DIY Coil Denitrator Questions

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Toddo

Candiru
MFK Member
Sep 24, 2008
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I am thinking about building a coil denitrator for my 125 fresh tank to supplement nitrate removal, and I am looking for opinions. I have a requirement for very very low nitrates.

Will this be effective enough to warrant building? If so, what size would it have to be to be effective? From what I have read, it should be 4 inch pvc about 30 inches long.

In addition, I am running ion exchange resins in my canisters to remove nitrates (Along with weekly water changes of course).

Does anyone have experience with fresh water denitrators? I searched the forum but some of the posts I found were older (back to 2005).
 
I hope you get some answers.

I was thinking about the same thing.

I will have 3 overflow tubes, one will be 3/4 higher then other 2 and it will just be a trickle of water. Seems to me it would be perfect to send it through a coil setup. All I have read says just a trickle of water.

I also have the setup to mount it 6 feet below the tank bottom. And with its height, I could output it right into my sump.

I will have a decent sump setup, so this would just be an addition.
 
i'm also very interested in this. from everythignI've read on them, it doesn't make alick of sense on how it actually gets rid of them though.
 
Interesting stuff, but I don't see why you would go with this rather than the awesome denitrator known as "plants". If you don't want them in your tank, just use a 'fuge with some fast-growing emergents. They'll kill your nitrates like nobody's business.

An algal scrubber is another option.
 
I have seen two designs, one seems like a waste of time.

The one is bunch of coils going around a super bright light that uses algae to filter. I think this would work for a good week before the caked on crap in the tubes rendered the whole thing useless.

The good ones I have seen is a plastic box suspended above the water with the HID in the middle, with the water trickling down the sides of the plastic box. This works because its so easy to clean. You can easily scrape off the accumulated algae and it makes fine fish food too. With clear plastic, the algae can grow on both sides of the box.
 
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