What is the proper environment?
Well, I didn’t know bio-pellet reactors are still being used. And I think someone who is using the reactor with success should be more helpful.
I’ve only tried it when it first came out and because I didn’t know what I was doing, I remember throwing away that expensive pellets to never look back. It’s been so long so my information maybe outdated.
I see you have fowlr. My understanding of Carbon dosing (in this case, the pellets are Carbon) works by “using up” Carbon + Nitrate + Phosphate to feed the bacteria and as they populate while “using up” tons of oxygen and such… is then skimmed out by your skimmer as waste. In this case, you need good working skimmer since nothing in your tank will be feeding on these bacteria like corals.
For carbon dosing to work properly, you need to have proper environment as in this case, high Nitrate and high Phosphate… Bio-Pellet is carbon.
And bio-pellets are polymer and known to take long time to seed and start to work. Not like other carbon. Also remind you, lots of the times we didn’t know when it was working -.-; and have negative effects to the tank like cyano taking over etc etc. by the time realized and it’s hard to control it. Thinking about it now…. Redfield Ratio: Bio-Pellet once starts to work, it will release tons of carbon (106) eating up tons of nitrogen (16) while eating little phosphorus(1)…You will run out of Nitrate… idk… maybe… So I would b cautious.
I think your tank will work great since you probably feeding a lot. You also need to clean em and refill em. So I don’t know anyone who are still using them successfully but it would be good for fowlr.
Something I would consider:
-Just wait it out
-is your reactor setup correctly? It suppose never be exposed to the air I think? Hence fluidized.
-use more reliable method like doser
-Is your phosphate high enough? I’d you are running things like GFO, it may need to be taken off sometime.
-Are you currently carbon dosing in other ways? Guessing not.
-Dr. Randy and many would say that’s not a bad nitrate numbers
-It may need to be re-seeded with nitrifying bacteria.
*I would try to let it seat for one hour or something and restart the reactor. I just don’t know the effect it will have though to your tank with those fishes.
Which reminds me that if you have power outage… yikes… that may cause more problem when reactor restarts.
-Adding more won’t do anything since your pellets are not being used up. If it is, you will see the nitrate come down for sure.
