Anaerobic Bacteria

[jaws7777]

duanes RD. and anyone else that can help.

Ive been tinkering with a denitrate filter for the past few months and havent gotten any results. Im ready to call it quits but wanted to run it by you guys to see if im missing anything.

Tank is 300 gal with 100 gal sump overstocked. I go from 5 or 10 ppm of nitrates to 40ppm (mybe more) between my 2x per week water changes.

Im using 10 or 12 liters of seachem denitrate in a series of 4 inch pvc towers running below 50 gph. After a couple of month not seeing any nitrate reduction i followed seachems advice and dosed with stability... still didnt see any reduction.

I asked seachem abkut different flow rates....thinking maybe if i were in the 20gph or less ball park that would help but they suggested to stay between 40 and 50 gph as the lower end of the spectrum may starve the bb.

My goal was to reduce nitrates enough to be able to do 1 wc per week and wasnt shootijg for the stars thinking i woukd get nitrates to undetectable levels.

So do i chalk this up as a mythical unicorn or am i missing something.

 

[Angelphish]

duanes RD. and anyone else that can help.

Ive been tinkering with a denitrate filter for the past few months and havent gotten any results. Im ready to call it quits but wanted to run it by you guys to see if im missing anything.

Tank is 300 gal with 100 gal sump overstocked. I go from 5 or 10 ppm of nitrates to 40ppm (mybe more) between my 2x per week water changes.

Im using 10 or 12 liters of seachem denitrate in a series of 4 inch pvc towers running below 50 gph. After a couple of month not seeing any nitrate reduction i followed seachems advice and dosed with stability... still didnt see any reduction.

I asked seachem abkut different flow rates....thinking maybe if i were in the 20gph or less ball park that would help but they suggested to stay between 40 and 50 gph as the lower end of the spectrum may starve the bb.

My goal was to reduce nitrates enough to be able to do 1 wc per week and wasnt shootijg for the stars thinking i woukd get nitrates to undetectable levels.

So do i chalk this up as a mythical unicorn or am i missing something.View attachment 1267122 View attachment 1267123

Have you considered a protein skimmer? Tomt37 should know more them since he uses one.

 

[Grinch]

Denitrifying bacteria (those that convert NO3 to N2) are typically anaerobes, which you seem to be aware of from the title of your post. In a high oxygen environment, they will never reach the numbers needed to make a noticeable impact on your nitrate... and with 50 GPH pass through of tank water, I doubt you have anaerobic conditions. $50-60 will buy a cheap dissolved oxygen test kit....

 

[jaws7777]

Have you considered a protein skimmer? Tomt37 should know more them since he uses one.

Thought about it...read a little seemed like allot of people were saying it didnt tho i didnt put in a fair amount of research

Denitrifying bacteria (those that convert NO3 to N2) are typically anaerobes, which you seem to be aware of from the title of your post. In a high oxygen environment, they will never reach the numbers needed to make a noticeable impact on your nitrate... and with 50 GPH pass through of tank water, I doubt you have anaerobic conditions. $50-60 will buy a cheap dissolved oxygen test kit....

Yup im aware of the low oxygen enviorment needed. As per seachem those are the flow rates they suggest. Do you suggest something different ?

 

[J. H.]

Maybe you have a bad seal on one of your pipes. Most DIY denitrarors that i have seen are coil denitrators, running the water through 30 ft of coiled airline. I didn't even know about this approach until you started. Maybe there is a reason for that.

 

[jaws7777]

Maybe you have a bad seal on one of your pipes. Most DIY denitrarors that i have seen are coil denitrators, running the water through 30 ft of coiled airline. I didn't even know about this approach until you started. Maybe there is a reason for that.

Ya know what that very well could be the case. I need to look up the coil denitrators before i give up and just throw a ton of purigen in the towers lol

 

[Grinch]

Yup im aware of the low oxygen enviorment needed. As per seachem those are the flow rates they suggest. Do you suggest something different ?

I don't know your "filter" or your conversation with seachem. I am assuming that the rep. you talked to at seachem does not understand your situation because they are suggesting you apply "stability", which is a mix of nitrifying bacteria that specialize in breaking down nitrogen containing compounds under aerobic conditions (NH3 etc. to NO2 to NO3). That is, the folks at seachem do not understand your situation and are giving you poor advice. And yes, I suggest something different.

 

[jaws7777]

Soo oddly enough after creating this thread did some nitrate tests. Last night it looked between 10 and 20 ppm (i can tell the difference between the twp shades of orange. Tested today and it looks the same. Im a bit surprised though as it normaly would be red by now.

 

[BIG-G]

Maybe you just need to give it some more time to let the bacteria get fully established.
But before I gave up completely I would try lowering the GPH by 10 letting that run test and repeat.
Sooner or later you may stumble on to the sweet spot.
I have contemplated this a few times and did a lot of reading but never pulled the trigger on it.
Its always Interested me.
I knew a man once who had half of a 100 gal sump tank full of sand the other half was pumps and what not that he would pump a portion of the water to the top of the sand and it trickled through the sand. He claimed that the deep sand bed was working as a Denitrifier. He said he never touched the sand in years, he just had a space at the bottom for the water to run out of the sand back to the pump section.
I never questioned him much about it, and this was 25 years ago and he has long since passed but I always wondered about how he did it.

 

[J. H.]

Here are some relevant links.
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwbiofltfaqs.htm
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/denitrator.16813/
https://www.arowanafishtalk.com/for...ator/page2&s=52cea245f0b948bb9e83f89570617c5d
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showt...30e88d0331de91a3eb51020&t=595109&pp=25&page=2
After having read about this a little, I think whoever told you 50gpm does not know what he is talking about. They are measured in drips per minute, not gallons. Sand denitrators, coil denitrators, aquaponics like me, ATS (Algae turf scrubbers) like markstrimaran - there are plenty of systems that work. A friend of my fathers told me that he saw a tilapia farm in Israel that used a pit of sand as bio and denitrator in a closed loop system with no water changes! This stuff can be done, just keep at it.
Here are some pics of my 10g no WC overstocked tank.