Bio Pellets Clumping

Hey AJ, You should send Bill (fishbrain) a PM, I know he's been running the bio pellets for awhile---he gave me some good info.
I remember Adam P. talking about this very same thing just a few days ago--maybe he has info as well.

Good luck, John

 

A friend of mine had the same problem, I think it happened (in his case) because he had too much in the reactor and not enough flow. We tried taking some out and even though it helped he ended up taking out the clumps. I think you could do the same thing, just take the clumping parts out, rinse them off and then put them back in. That way you wouldn't lose your whole culture.

 

Open your reactor and give them a light stir. Don't rinse

 

I think once the clumping has happened you'll need to rinse them completely and start with more flow to prevent them from doing it again. I had mine running about 4 days before I left town for Christmas back home(gone 4 days). I had my bio pellets exit into a filter sock(not going to do that again). When I got back into town the entire filter sock was completely filled with bacteria gel. Once so much gel got piled up in the filter sock, it slowed down flow through the reactor and the clumping got exponentially worse and flow pretty much stopped. I gave them a light rinse when I got back, but I'm going to have to rinse them completely to get them to tumble again.

It's a little difficult to explain how I have it setup, I'll try to make it quick. Each of my corner overflows has two bulkheads, one 1" and one 3/4". I have standpipes on the 1" bulkheads and leave the 3/4" bulkheads flush with the bottom of the tank(no standpipe), then I put ball valves on them and open them just enough, creating a quiet siphon, so barely any water goes through the standpipes. I had a simple poly reactor laying around and I re-routed one of the 3/4" siphon drains from my overflow to the poly reactor. Sure there are flaws in this approach, but I didn't need any extra pump and it tumbled them perfectly. Instead of having the "waste water" of the reactor go into a filter sock, I'll have it exit right in front of my skimmer intake. It will be super easy to do, I just need to take time to do it!

Good luck AJ, I really think you'll have to rinse them completely...

 

I prefer shaken, not stirred.

 

I had some clumping too. I am almost certain it is a flow thing. I had my carbon and my pellet's piggy backed. As soon as I removed the carbon from the chain, everything was dandy. I actually had to throttle back the flow as it became TOO strong. You did say 800gph didn't do anything. Did you stir up the pellets and THEN try the 800gph flow? I had to stir up my pellets in order to get them apart. When bacterias form plaques (like on our teeth) it takes a bit more work to get them to come apart. The flow is what keeps them from forming that plaque between pellets. You shouldn't HAVE to rinse them off completly unless the plaques are so thick that you can't break it apart. That said, if it is that bad rinsing probably won't do much t that point!