I was just thinking about a some filtration questions. Firstly is there any way to get nitrates to zero? From my understanding nitrates are a by product of the nitrogen cycle. Say you had a 30 gallon tank and you had a w/d that was bigger than the actually tank size, would you be able to lower the nitrates to zero like that, if you had a crazy big sump and bio tower?
Filtration question
- Thread starter Euge
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nitrate removal requires a anairobic(sp?) area. sometimes hard to achieve cause you always have the risk of hydrogen sulfide wich will kill your fish... I could be wrong but I believe I read somewhere before if you have a tall enough tower you will remove nitrates don't know if that is 100% true though
Anaerobic bacteria will remove nitrates, but not enough to get you down to zero. There are several chemical medias that will remove nitrates, (purigen, and d*nitrate are both good). I personally prefer the live plant route to getting zero nitrates.
There are only three ways to reduce nitrates; anaerobic bacteria, delute them with water changes, or macro-algea's. Freguent water changes are the norm, however with a sump (or w/d) you can add a deep sand bed, or macro algea (plants). The macro's absorb the nitrate like fertilizer and as the plant grows you prune it for nutrient export. Mangroves work well for this. Also you can buy (or biuld) "Nitrate Reductors" which are anaerobic chambers that you add CO2 to to feed the bacteria. This eliminates any harmfull by products.
jungledriver;830067; said:
There are actually four methods, nitrate reactors can be considered another form. Macro alga is not the only method of plant use. In FW aquariums you wouldn't use macro algae at all generally.