About to ditch ZEOvit!

[malx]

Originally Posted by jda

I don't use chaeto on my SPS tanks. I have before on my FOWLRs. The SPS tank will handle the N and P all on it's own and the chaeto would take the few critical bit of nutrients that I have from my SPS.

Chaeto is a very effective N and P exporter. However, it is not necessary on every tank. It would be a disaster on my SPS tank. On my past FOWLRs it was a welcome addition that kept N and P in check and provided a great place to house new fish and grow mysid shrimp and pods.

Thanks for the tip. I have my Chaeto reactor turned WAY WAY down. I'm going to keep it working small until I compeltly shut off my ZEOvit reactor then go from there.

Once I know it can handle the bio load I may just stop dosing the ZEOstart and just dose the bacteria and bacteria food.

[swk]

Originally Posted by jda

Let me try this one last time... and I will be more emphatic before I bow out. You will not be able to be in charge of this and have it work out. If you must control the nutrients on your own, then you will fail and somebody will be getting a good deal soon on all of your really nice stuff.

Stop everything that you are doing but water changes and feeding your fish. The N and P need to rise to later fall. You will need to have cyano, diatoms and the ugly phases to get past them. Bringing anything online to keep them low will just keep you on the same path that you are on now where you are not going to be able to do what nature has learned to do so well.

Just let go for two or three months. Then, test some water and see where you are at.

Adding extra real live rock to the sump is a good idea, BTW.

Originally Posted by malx

Thanks for the tip. I have my Chaeto reactor turned WAY WAY down. I'm going to keep it working small until I compeltly shut off my ZEOvit reactor then go from there.



Once I know it can handle the bio load I may just stop dosing the ZEOstart and just dose the bacteria and bacteria food.

I think maybe you missed jda's post before the chaeto comment?

Great advice from him/her that I completely agree with and all the fiddling you're doing in an attempt to wean the tank off the products are simply prolonging the inevitable. Just cut the cord and be done with it.

[malx]

Originally Posted by swk

I think maybe you missed jda's post before the chaeto comment?

Great advice from him/her that I completely agree with and all the fiddling you're doing in an attempt to wean the tank off the products are simply prolonging the inevitable. Just cut the cord and be done with it.

Well no I didn't miss it. Because I have it in a reactor I can keep it really low. It keeps my PH up at night. But again I'll have to just wait and see.

[Potatohead]

My tank is now 14 months old and I am finally starting to see results with sps as of 2 - 3 months ago. I can sympathize with the OP in that although everything before was "correct" in terms of numbers, but corals just didn't do well. I can say I haven't changed much in the last few months other than needing to put a doser online, but the corals are completely different in terms of color/growth/polyp extension.

I did start my tank with dry rock. If I was to do it again, I would probably use dry rock again but I would just let it run and run and not worry about it. I might add fish after a couple months but I wouldn't add any lps or sps for quite a while, at least nine months, maybe more. I used to think the "wait a year" mantra was hogwash but it is absolutely true unless you start with high quality seasoned live rock.

[Horace]

Im not sure why everyone is so afraid of nitrates. Nitrates are not a big deal. Ive seen tanks that would freggin blow your minds, with colors that look photoshopped, and huge colonies, and that was with nitrate as high as 50. It is absolutely not needed to have nitrate and po4 at zero to have success. In fact, my tank looked far more pale/pastel in color when I did. Most tanks that have 0/0 are actually starving the corals and are doing more harm than good. My point is, you are far better off feeding more food to your fish (and indirectly to your corals) and having some nitrate/po4, than you are by starving them to maintain a 0/0 test. Once i realized this truth my tank went from near zero growth, and super pale colors to this:

And for what its worth, I had Zeo running when it looked like S*#T and when it looked good. The only difference? More fish, more food....

At this stage in this tank's life, I could see growth on my corals within 24 hours... no joke. It would drop about 1-1.5dkh per day of alk if not maintained.

