De-nitrification in FW

[ChickenTeeth]

Salt water fishkeepers know a deep sand bed can improve De-nitrification. Can the same principle be applied to a freshwater setup? Place at least 3" of sand on the bottom of the tank and cover it with meshing and a gravel tidy. If the theory is correct, a layer of oxygen PooR sand is converted over to using nitrate as their oxygen source!

 

[mcblack]

i am not familiar with this technique of de-nitrification but what i have currently done is a coil denitrator, i am still cycling it but so far there is a bit of improvement in terms of lower nitrate values

 

[ihob78]

Salt water fishkeepers know a deep sand bed can improve De-nitrification. Can the same principle be applied to a freshwater setup? Place at least 3" of sand on the bottom of the tank and cover it with meshing and a gravel tidy. If the theory is correct, a layer of oxygen PooR sand is converted over to using nitrate as their oxygen source!

Kindof sounds like your talking about some sort of backwards Plenum?? Are you??

 

[ChickenTeeth]

Yes, I hear they work really well in Salt Water setup. So, can't this be applied to FW?

 

[Potts050]

I'm going to wade in and say 'yes' on this one with the usual caveat that I don't have any quantifiable eperience- just going with a gut feeling.

The nitrification bacteria that we all know and love work equally well in fresh and marine environments so it stands to reason that there are freshwater analogs of anaerobic reduction bacteria. Wetlands are well known as 'nitrogen sinks' and it is common knowledge that artesian water is typically low in nitrogen compounds as well. This would tend to support the notion that as water seeps below the muck, and into the aquifer that nitrates are consummed by something, probably the bugs we can establish in substrate that is oxygen free at the bottom of our FW tanks.