I was 1st a little sketchy when I was thinking about purchasing a denitrator. But after months of drooling about it I forked $250 to get one. The instructions say it needs 2 to 4 weeks for you to notice any difference in your nitrates. Mine was installed for 6 months never seen any improvments. To top it off, one morning at 6am my mom runs in my room wakes me up from my 1 hour nap and yells "your tank is leaking everywhere!!" I go down stairs see that my 125g tank is half empty and the carpet is drenched in at least 60 gallons water. The room smelled like a sewage plant, so while hung over as hell I searched for my sisters old 20g set it up and tossed my fish in there, then drained my tank of all water and scooped out all 125 pounds of gravel. I then found out my tank wasn't leaking, my $250 plastic box managed to explode and drain most my water. I Moved my tank, cleaned the carpet a thousand times, refilled and dumped the fish back in I didn't get finished till 1:30pm. Lessoned learned never try to cheat the nitrate system it will rape you when you're hungover.