[malx]

Originally Posted by Horace

Im not sure why everyone is so afraid of nitrates. Nitrates are not a big deal. Ive seen tanks that would freggin blow your minds, with colors that look photoshopped, and huge colonies, and that was with nitrate as high as 50. It is absolutely not needed to have nitrate and po4 at zero to have success. In fact, my tank looked far more pale/pastel in color when I did. Most tanks that have 0/0 are actually starving the corals and are doing more harm than good. My point is, you are far better off feeding more food to your fish (and indirectly to your corals) and having some nitrate/po4, than you are by starving them to maintain a 0/0 test. Once i realized this truth my tank went from near zero growth, and super pale colors to this:

And for what its worth, I had Zeo running when it looked like S*#T and when it looked good. The only difference? More fish, more food....

At this stage in this tank's life, I could see growth on my corals within 24 hours... no joke. It would drop about 1-1.5dkh per day of alk if not maintained.

Dude looks amazing! I'm sold! Let's get these nutrients going! ZEO reactor is running minimal, going to be taking it offline this weekend or next weekend.

[malx]

Originally Posted by Potatohead

My tank is now 14 months old and I am finally starting to see results with sps as of 2 - 3 months ago. I can sympathize with the OP in that although everything before was "correct" in terms of numbers, but corals just didn't do well. I can say I haven't changed much in the last few months other than needing to put a doser online, but the corals are completely different in terms of color/growth/polyp extension.

I did start my tank with dry rock. If I was to do it again, I would probably use dry rock again but I would just let it run and run and not worry about it. I might add fish after a couple months but I wouldn't add any lps or sps for quite a while, at least nine months, maybe more. I used to think the "wait a year" mantra was hogwash but it is absolutely true unless you start with high quality seasoned live rock.

Thanks for the tip dude! Yeah my tank is young and I guess that's the problem with SPS. Nothing good comes overnight.

[jda]

Originally Posted by malx

It keeps my PH up at night.

Disconnect your PH probe and never look at it again. Although it does not hurt to know what it is, everybody who has chased PH has gotten into trouble at some point or another whereas the folks who don't know never have any problems.

Keep alk stable and don't ever look at PH.

[malx]

Originally Posted by jda

Let me try this one last time... and I will be more emphatic before I bow out. You will not be able to be in charge of this and have it work out. If you must control the nutrients on your own, then you will fail and somebody will be getting a good deal soon on all of your really nice stuff.

Stop everything that you are doing but water changes and feeding your fish. The N and P need to rise to later fall. You will need to have cyano, diatoms and the ugly phases to get past them. Bringing anything online to keep them low will just keep you on the same path that you are on now where you are not going to be able to do what nature has learned to do so well.

Just let go for two or three months. Then, test some water and see where you are at.

Adding extra real live rock to the sump is a good idea, BTW.

I'm not going to just shut everything off at once and risk killing stuff. I have two really beautiful clams in the tank that are doing great and I don't want to risk them.

[StarF]

No water changes
Calcium reactor
15l of siporax
big skimmer
good growth but its a new system i setup when i moved from one house to another, so i have no progress pictures yet...

adding aquaforest bacteria each day with 3-4ml vsv (to fuel the siporax)
running around 40g rowa and some zeolith stones in a reactoer the aquaforest way aswell...

[Horace]

Originally Posted by malx

Dude looks amazing! I'm sold! Let's get these nutrients going! ZEO reactor is running minimal, going to be taking it offline this weekend or next weekend.

Im not suggesting you stop Zeo. I think Zeo does have benefits in regards to using carbon dosing to both feed and keep nutrients "low", but the key is to NOT chase 0/0. Low nutrients is good....but IMHO ZERO detectable nutrients for most tanks is disaster. Unless you are feeding massive amounts, and you have such efficient nutrient export and bioload that you can maintain 0/0 (which 99% of tanks are not capable of), then you are better off with small amounts of nutrients. In my experience, I like to push my feeding/nutrients (mostly nitrate) to the point where i start getting small amounts of hair algae in the display, then back it off a bit. For me that tends to be Nitrate <5ppm or so. Po4 I tend to try to keep low as well, but not 0.

[zsuman101]

Yep, I'm a zeo reefer and my reefs look terrible if I go below 5 ppm nitrate.

[malx]

Originally Posted by zsuman101

Yep, I'm a zeo reefer and my reefs look terrible if I go below 5 ppm nitrate.

