Why you check your phosphates when running biopellets.

[Crustaceon]

I’m going to test if lower nutrients + coral feeding will actually yield better growth and set up a biopellet reactor to reduce my nitrates. I’ve been allowing them to creep up just to see what would really happen and stopped at 25ppm because not surprisingly, growth slowed down. I started the pellet reactor by filling it with about 1/2 of pellets and have been dosing seachem stability AND phosphate daily (seachem phosphorus). Yes, my phosphate is dropping that quickly. Nitrates... not so much. So now the reactor has about 2” of pellets and man is that Po4 being used! I’m seeing a drop of .10ppm PER DAY. Nitrates are down to 10ppm and the skimmate is obviously extremely disgusting. We’re getting there. Just a reminder though, if you’re aggressively trying to reduce nitrates using a biological process, such as vodka/vinegar/nopox/biopellets or a refugium/ats, make sure to check your phosphate levels every 1-2 days. Otherwise, check it weekly. It’s as important as checking alkalinity.

 

[theMeat]

A good heads up. Think many start to carbon dose and see no reaction then get lazy about testing. The thing is when it does finally start to go down it goes down quickly. The skimmer getting more active and the film that grows on glass turning more white are also signs.
YMMV