Are canisters nitrate factories?

[soul_assassin]

The end product of the nitrogen cycle is nitrate; therefore most canister filters are nitrate factories. That is their purpose.

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Have you ever heard of denitrification under anaerobic conditions? The end result under the right conditions is nitrous oxide or dinitrogen. Reefers try to achieve this with deep sand beds, supposedly matrix and bio-home plus have this ability as well over time. But this has nothing to do with my initial post. The initial post was about debating if a canister collected enough gunk to become a nitrate factory because most people did not clean them very often. I dont know if I can explain it in any simpler of terms.

Ammonification, Nitrification, and Denitrification

In contrast to nitrification is denitrification, in which nitrate is reduced to the form of either nitrous oxide or dinitrogen. This takes place under anaerobic conditions—that is, in the absence of oxygen—and on the largest scale when concentrations of nitrate are highest. Flooded fields, for example, may experience high rates of denitrification. http://www.answers.com/topic/nitrogen-cycle

 

[soul_assassin]

I dont think the op understands the process of the nitrogen cycle. If he did, the original question wouldve never been asked.

Sad that someone on a fish forum with 17 000 post has no concept of anaerobic bacteria that convert nitrate

 

[lp85253]

going back to the original question...... the answer is YES they are

 

[viejafish]

Don't count on denitrification to reduce nitrate in freshwater systems, because it is cheap and easy to reduce nitrate by WC. But it is common in salt water systems to employ deep sand denitrification because replacing salt water is both expensive and tedious.

Although I can't prove it, I believe denitrification is happening in every fresh water system to some degree. When I vacuum substrate underneath rock or in deep zone, I often observed bubbling up. I didn't smell sulfide or ammonia, so the gas must be nitric/nitrous oxide or nitrogen, the intermediate and end product of dentrification.

 

[DDK]

Its all about how you set it up, what you do to maintain water quality(as additives), and the amount of water changes you do. Its a nitrate factory if you let it become one by bad habits such as over feeding, being over stocked, etc. My tanks been set up for years and nitrates never go above 20ppm and I clean yearly. Theres some tips and tricks in the trade to keeping nitrates down.

 

[ecoli73]

Seachem matrix claims it has some denitrification properties due to the size of the matrix.


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[Drstrangelove]

Food (protein) ---> ammonia ----> nitrites ----> nitrates is my simple (simpleton>?) way of looking at it....

Nitrogen is introduced into the tank as a component of the protein.

You can cut down nitrates at any point in the process. The earliest and easiest is to remove uneaten food or to use food with less protein. The latest step is to do water changes or lock up nitrates in adsorbent material or plants. Even then, the original nitrogen that was in the protein is still in the tank until it's removed. (If the plants die or the adsorbent material back flushes, the nitrogen is re-introduced to the water.)

Canisters like any other item in the tank might temporarily capture the nitrogen, but it will be released under certain conditions, so removal (cleaning filters), removing plant growth or doing water changes is needed.

Canisters aren't nitrate factories anymore than a garbage dump is a garbage factory.

 

[Simcan]

I am actually surprised, and perhaps I should not be, that this topic has gotten so off-track. We started with whether canisters are nitrate factories (they aren't, unless - as folks have observed - you are referring to them doing their job (or better put their biological job) of converting nitrite, which is very toxic, to nitrate, which is not toxic at low levels or even quite high levels if they are arrived at gradually (which they should not be permitted to do)). Sure, there are ways to take nitrate down without water changes, and various ways are noted above...anaerobic bacteria, plants...but realistically water changes are what do the job.

Which has nothing to do with canisters.

Water changes, in my view, are also important to do more than taking out nitrate, but I have nothing to really back this up except that closed systems are bad in that they accumulate whatever is put into them unless you take it out and for invisible stuff, taking it out is either something that happens anyway, or a water change.

Which has nothing to do with canisters.

Can we agree, remove gunk from canisters or socks or gravel, or whatever, and change water? Unless you are running some kind of complete ecosystem, which you aren't, this is what the hobby is about.

 

[viejafish]

Canister is no more a nitrate factory than any cycled fish tank. The rate of nitrate production is proportional to amount of protein source (food) you feed to the fish, whether it actually get eaten by the fish or by micros. The bio media is intended to house only nitrifying bacteria to convert ammonia , not to trap uneaten food to feed micros to produce more ammonia. You can slow down the rate of nitrate increase by frequently cleaning the bio media of gunk built up, but ultimate nitrate reduction requires WC.


What you have to worry about is not nitrate factory but ammonia factory. It can happen if you allow the canister to trap too much gunk and a power outage occurs that temporarily cut off the oxygen supply. There are uneaten food and huge population of micros that feed on the gunk and one another. Without oxygen, aerobic micros including nitrifying bacteria will die off, and the canister will turn anoxic.

I do not like canister because it is a closed system to the atmostphere. I prefer HOBs and sump systems because they are open systems that won't go anaerobic even in a power outage. HOBs are primarily mechanical filter with little to no media to trap gunk. For sump systems, the bio media can be kept free of gunk indefinitely as the water is prefiltered by micron sock and mechanical filter.

 

[dogofwar]

The characteristics that makes canister filters a less effective tool in managing nitrates - for me at least - are that they combine mechanical and biological (and chemical) filtration into a single (inaccessible) chamber and are a PITA to clean.

Other filtration approaches - air-driven boxes, powerhead quick filters, HOBs, pre-filters, filter socks before sumps or dumps, etc. - make removal of the uneaten food/protein/waste, etc. (the left of the process) that will become nitrate (to the right of the scale) that much quicker and easier....and likely more frequently done.

There's nothing magical going on in a canister filter (other than that you can't see it) that makes rotten food, etc. any less nasty than if it sat on the bottom of your tank and was permitted to be broken down by nitrifying bacteria and converted into nitrates.

Most freshwater fish are tough enough that it really doesn't matter, especially when folks are doing regular water changes and using plants to absorb nitrates.

Make no mistake, though, that canisters make it harder and not easier to maintain really low nitrates.

Matt

Food (protein) ---> ammonia ----> nitrites ----> nitrates is my simple (simpleton>?) way of looking at it....

Nitrogen is introduced into the tank as a component of the protein.

You can cut down nitrates at any point in the process. The earliest and easiest is to remove uneaten food or to use food with less protein. The latest step is to do water changes or lock up nitrates in adsorbent material or plants. Even then, the original nitrogen that was in the protein is still in the tank until it's removed. (If the plants die or the adsorbent material back flushes, the nitrogen is re-introduced to the water.)

Canisters like any other item in the tank might temporarily capture the nitrogen, but it will be released under certain conditions, so removal (cleaning filters), removing plant growth or doing water changes is needed.

Canisters aren't nitrate factories anymore than a garbage dump is a garbage factory.