Yeah. I'm pulling my ZEO reactor and will use the ZEO products to carbon dose if I need to. I'll keep everyone posted.

[Horace]

why are you pulling the zeo reactor? just FEED more . Thats all you gotta do. Zeo fundamentally allows more feeding, and creates more bacteria for the corals to eat. I feel zeo is a sound method. If you are invested already I personally would not bow out.

[malx]

Originally Posted by Horace

why are you pulling the zeo reactor? just FEED more . Thats all you gotta do. Zeo fundamentally allows more feeding, and creates more bacteria for the corals to eat. I feel zeo is a sound method. If you are invested already I personally would not bow out.

For a few reasons... I have too much filtration on this system and this one is the best to take off because it also frees up a plug.

[ryanrid]

i ran full zeovit religously for 6ish years here is my last zeo tank


and now i run a tank with nothing but a skimmer

[abhishek@1985]

Originally Posted by jda

Let me try this one last time... and I will be more emphatic before I bow out. You will not be able to be in charge of this and have it work out. If you must control the nutrients on your own, then you will fail and somebody will be getting a good deal soon on all of your really nice stuff.

Stop everything that you are doing but water changes and feeding your fish. The N and P need to rise to later fall. You will need to have cyano, diatoms and the ugly phases to get past them. Bringing anything online to keep them low will just keep you on the same path that you are on now where you are not going to be able to do what nature has learned to do so well.

Just let go for two or three months. Then, test some water and see where you are at.

Adding extra real live rock to the sump is a good idea, BTW.

@jda - i was thinking of adding some live rocks to my sump due to lack of biodiversity , starting with all dry rocks and falling a prey to modern hypes .

The hype about pests in live rocks is so overrated that it's of lesser significance to the abundance of micro fauna we get in live rocks .
Anyways , which live rocks do you suggest ? I thought pacific ones are the best . If so , any suggestion where to get good ones ?

Regards,
Abhishek

[malx]

Originally Posted by ryanrid

i ran full zeovit religously for 6ish years here is my last zeo tank





and now i run a tank with nothing but a skimmer

You tank looks great. For some reason thI first picture didn't work. Can you repost?


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[Horace]

I think you are thinking about this wrong. You dont remove filtration because you have too much. There really is no such thing. You just ADD FOOD. More food equals more growth. The more/better filtration you have, the more you can feed while keeping Po4/No3 in check. Just feed more....its pretty simple man. You are overthinking this.

[Scorpius]

I used to run Chaeto until it all died on me. Best thing that could have happened as the chaeto was keeping my water to clean of nutrients.

[cpllongjk]

To the OP.

I ran Zeovit for several years with mixed results. This is what I gathered with their method.

1. You strip the water of Nitrate and Phosphate using zeolites to grow a bacterial bed in.
2. You strip the water so well you actually have to add Nitrate and Phosphate back into the tank.
3. The zeolites deplete potassium (I THINK)
4. If you neglect your tank for even a few weeks it could end very badly for you.
5. Zeovit has a very high upkeep cost.

For all the reasons above is why I stopped using zeovit. Does it work, yes it can. But it takes someone with more devotion/OCD than I.

[ClownReef®]

I ditched Zeo. It stripped the water of nutrients until it starved all the SPS. They lost all their beautiful color. I followed the rules down to a science. It just didnt work for me. That only works for SPS reefs in Poland and Germany..lol

But really.. Im following a "keep it simple, stupid" approach right now.

I have a Ca. reactor hooked up, and dozing Aquavitro Fuel since it has worked for me in the past..

[malx]

Update here for everyone. So I pulled the ZEOlite reactor and added about 20 more pounds of live rock to the sump. I am still using the ZEO products for dosing but I am not dosing and nitrate and phosphate remover, only the bacteria to build up some more in the new rock as well as coral foods like Coral Vitalizer and Sponge Power. Doing this for a few weeks to let nitrates and phosphates creep up. Wish me luck!


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[lynchmob3000]

You can also set your skimmer a little on the dry side


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[malx]

Originally Posted by lynchmob3000

You can also set your skimmer a little on the dry side


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Yes! This is my next step if nutrients don't climb a little.


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