Bio pelletes soaked in bacteria for a couple hours before placed in the reactor

[Smallslandreefer]

Heyy guys and gals, did any one ever try soaking their bio pelletes in some sort of bacteria fluid ( microlift special blent for example) for a couple of hours before placing them in the reactor? I ve read somewhere that it can been done however i dont know if its indeed beneficial or can cause adverese effects. Any thoughts?

 

[KrisReef]

Interesting question.

Basically, biopellets are dead until they come into contact with bacteria. Then the bacteria eat them and produce biological growth/energy is transformed from the dead pellets to living bacteria molecules. Presoaking the dead pellets in living bacteria might speed up the process. How much faster the bacteria start working and removing nutrients from the tank water, I would think that would be negligible? I wonder if scientists have ever done an experimental investigation into this? Those are a few of my thoughts.

 

[taricha]

My educated guess is that native aquarium bacteria will digest biopellets just as fast or faster than bottled bacteria. (But that's a really interesting experimental idea.)

 

[JNalley]

The biggest question is, how do you measure success? As I understood it, the reason you need to wait X-amount of time is not for the bacteria to be populated, but because the plastic needs to start breaking down to start becoming a carbon food source, which is also why you only change out a small percentage of it at a time rather than swapping out the entire stack of pellets. But I could be misinformed...

 

[Spare time]

Yeah I did this with waste away a few years ago on one system. Can't say whether it worked or not. The reactor starting working shortly after, but it had already been running for a little while. It definitely doesn't hurt

 

[GARRIGA]

The biggest question is, how do you measure success? As I understood it, the reason you need to wait X-amount of time is not for the bacteria to be populated, but because the plastic needs to start breaking down to start becoming a carbon food source, which is also why you only change out a small percentage of it at a time rather than swapping out the entire stack of pellets. But I could be misinformed...

What I don't know about bio pellets is if they dissolve on a time release formula or based on consumption by the bacteria. I tend to think it's the former in which case per-loading wouldn't help since the bacteria would still need a source of detritus in an aerobic condition or nitrates/sulfates in bound oxygen environment absent of dissolved oxygen.

 

[JNalley]

What I don't know about bio pellets is if they dissolve on a time release formula or based on consumption by the bacteria. I tend to think it's the former in which case per-loading wouldn't help since the bacteria would still need a source of detritus in an aerobic condition or nitrates/sulfates in bound oxygen environment absent of dissolved oxygen.

Yes, I agree; I believe they dissolve based on their formulation...

 

[Mikey-D]

Could this be applied to putting them in to sump prior to replenishing an already seeded reactor? So in theory you could kick start the pellets say a week prior to putting them into the reactor.