Opinions On Switching From Zeovit To Biopellets.

[Stnbrgn]

Hello everyone, I'm newish to this forum and have yet had time to post my build thread to this forum so until that happens I'll go over a few details regarding my system. The tank has been up and running for 5 months now, and I've been using the full Zeovit system since I started the tank in late April.
Tank Size: 300g 72"×36"×27"
Water Volume: 400g
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
Alk: 6.8
All my other levels as of right now are all at natural seawater levels and stable.
I don't have many corals right now but plan to do an sps only reef in the future but want to add all my fish before I add more coral. I plan to have a heavy bioload and I'll be feeding alot.
Now to the question, the cost of running the zeovit system for my tank totals roughly $2000 a year in additives and chemicals, and thats just for the basics.
Now I've been pondering the idea of switching from Zeovit over to biopellets, as after the high initial cost of the reactor the following upkeep cost is very minimal. I've used Zeovit in the past with great success and i still plan to use there additives for colouration if I switch to biopellets.
Anyone else running biopellets in there reef with good results? Any thoughts, comments or suggestions are welcome.

 

[Nighthawk26]

Following.

 

[Kman]

I get some people have results with the Zeovit line. But based on my experience with a huge assortment of products over the years including Zeovit it is a complete waste of money. Any time I have tested a product form Zeovit I have seen very little to no difference. In fact what little i might have seen could and probably was done\caused by something else. You can have healthy vibrant coral reef tank if you stick to proper husbandry practice for a fraction of the money.

If you do choose to do carbon dosing I recommend Nitra-Guard. I hate and I mean hate messing with bio pellets as they cause nothing but problems for me. Nitra-Guard is easy to use with a fraction of the hassle. You don't need any fancy reactor to run them in. All you need is the bag that comes with it and a air pump and air stone. Boom done!

http://www.nitraguard.com/

 

[zoomster]

+1 with Kman on the pellets.
I have a 120g tank , 70g sump and 25g fuge.
I used them for over a year and think they caused more problems than good. Slowly weaned my tank off them and went with some cheap "nitrate sponge" and mangroves. 0 PPM NO3 for over a year now
On mangroves and $35 worth of the nitrate remover. Oh and good husbandry - reg water changes
Just my .02$ worth.

 

[Stnbrgn]

I get some people have results with the Zeovit line. But based on my experience with a huge assortment of products over the years including Zeovit it is a complete waste of money. Any time I have tested a product form Zeovit I have seen very little to no difference. In fact what little i might have seen could and probably was done\caused by something else. You can have healthy vibrant coral reef tank if you stick to proper husbandry practice for a fraction of the money.

If you do choose to do carbon dosing I recommend Nitra-Guard. I hate and I mean hate messing with bio pellets as they cause nothing but problems for me. Nitra-Guard is easy to use with a fraction of the hassle. You don't need any fancy reactor to run them in. All you need is the bag that comes with it and a air pump and air stone. Boom done!

http://www.nitraguard.com/

I've used Zeovit in several other tanks with very very good success. Of all the other carbon dosing systems I've found it to be the best however now with such a large tank, the price of stones, zeostart, bacteria etc add up quickly so I'm looking to use a method that would be as good for a slightly cheaper cost to run.
All regular husbandry is taken care of with regular weekly 45 gallon waterchanges. I pride myself in keeping my tank very clean, more so than most i would say, but I still require the need for Carbon Dosing. That being said I have looked into the nitragaurd product but to be honest the thing that really turns me off is the need to run airline and media bags in the sump. I like my sump looking like a show peice just like my display tank so I'd prefer to stick to something I can place in a reactor or possibly dose as I have several dosers. Thanks for the opinion

 

[Stnbrgn]

+1 with Kman on the pellets.
I have a 120g tank , 70g sump and 25g fuge.
I used them for over a year and think they caused more problems than good. Slowly weaned my tank off them and went with some cheap "nitrate sponge" and mangroves. 0 PPM NO3 for over a year now
On mangroves and $35 worth of the nitrate remover. Oh and good husbandry - reg water changes
Just my .02$ worth.

Could you please go into a little more detail on what problems they caused, reactor you used etc, as I know alot of people have bad luck because of low quality reactors with biopellets or atleast so i've read. Keep in mind I won't be using the biopellets alone for all the dentrification process as I have a larger skimmer, ATS, and numerous other biological media to help reduce nitrates.

