Denitrator?

[snakeklr]

Anyone DIY a denitrator? I was looking at a couple plans and was curious do they actually work? seem very easy to build. Does anyone have any experience with on of these? any newer better plans? one I was looking at was built in 2005. and better mods or something to look for?

[1628mna]

here for the ride, also looking!

[snakeklr]

http://www.aquariumpros.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=18394

This is the website that gave me the idea i could build one. But i want to make sure that it actually does work. Moma is getting tired of me making things. I love making things. I feel i learn and shows me a better way of doing things. Plus its always cheapper.

Looks like a skimmer/wet-dry fuge with a lot of air line tubbing on the outside.

[1628mna]

i have never seen that kind unless we are not talking about the saqme thing which i know we are. i always seen them built like a cal. reactor. the tank water comes in the bottom and goes out the top with a slow and steady drip. there is a build thread on here a couple days back i read but i wanted to see if there was anything else out there. threads are just like fishing, someone will bite!

[Paul_PSU]

I built this one and it got my Nitrates from 180 down to about 20.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1400576

[Paul_PSU]

That other one is a coil denitrator and it also works but just takes longer to bring the Nitrates down.

[snakeklr]

Thank you paul! I will finish reading it tonight after the turkey dinner.

[NanoReefWanabe]

i built a coil Denitrator similar to that one about two months ago...but in mine the coils are on the inside of the pipe, to prevent any light from getting to them and algae blocking it up...i also filled the centre of the PVC pipe with ceramic biorings...

my NO3 went from 10 to almost zero in two months...i am sure they will be zero by the new year....it takes a while to get the thing seeded and working but once it is there is nothing else to do other then make sure there is water flowing through it...

you can also build a sulphur based one that works similar to a PO4 reactor...and if you can get the media i am sure 2little phishys PO4 150 reactor would work fine..sulphur reactor will bring your NO3 down much faster but the media has to be replaced occasionally...

[therealfatman]

Over the years I have tried many different denitrifiers. I have found the cheapest, most efficient and maintenance free method is the use of remote deep sand buckets.

[1628mna]

therealfatman

im not familiar with what your talking about, can you explain .


thanx mike

[NanoReefWanabe]

i wanted to use a RDSB but the 5 g pail wouldnt fit under my tank in the stand...

1628mna, it is basically a 5g pail full of oolite sand, that you have water flowing over at a fairly good rate...make sure the water is clean though you dont want solids getting trapped in your sand...you only need an inch or two of water flowing over it...the water circulates through the sand and by the time it hits the bottom of the pail it is in a completely O2 free area where conversion of NO3 to N2 can take place, completing the nitrogen cycle and completely stripping the system of NO3...you dont want to disturb the sand at all though once it is running..worms and pods are fine, dont add snails, fish or stars though. you can plumb the pail however you like, however not much will stick and adhere to polyethylene so it will be hard to put an overflow in it...i am pretty sure people just have two bulkheads, one on either side of the pail; with the inlet, under pressure being slightly lower then the exit...you need at least 8-10 inches of sand in the pail...snap the lid back on and your done...never look at it again, unless there is a problem..

[1628mna]

NanoReefWanabe

what if i have a maxi1200 in there making the water go in cicles for movement, then have a uniseal on each side one for inlet one for outlet? also where do you get this sand i have never heard of this?i know the answer but i want to make sure this bucket dont need to be filled to the top and sealed does it?also how much water flow going thru est.?



thanx in advance mike

[NanoReefWanabe]

no need for the water to be going in circles...a MJ1200 should be enough flow to feed the bucket though(provided there isnt a ton of head loss, ie put the bucket side your sump)...uniseals will work fine as there is not a ton of pressure in there...there is no need to seal the top...you may want to have it ventilated as N2 gas will be produced and need to get out some how, covering the bucket will help reduce algae from growing in there....you only need 8 or more inches of sand, deeper the better.. Oolite sand can be found online or at any LFS...it is the smallest sugar sized stuff..aragonite will work too...as will southdown play sand, you might be able to use crushed coral but the pieces are fairly large and you dont get the same surface area as with the smaller particles...

if you offset the the uniseals you may create a swirl in the bucket...(dont have them directly across the bucket from one and other)

[1628mna]

snakeklr sounds like rdsb would be easier to build more cost affective downsize is it might take up more room. sorry for the hijack i hope this helps your decision making on more things in the equation . NanoReefWanabe , therealfatman and Paul_PSU thanx for the valuable info. nano im still wondering what the h@#! oolite sand is and were to get it. lol



thanx mike

[1628mna]

nano i have been looking all day for some oolite sand and there are some good saltwater stores by me with no luck. they all carry the ocean direct regular live sand not the oolite. what is the diffrence between the to? can i get away with not using the oolite sand?

thanx mike

[hotwired99]

1628-
I just googled oolite sand and this the first one that popped up.
http://www.fish.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=710019%20003
Im sure theres more on other sites though.

