Algaescrubbers and biopellets?

[Floyd R Turbo]

I heard about that one - which brand was that?

Also IIRC iiluisii you told me that you were using the BP from Werner Marine? Was that it? The one that is going for FDA approval?

[Ace25]

Reef Dynamics was the first one to make a recirculating bio-pellet reactor. I have seen a few more come out in the last few months, but I credit Reef Dynamics for the concept and design. You probably saw it the same place I did, on LA Fishguys page.

http://www.reefdynamics.com/category-s/257.htm

[Floyd R Turbo]

I knew it was an LA Fishguys episode...I recall talking to Jim about it a while back. he's still waiting to get one of these 'donated' to him so he can do an episode on them. I think he hand-makes these one at a time. Sounds familiar...

[Garf]

Bit baffled about the "stripping the nutrients" comment. Surely just lob a load of food in !

[iiluisii]

Reef Dynamics was the first one to make a recirculating bio-pellet reactor. I have seen a few more come out in the last few months, but I credit Reef Dynamics for the concept and design. You probably saw it the same place I did, on LA Fishguys page.

http://www.reefdynamics.com/category-s/257.htm

Ace im sorry but u are wrong about bio pellets. One the reciculating reactors were made for bio pellets like npx an all those other pellets other than ecobak or np pearls by dr tims because they suffer clumping which ecobak and np pearls dont. Recirculating reactors are bad one cause you are suppose to gentle flow pellets for them to function right.
Here is jon warner the owner of ecobak eplaining it on an other forum.


I understand the logic in a recirculating reactor but it's probably not necessary for ecoBAK and I will explain why.

Every major company to offer a "bio pellet" in the USA obtains that biopolymer pellet from the same source (ecoBAK comes from a different source working closely and exclusively with Warner Marine). One of the characteristics of these pellets is the stickiness one encounters when running these pellets. So people end up running higher flow rates to keep the pellets from clumping together. So the concept of a recirc reactor allows you to separately control both the aggressiveness of the tumble and the water flow through the reactor. This gives more or less contact time inside the reactor.

But an aggressive tumble is bad news for biopellet users and may explain the plethora of bad reviews from users of competitive pellets. High flow rates and aggressive tumbling strips biomass off the surface of the pellet (remember a pellet is BOTH a food source AND a media to grow bacteria). When the pellet surface is stripped a new layer of bacteria grows on the surface until it again is stripped. You will end up with biomass in the system, possibly on the rocks or substrate where it may lead to Cyanobacteria or algae issues. In addition, this aggressive strip and regrow cycle causes cloudy water and frequently a rapid drop in PO4 or NO3 which may damage or stress corals or fish.

ecoBAK has a different physical composition and a different crystalline structure at the microscopic level.

In your post you say "...the concentration coming out would be greater then using a regular flow reactor with a small feed pump." I just wanted to clarify a common misconception. Other than some small amount of biomass, NOTHING comes out of a reactor other than water. ecoBAK does NOT "dissolve" to provide Carbon for a system. The biomass that does come out of the reactor will either be skimmed, consumed or settle out in a system.

ecoBAK has little problem with clumping (other than the first few days) and works just great in any reactor supporting a GENTLE tumble including the RD recirc reactor.




If you PM me the name of the store I can help the store keep ecoBAK in stock.




That's great news but I can't say I'm surprised. The first adopters of ecoBAK were service people. They noticed that when they used ecoBAK on customers systems the aquariums just "looked better" and the client noticed the cleaner system. So happy clients began asking their service personnel to bring out more fish and coral or to go ahead and do that LED lighting switch they'd been talking about. And in the retail store environment cleaner systems means healthier animals and customers more willing to buy livestock. And a retail store that uses this kind of technology to maintain a healthy system is truly cutting edge and an asset to the community.

I wince when I hear people give hobbyists advice and "caution" them against using biopellets. When used properly (and ecoBAK has a lot of margin for error) it's nearly an auto-pilot way of keeping the aquarium clean and healthy. I've been keeping marine aquariums for 35 years and I believe that ecoBAk is on the top 5 list of products to make marine aquariums successful for the average hobbyist.




I can't speak specifically for the RD pellets... I can say they're not made like ecoBAK but other than that I prefer not to directly talk about a specific company's product. It's easy to change brands of pellets to ecoBAK. Just remove the old pellets and replace with ecoBAK, maybe 1/3 to 1/4 the total recommended amount with another 1/3 to 1/4 added weekly.

[iiluisii]

Also were do you get this yo yo effect from. The onlything that happends is you might get a bacterial imbalance and get cyano to show up but all u have to do is use some special blend or waste away to balance it out.I believe bio pellets are the future in the reef aquarium business. Also I would like so see a member here with a scrubber only sps reef mature aquarium because I have not seen it. I believe also for a succesfull sps reef multiple filtrations are required ie skimmer, scrubber and pellets. Also ACE some of the bio film that the pellets release its good for corlas as its food for them

[iiluisii]

On something like a 400G display tank, that would require a HUGE algae scrubber to solely handle the filtration, which for most people would be impractical. So for large tanks like that you can use 2 methods like bio-pellets and a smaller algae scrubber because neither is going to be able to handle the filtration by itself, but together it could work if both are sized properly. On a 100G or smaller tank, trying to dial in the screen size with the small amount of bio-pellets that would be required would be a big headache IMO and make the water unstable for quite a while until you find the proper balance. Can it work, sure, but on a smaller tank an algae scrubber can handle the vast majority if filtration without needing to resort to carbon dosing. Most of the time I am not a fan of carbon dosing because it just wreaks havoc on a system until you get it dialed in, and it can take 6 months to a year just trying to dial in bio-pellets on a small tank, put an algae scrubber in the mix while doing that and that is just too much instability for my taste.

Also dont see what are you saying here it should be the same on a small or big tank actually it will be more beneficial on a small tank do to less water volume and usually people overstock their tanks so more nutrients. Big tank or small dose not matter that why they have different quantities to use and thats why there's guide line for the scrubber unless the guidelines are just a joke.

[Garf]

Multiple filtrations are what I've plumped for, makes sense to me.

[iiluisii]

I think you are confusing PaulB who has the horzontal scrubber at the top/back of this tank with Amfyn (or however you spell it) who has the sunlit tank in South Africa

Floyd im talking about paul brune

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...totm/index.php

[Ace25]

I have used EcoBak many times.. they clump like any other pellet, they have caused my tank to crash twice, once using them in a TFL reactor, once in a BRS reactor. I am talking from experience. Like the video stated, running pellets in a reactor 'full bore' is bad and he explains why, and what causes the 'yo-yo' effect.