 

[Kman]

I've used Zeovit in several other tanks with very very good success. Of all the other carbon dosing systems I've found it to be the best however now with such a large tank, the price of stones, zeostart, bacteria etc add up quickly so I'm looking to use a method that would be as good for a slightly cheaper cost to run.
All regular husbandry is taken care of with regular weekly 45 gallon waterchanges. I pride myself in keeping my tank very clean, more so than most i would say, but I still require the need for Carbon Dosing. That being said I have looked into the nitragaurd product but to be honest the thing that really turns me off is the need to run airline and media bags in the sump. I like my sump looking like a show peice just like my display tank so I'd prefer to stick to something I can place in a reactor or possibly dose as I have several dosers. Thanks for the opinion

I process my tank by natural means with a large refugium with macro algae and\or mangroves and use Cryptic Zone Filtration for my nutrient processing. The darker area fosters things like sponges, sea squirts and other cryptic life like fanworms to process organics, nitrates and phosphates. This method is highly effective so products like Zeovit are just not needed by me. I myself only need and use carbon dosing in the early stages of my tank being set up. Once my tank is over a year and a half they have to come off as they do nothing but cause slime for me. My skimmer even comes off and only comes back on if i have a issue that i want to solve.

For sure Zeovit is more costly the larger the system you go and is not the cheapest option for larger tanks that is for sure. You should also look at natural means to filter your water so you don't need to rely on products to help cut costs. I use bare minimum products and i have no issues with growth or color for my tanks because of the way i set them up.

The common complaint with bio pellets is clumping and the constant fine tuning of water flow. I had to daily mess with higher and lower flow and had mine clump constantly when they hit a high density of bacteria and would go through a bacteria bloom. Worse the bacteria gets to the high density and it will start releasing the bacteria off the pellets into the water column. So coming home to a cloudy tank from it was a regular occurrence. To cut down on this I placed the output of the reactor where my skimmer pulls water in. But this didn't help much. I don't like high maintenance hardware or methods so for me I was not a fan. They do work for some people though don't get me wrong. I found the larger the tank the more media i needed and the more issues i had. I would have been better off getting two smaller reactors and split the media then use a larger reactor like i had. To me that would have just added extra costs that were not necessary. I know it wasn't flow that caused the issue as i had so much i had to use a ball valve before the factory ball valve so i could reduce and fine tune the flow.

 

[Skim]

If you are getting cloudy water and it is not clearing up, remove some pellets. Cloudy water is a sure sign of too many pellets. Forget about following the instructions. Start with half of what they recommend and just let it do its thing. When you think its starting to do its thing, start taking some Nitrate readings and see if they coming down, they may get to where you want running half of what they say and if you find it stopped dropping and you want to go lower add only a small amount. The only thing is it will take time, your looking at a month just to start and another month to see what is going on then you can fine tune. If you keep going with the cloudy water you will end up with Cyano or White fuzzy build up on rock work and both are a pain to get rid of.

 

[BIGSHOW]

You can run the nitra-guard in a reactor with a skimmer pump, this is what I do. IF your interested Marcus, I have a dual Vertex Reactor setup that I used on one of my systems for the Nitra-guard but have since removed.

 

[Bayinaung]

I think you want to think about what you use the zeolite stones and biopellets for. Those are bacterial hosts for processing nitrogen and phosphates. There are many alternatives for that. It's been shown biopellets do not provide the most space for hosting bacteria as live rock nor zeolites and other alternative biomedia such as matrix, siporax, marine pure, and live rock (provided surfaces are open and not covered in coraline, etc). From what I am reading Nitraguard is NOT a hosting media but rather a carbon source. So if you're removing one media for bacteria to host (zeolites) you'll want to add another media.

Zeovit system dosing includes bacteria and a carbon source for them that they won't identify. A few articles allude to that. So bacteria source and their food carbon source can be substituted with alternatives accordingly. There are good reasons for regular bacterial additions due to a belief that some bacteria will grow faster than others and thus potentially crowd out them out in an enclosed reef system.

 

[Stnbrgn]

Just to clear things up, I have quite a bit of natural biological filtration, of which are:
- 320 lbs live rock
- 270 lbs sand
- 2x 8×8×4 MarinePure Blocks
- 5l Siporax
- Refugium w/ Cheato
I dose different Bacteria strains weekly (Zeobak, MB7, Prodibio), and that will continue regardless of wether i Carbon dose or not. I'd just like to save some money on the costs of the full Zeovit system. I've used biopellets in the past on an older tank and had great results while I could keep the pellets tumbling. So now the plan is to use a recirculating Biopellet reactor so I can control the effluent entering the tank so I can control how much nutrients the biopellets consume. I'd my skimmer, algae scrubber etc to take most of the load while the biopellets take care of anything that is left. I have enough zeovit produces to last me till the end of December so I'll have to slowly switch everything over from there.
Anyone have experience with recirculating Biopellet reactors?

 

[Stnbrgn]

You can run the nitra-guard in a reactor with a skimmer pump, this is what I do. IF your interested Marcus, I have a dual Vertex Reactor setup that I used on one of my systems for the Nitra-guard but have since removed.

Thanks for the offer Dave, after a bunch of research I've decide i want to give biopellets a go, i like tinkering with the tank so I doing mind taking the time to perfect the balance.