For the biopellets to work they need to be used inside a fluidised media or pellet reactor with a strong water flow. The bacteria that grow on their surface form a mulm, this needs to be remove otherwise they will stick together and no longer function properly. By strongly fluidising the pellets the action of them colliding with each other combined with the water flow will prevent the build up of mulm on their surface. It is also important that a good protein skimmer is used as this will remove the bacteria being shead from the reactor, this will be ultimately removing nutrients.

The pellets work via bacterial reduction of Nitrate and Phosphate. They do this as they have a carbon source bound to their polymers that the bacteria utilise a donor whilst using nitrate an acceptor. Phosphate is also taken up as the bacterial mass grows as part of cell production. Phosphate is generally taken up at a slower rate than that of Nitrate so we always suggest running a small amount of PO4 remover to help prevent a slow increase in PO4. Try and keep PO4 between 0-0.03 ppm as if kept at 0 the bacteria may be robbed of PO4 required for cell production and the process stalls.

As the bacterial colonies grow dead cells and mulm are skimmed off creating an efficient nutrient export system. If Nitrate is very high to start with and a sub standard protein skimmer used the tank can cloud due to bacteria getting into the water column (bacterial bloom). The bloom can also strip the water of O2 due to over driven bacteria so we always suggest starting with half the recommend dose of pellets and building up over a month.