So basically the question is this, if one was to stop using biopellets is it best to go cold turkey or to somehow ween the system off them by removing small amounts of pellets over a period of time?
I want to try to make what is typically a very long story short. Do to a crashing of my frag tank I had to transfer a number of my corals to my display tank (which for the most part has been coral-less with this exception of a couple zoas) which has been running for about a year now. As the tank hasnt had any corals in it for the first year (well none that survived) I generally haven't been doing a great job keeping up with my testing. Now that I have coral that I very much am interested in keeping alive in this tank I have increased my testing regiment.
So... I just tested my nitrate (red sea pro kit) and phosphate (Hanna ULR Phosphorus Checker) and found that my nitrate is undetectable and my phosphates are at 0.021 ppm. So this brings us back to my original question, if I want to stop using biopellets to increase my nitrate level to something that is detectable, what is the best way to do that. Do I just take the reactor off line or do I remove pellets over a period of time while monitoring levels.
The another option would be to dose nitrate directly, but as many have pointed out this is counter intuitive to the use of biopellets in the first place.
Thoughts, opinions...
I want to try to make what is typically a very long story short. Do to a crashing of my frag tank I had to transfer a number of my corals to my display tank (which for the most part has been coral-less with this exception of a couple zoas) which has been running for about a year now. As the tank hasnt had any corals in it for the first year (well none that survived) I generally haven't been doing a great job keeping up with my testing. Now that I have coral that I very much am interested in keeping alive in this tank I have increased my testing regiment.
So... I just tested my nitrate (red sea pro kit) and phosphate (Hanna ULR Phosphorus Checker) and found that my nitrate is undetectable and my phosphates are at 0.021 ppm. So this brings us back to my original question, if I want to stop using biopellets to increase my nitrate level to something that is detectable, what is the best way to do that. Do I just take the reactor off line or do I remove pellets over a period of time while monitoring levels.
The another option would be to dose nitrate directly, but as many have pointed out this is counter intuitive to the use of biopellets in the first place.
Thoughts, opinions...
