Biopellets, what am I doing wrong (long term cloudy water)?

[Kaludar]

So I have a 65G tank, which is fairly new, I've been running about 4 months now. Initially I started with some pretty high nitrates after my cycle completed. I was at about 80ppm, I got it down to 40ppm through heavy water changes and wasn't seeing much more progress so after talking to the guys at the LFS I decided to start running some biopellets.

The pellets have worked pretty well in terms of lowering my nitrates, as of a few minutes ago I am sitting at 4ppm. The problem I'm having is that it is clouding my water. Now I have read that biopellets can cause a cloudy water issue that lasts for a few days and then dissipates from the bacterial bloom, but this has been an issue going on 2 months now. I started out using half of the recommended dose of pellets, and the bloom got pretty bad so I cut it way back. I am now running roughly quarter of the recommended dose for my tank and my water is less cloudy but its definitely still there. I have a pretty decent protein skimmer and I have the output of my reactor pointing directly towards the input of the skimmer, although it is not hard plumbed in.

The skimmer was producing a LOT of skimmate when I was using the half dose, and has since tapered off quite a bit after reducing my pellet dose but its definitely still skimming off bacteria. I'm kinda at a loss on what to due at this point, I am a bit anal about water clarity and its driving me nuts seeing hazyness in my tank. Has anyone else faced similar problems?

I also have a bottle of NoPox sitting around that I toyed with using before trying the biopellets, should I give that a shot, or should I just shut the reactor down and see if my water clears up and then decide how to handle my nitrates from there?

 

[Iván Olalla]

So I have a 65G tank, which is fairly new, I've been running about 4 months now. Initially I started with some pretty high nitrates after my cycle completed. I was at about 80ppm, I got it down to 40ppm through heavy water changes and wasn't seeing much more progress so after talking to the guys at the LFS I decided to start running some biopellets.

The pellets have worked pretty well in terms of lowering my nitrates, as of a few minutes ago I am sitting at 4ppm. The problem I'm having is that it is clouding my water. Now I have read that biopellets can cause a cloudy water issue that lasts for a few days and then dissipates from the bacterial bloom, but this has been an issue going on 2 months now. I started out using half of the recommended dose of pellets, and the bloom got pretty bad so I cut it way back. I am now running roughly quarter of the recommended dose for my tank and my water is less cloudy but its definitely still there. I have a pretty decent protein skimmer and I have the output of my reactor pointing directly towards the input of the skimmer, although it is not hard plumbed in.

The skimmer was producing a LOT of skimmate when I was using the half dose, and has since tapered off quite a bit after reducing my pellet dose but its definitely still skimming off bacteria. I'm kinda at a loss on what to due at this point, I am a bit anal about water clarity and its driving me nuts seeing hazyness in my tank. Has anyone else faced similar problems?

I also have a bottle of NoPox sitting around that I toyed with using before trying the biopellets, should I give that a shot, or should I just shut the reactor down and see if my water clears up and then decide how to handle my nitrates from there?

4 months is not a lot, your system needs time to balance itself in order to handle its own waste, putting the reactor is like giving crutches to your system... If it was mine i will ditch the reactor for some time and let the tank handle its own waste... once nitrate establishes that´s your baseline, let´s say it settles in 20/30 then a big WC should be scheduled in that way you export nitrate but your system is ready to mantain such levels.

Focus on your biological filter first, maybe lacks rock or places for denitrifying bacteria populations to thrive.

If you want to use NOPOX it´s either the carbon dosing or pellets, not both, but using a carbon source is again like using crutches or putting a band aid, attack the problem, not the symptoms

One way to reduces the amount of bacteria that clouds your water is to put a filter sock on the outlet of your reactor and clean the grudge often, it works, but then again is not solving the problem from the origin

sorry for the broken englsih, not native speaker here, hope that i helped