle of the tank compared to yours.

I switched to the regular salt (7dkh) stopped gfo completely and reduced my pellets. It took a few months to recover but the white corals that had thin white tissue finally thickened back up and regained color. I'm now up to 6 fish (in a 12 gallon tank) and feed frozen food everyday. The biopellets still seem to keep the nitrate and phosphate low with no algae. The dissolving pellets and bacteria are extremely efficient.

That was the recommended amount for my 150 gallon tank on the corallife gfo I got for free. but yes it did seem very full. I think I might completely take the gfo offline and use that as a second carbon reactor so that I can switch them out faster and stay on a more regular schedule.

 

[Bschowa]

On a side note bleached corals are not truely dead until they have algae growing over them correct?

 

[marty9876]

From what I've read higher nuturents the higher alk, lower the nuturents the lower alk one generally wants to run. Zeolite systems for example run way low alk.

I wonder if you could switch out the motor on that thing, many times the blocks are interchangeable working a size or two up or down. Just twist off one and twist on the new one reusing the shroud and such

 

[ChristopherKriens]

On a side note bleached corals are not truely dead until they have algae growing over them correct?

This is confusing because people use the term "bleach" to refer to two different scenarios.

1) The colony expels the majority of its zooxanthellae, which accounts for most of the pigment and results in a coral that appears whiter because it has become semitransparent.
2) The colony has lost is polyps and base tissue, exposing the white skeleton underneath. This is like Indiana Jones stuff.

The former is recoverable and the latter is not, although there are some edge cases in the second case where euphyllia, fungia, etc. will recover after a long period of time. It is safe to say that if algae is growing on portions of the colony, that portion is generally dead.

 

[Bschowa]

None of them have any algae growing on them but most have turned white, and polyps have receded. I will leave them in until I start to see algae grow over

 

[Jonty]

Thanks for the advice, you haven't failed me wrong yet no matter what Marty seems to think lol i did a bit of research and am wondering if your reasoning for this is due to the low nutrient level a higher alkalinity has a worse affects on corals vs if you have higher nutrients you would want a higher Alk

Am I on the right track?

It for me seems to be a low nutrient/bio pellets system issue. I do not fully understand the mechanics but every tank I have had running Biopellets seems to thrive @6-7DKH anything above that an I have issues with corals losing color and bleaching out.
The Biopellet reactor you are running is a really nice unit and you should have no issue adjusting the pellets so they just gently churn and turning down the effluent to a trickle. once a week turn up the churn and effluent to give the pellets a good scrub for 5 min and then reset back to normal operating levels. Shoot for nitrates of around 1-2 and PO4 of .02-.05 and your tank will rock. This will also mitigate any Cyano issues you may have that result from excess Biopellet nutrients in the tank. Just my 10 cents...

 

[Jonty]

Oh and stop running GFO till PO4 creeps up and then slowly restart the GFO if biopellets can't keep up. AIO pellets make life a little easier for me as I don't need to run GFO in its own reactor any more