Looks like a good tumble, but did you put all these pellets in your tank all at once? I would pull some out because you might nuke your tank, in other words you might "bust-a-wickedfish"......
Yes it's a great tumble! This video was with the recirculating valve approximately 90% closed and the fine-tuning full control valve approximately 75% closed. Running the reactor in this way is great for removing phosphates because the water needs to pass through the pellets least 2 or 3 times for the bacteria to be able to consume phosphates. It only takes passing through once for the nitrates to be consumed so if you are having a nitrate problem more so than phosphates, the reactor will better serve your tank by having the recirculating valve open 100% and the fine tuning valve can be adjusted to whatever setting is optimized for your tank depending on how fast the no3 is coming down.
Video of this^ coming in a minute...
Yes I put all those pellets, 300ml to be exact, in my tank all at once. This is the proper way to do it if you're going to run pellets in your tank. I am not worried about crashing my tank like Esteban because I have the proper equipment that allows me to do it the right way. It's the recirculating valve and the fine-tuning valve that allow me to do this... this is what sets the CAD Lights reactor apart from all the others... you put the amount of pellets that you want to have in there in the very beginning. Then you control how those pellets are working on your tank and adjust it accordingly to what your test results are telling you you need to do.
If you have to open up the reactor to add more pellets as you "work up to what you need", or open it to take some out because you find that you're stripping your water too clean, you are disturbing the bacteria that has begun growing inside every time, which is killing some of it off and changing the amount you need to add or remove because the amount inside the reactor has changed. You are essentially playing a guessing game as to how many pellets you need to add or remove if you do it this way and it's harder to be successful.
The valves implemented in the CAD Lights reactors have given the user every option needed to be successful with pellets. You even have the option to close booth valves completely leaving the reactor running so the pellets continue to tumble and bacteria stays live, keeping the pellets on standby for when your nutrient levels start rising again. This way you don't have to start over when this point comes again and you need them to go back to work for you.
CAD Lights had taken the guesswork out of running biopellets!
