Carey's Final Reef Upgrade- 180g

[Sniperhank]

I miss the days of dropping that kind of coin on my tank... Now I'm back to making car payments and figuring out how to afford house payments along with wanting to put a bigger tank in the new house.

[carey]

Oh trust me, if it werent for the line of credit I got from paypal I wouldnt have any funds for this expansion. lol Thast why I am keeping it streamlined and simple. I think the reactor is the only thing I kinda want or need. I got the rest already I thinks. I hope anyways. lol

[redsea]

I love your little Blenny, how cute! I've only had Lawnmowers and a Bicolor once (years ago). They are such a great family of little fish, maybe I will get one for the 29g.

[Sniperhank]

Expansion? Watching Blizzcon much? Lol. I really like reactors. Total must, atleast on my tank.

[carey]

hehehe yeah, got a little warcraft on my mind. cant wait! i love the game so much, thats all I do really. In fact, need to get on game soon, lots to fo before the xpac drops. lol

Do you have a biopellet reactor sniper? Any good things you wanna mention....

[Sniperhank]

Right...you mean raid night. And no, I only run the dual reactor from BRS that you recommended to me oh so long ago. I run chemipure elite and phosguard ATM. Had purigen in there, but really ran out of room and needed to replace it due to not having anything to rejuv it...so just went without it for the time being.

[carey]

Yeah, I;ve tried the dual reactors too but it kept getting clogged on me. lol I'm thinking just the biopellets. I have an extra reactor just in case I need to use carbon or run gfo. So far the levels are all fine so hopefully they stay that way.

And raid night is tues and thursday for me now. I have 13 toons so there is always something that has to be done.

[Sniperhank]

Haven't done that since BC...hopefully this Xpac is a refresh back to when it was truly fun. But my dual reactor is running strong, just had to ditch the GFO and go for phosguard.

[carey]

I've been playing since the beginning of BC, I was a tank back in those days. lol i am now a healer, have one of every class so its a good time. Just not enough time in the day for all those toons. lol

I found that gfo does clog up fast, I ran out of phosguard, those little white pellets or I'd run those.

[Sniperhank]

The Cobalt resins worked well...but need replaced every 15 days! Incredible. Now that would get expensive.

[carey]

Yeah, part of the reason I dont run carbon unless I need to. Too expensive and it only lasts a few weeks. At least with the biopellets they are good for at least 6 months. lol

[Sniperhank]

I've heard of about how biopellets will cause drops in alk though.

[Gregcoyote]

I run pellets. But I constantly dose, so I haven't seen a alk drop. I still think it's a safe and easy way to increase available carbon. But that is a bit different than running carbon filtration. The pellets directly feed the bacteria we all depend on in the live rock and elsewhere. Carbon filtration, to me, is really about removing both dissolved and gaseous toxins from the water. In a mixed coral tank, it can be indispensable to remove combating coral toxins from the water. Like in mine, where I have soft, LPS and SPS growing next to each other. When my carbon wears low, I can see the divisional lines between corals widen a.bit as they get more toxic to each other. But I may be insane. I also use purigen to polish the water of those pesky last bit of phosphates.

[carey]

How about a denitrator setup? I know the basic differences between them and biopellets but at the end of the day which would be better? The denitrators are a bit more money and require a twist everyday but is it overly better than the biopellets?

ANyone?

[Gregcoyote]

Since I am still online, I will throw in my two cents. Excess nitrate products can be exported by live rock, converting to nitrogen gas, denitrators, or algae scrubbers. Everyone uses live rock as stage one, but as you have noted, with a heavily stocked tank, nitrates can build up. Most water exchange programs keep them under control, but I don't do massive water exchanges. So I went the natural way and grow beds of harvestable algaes. I put my nitrates into the local landfill. It is natural, stable and pretty easy to setup with a bit of room. But I also boost the bacteria in the live rock with bio pellets. Both work together and support each other.

[carey]

Thanks Greg, appreciate your time. If I wanted to not go with an algae scrubber and fields of macro, which would you chose, denitrator or biopellets? I want to get away from the 50g water changes and was hoping i could add something equipment wise that would help with that goal. I of course dont want to replace water changes, but want to add something can help the tank overall.

[huma-huma]

im curious as to what everyones opinion is on what to run in a reactor. GFO? bio-pellets? or should I run a dual reactor?

[Sniperhank]

Phosguard is where its at.

[huma-huma]

how often does it need to be replaced? sorry carey just seen you were on this topic and figured it was a good chance to get the info

[carey]

I tried running carbon and gfo at one point but didnt see any great improvement so stopped. I do know you cant run biopellets and another media in a twin canister, they need to be separate.

Since this is my last big tank, reef anyways, i want to do as much as I can right the first time. I dont wanna be fiddling with equipment forever. lol I have the available credit right now so its as good time as any to get what I need/want.
Is the added expense of a denitrator actually worth it in camparison to pellets? Hoping some user can chime in and share.

Thanks all!