Homemade carbon pre-filter bombs for high nitrates

[sbloxy123]

Hey there.

My tap water is high in nitrates (40ppm) and i have had an idea

Fill up large jugs/bottles of tap water then drop some wrapped up activated carbon into the bottles. Leave for a week ready for the weekly water change.

Wrap the carbon in net bags or an old pair of the missus' tights.

Was thinking it will help remove chlorine & lower nitrates.....

It would be great to know your thoughts!

 

[Hendre]

Carbon will gobble up chlorine, but as far as I know the only things that remove nitrates from water are plants and special exchange resins that are used for household or commercial water filtration

Nitrate Removal - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

www.sciencedirect.com

.

 

[sbloxy123]

Carbon will gobble up chlorine, but as far as I know the only things that remove nitrates from water are plants and special exchange resins that are used for household or commercial water filtration

Nitrate Removal - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

www.sciencedirect.com

.

that makes sense I thought it was a bit optimistic.

My thoughts came from looking at faucet filters on my taps (just for water changes).. the product i've been looking at says it uses activated carbon:

TAPP Water TAPP 1 - Faucet Water Filter, uses 100% organic granular activated carbon (GAC) technology, purifies water, filters chlorine, rust, sediments, herbicides and pesticides: Amazon.co.uk: Kitchen & Home

Great prices on your favourite Home brands, and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

back to the drawing board ?

 

[tlindsey]

If you can test and figure how much water to remove bi-weekly or weekly will be the best without gadgets.

 

[sbloxy123]

If you can test and figure how much water to remove bi-weekly or weekly will be the best without gadgets.

True but my water comes out of the tap at 40ppm which is already too high (which I've read is bad for fish..)
I have little concern of that figure increasing because I don't have a large bioload and do regular wc.
It's just the level of nitrates that I put in that is my worry.
Fish seem fine (until kinda recently one fish has become ill). Not a huge worry but it wouldn't hurt getting my nitrates down.

 

[tlindsey]

True but my water comes out of the tap at 40ppm which is already too high (which I've read is bad for fish..)
I have little concern of that figure increasing because I don't have a large bioload and do regular wc.
It's just the level of nitrates that I put in that is my worry.
Fish seem fine (until kinda recently one fish has become ill). Not a huge worry but it wouldn't hurt getting my nitrates down.

My apologies I didn't read the entire thread so yes Plants or Resins that remove Nitrates stated by Hendre .

 

[DDK]

I have a brs 4 stage 75gpd ro/di system and it removes everything lol. I'm assuming nitrates are larger than the h2o molecules so the bulk if not all gets removed by the membrane alone. I only say this because I have yet to change the di resin and I've had it for years and its produced tons of water for humidifiers, little evaporation coolers, and weekly water changes for my fish tanks yet it still produce 0ppm or 0tds water. The di resin did change colors probably after 500-1000 gallons and it seems too much of a hassle to replace so I ignored it and its still working fine lol always a solid 0ppm. In 12 hours the 75gpd system makes me over 100 gallons but my house water pressure is 80 psi which is a LOT higher than the majority of the US.

I bought it for roughly 140-160 on a black friday or a cyber monday sale they had going, so if you need one wait till then. But you cant do 100% water changes with ro water or you'll kill all your fish. You need to add some tap water back in (at least 30%) on established tanks and at least 50% on new tanks. In tap water theres minerals or some call "salts" that are essential trace minerals that are important to the health and growth of fish. Unless your fish likes a neutral ph that bounces from 6-7 which are quite rare (unless were talking about rays), straight ro water will probably kill them unless they grew up with it having a buffer in the tank such as crushed coral or some type of rock that easily and slowly leeches into the water.

Or you can remove everything in the water with the rodi system and add back minerals into the ro water like shrimp keepers do. For my shrimp I use saltyshrimp GH+ just cause crystal red shrimp need GH hardness and not KH to effectively breed just cause their tank is small and its easy I do it. But for my fish tanks that are +100 gallons and well established and have a ton of minerals already from years of evaporation and topping off with tap water I just do 30-40% straight water changes with ro water and the next w/c I use straight tap and test the water every now and then with a ppm meter.

 

[Yoimbrian]

Like so many things in the aquarium world, you can indeed put real math to this. Activated carbon will indeed adsorb and remove nitrate, but its not used because it doesn't adsorb much before hitting equillibrium and not removing anymore.

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According to this article, activated carbon has a capacity between 0.006 and 0.8 mg Nitrate / g carbon.

So, if you have 50 gallons of water at 40ppm nitrate, that is

50 gallons * 3700 grams / gallon * 40 grams nitrate / 1,000,000 grams water = 7.4 grams of nitrate

So if you have the best surface coated carbon and call it 0.8 mg nitrate / g carbon, that means you need 9,250 grams of carbon to adsorb all of that nitrate.
So yea, you could indeed do this. But you would need to find the proper surface coated activated carbon, and you would need to use 20 pounds of it per 50 gallons of water. If you bought the wrong activated carbon with a 0.006 mg / g adsorption ratio you'd need 2,600 pounds of it per 50 gallons of water, which would be really tricky I'm not sure how you would fit that much carbon into the water

 

[Arthur11]

If you can afford it, you should get a bio pellet reactor. It can help remove nitrates and ammonia from the water quite quickly and will keep it that way for a long time. However, some water conditioners work quite fast as well. Some of them will even give you positive results after an hour or two.

 

[Oughtsix]

Hey there.

My tap water is high in nitrates (40ppm) and i have had an idea

Fill up large jugs/bottles of tap water then drop some wrapped up activated carbon into the bottles. Leave for a week ready for the weekly water change.

Wrap the carbon in net bags or an old pair of the missus' tights.

Was thinking it will help remove chlorine & lower nitrates.....

It would be great to know your thoughts!

My thought is I would throw one of those tiny little $10 pumps in the bottles to keep the water moving. If the water doesn't move over and through the activated carbon it won't do much good.

Running the water thru a big blue filter with a carbon block in it would probably work just as well. You would probably have to attach a garden hose connected to a hose spigot to get enough pressure to push the water through the carbon block.