I jumped on the bio-pellet bandwagon a couple of months ago. It was totally frustrating because no matter what I did they always clumped and would not tumble right. I started with the TLF500 reactor, with no sponges powered by a pump that did about 400 gph. After a day the pellets clumped up and would not tumble. I upped the pump several times with the last one being about 1400 gph. Same problem, no real tumble and just a clumpy mess. I canned the reactor and went to a Reef Octopus BR110. Much better reactor but after a few days the same clumping problem occurred. i took it offline and quit. I tried again a couple of weeks ago with a new Cad Lights Conex reactor. Way better than anything else I tried and the pellets tumbled really well for a few days but then I noticed clumping starting again. At this point it dawned on me that something was wrong that could not be blamed on the reactor. It had to be the pellets themselves. I was using the NPX pellets from TLF that look like little irregular shaped corn. These things just naturally want to stick together. Once the bacteria get established they just act like they were glued together. Most bio pellets on the market are shaped just like these. I switched to the newer version of TLF pellets that are perfectly round and look like little pearls. These are great. As long as they are pre-soaked properly in RO/Di water they have much less stickiness and they tumble beautifully. Its been a couple of weeks and no problems at all.