[One Dumm Hikk]

oolite sand is just small grained sand is all it is. Oolite works best but you can use any kind of sand you want to use.

[1628mna]

thats what i thought when i was reading about it, thanx for the confermation though. are you speaking from experience. have you done this yourself?


thanx mike

[One Dumm Hikk]

I have never built one to put on my tank. I did a lot of research(about 3 months daily) on the remote sand bed in a bucket and they will lower nitrates. It takes a while for it to cycle and then you have to be careful with them if the power goes off for any extended time and sulfuric acid production. But that is the same issue you run into with the coil denitrator is if the power goes off.

I never did get to set one up on my 90 because I moved and broke the tank down. I do want to try one (along with a coil denitrator) when I get to set it back up.

The newest rage for nitrates seems to be the Sulfur Denitrator although I haven't read a lot about them. There is a thread here in DIY on the DIY Sulfur Denitrator:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1400576

There is also a thread here in DIY on the bucket concept as well but I don't have a link for it. You can even set the bucket up with beach sand (play sand). The only drawback is you won't have calcium buffering but I am not yet convinced that sand offers any buffering capability anyway.

Good luck with it, whichever way you decide to go.

[NanoReefWanabe]

pretty sure you meant Hydrogen Sulfide..not sulfuric acid..but yeah that is true....the same will happen with a coil if the flow is too slow...you will be able to smell the rotten eggs and then you know you better up the flow...the sulfur ones seem like the newest rage...but if i can do it without the media replacing i am happy...i am pretty sure the sulfur ones can stand in a power outage with no ill effects though...obviously stagnant water for too long wont be good for anything though...

[One Dumm Hikk]

Yes, Hydrogen Sulfide, not acid. Brain was gitzy I suppose (Thats my story anyway) :)

The sulfur ones should stand a power outage but I haven't read far enough into them yet.
Of the three, the bucket appeals to me the most though.

[1628mna]

im looking at how im going to hook this bucket into my tank 2 months after i reran my return with a special y so i can run a 5 gal fuge for tumbling cheato in it. well long story short i have an empty fuge space in my sump so i will be filling that up 3 in. from the top. also the power outage will be taken care of by an invertor that will run my mag 9.5 which will run my 2 phos and carbon reactors, my 5 gal cheato bucket and my heater.

[therealfatman]

Oolitic sand is actually the ocean sand equivalent to a pearl. It is typically a piece of carbonate covered with many layers of aragonite. There are only a few places in the world where it forms abundantly. Bermuda is one of those places. Oolitic sand has an increase in pore water space which allows maximum diffusion rates of minerals and trace elements. It is typically around 0.5 to .2 mm in diameter. Typically you have to punch oolitics and into a search engine to find it. I do not know why but it tends to get fairly hidden by the online retailers like Marine Depot. If you just look up substrates in the online catalogs you will typically not find it. The cheapest quality brand is probably CaribSea Aragmax at about $22 per 30 pounds. Typically when people or catalogs talk about sugar sand they are talking about oolitic sand.

The reason you should keep a lid on a remote deep sand bed is because you want to exclude light. A lot of the drops in efficiency in a deep sand bed is caused by algae growth. It is best to not intentionally innoculate your remote deep sand bed with any critters. A RDSB purpose is only to function as a denitrifier not as a nitrification filter and denitrification filter combined such as a regular deep sand bed filter. Water should move briskly enough through a RDSB filter to discourage any settlement of detritus. No detritus means no need for critters and no turning into a nutrient sink.

[snakeklr]

No problems everyone. I am looking into this actually! We are currently adding a Huge country Kitchen to the house. So Moma's geta a new kitchen and the old kitchen she is letting me have. So with that I saw a system with the Monster rubber maid tubbs ( kinda like 100G tubs) that were filled with RDSB. I was thinkning on the plumbing to run the inlet into a PVC network under the RDSB and then letting the water flow upward thru the RDSB. SOund like what ya'll are talking about? I am thinking about the coil and the sulfer denitrator. just trying to figure which i want. Short term and needs to be disconected is the sulfer. the coil up and running continuos. Sulfer imidiate reaction. Coil slow reaction.

[1628mna]

im not seeing how you would be able to put the inlet at the bottom and let it flow up and drain at the top that is what your talking about right snakeklr. im thinking that sand would be so saturated with water the flow up would be a virtual crawl. maybe if you have the flow from bottom to top and over the top too now that would be good i think.lol therealfatman so it would not be a good idea to put the sand underneathe my tank in my sump(the old fuge compartment). i have to turn a light on to work down there but other than that there is no light except from the daylight? i know i asked this ques. before but what about the regular aragonite sand? snakeklr sounds like your gonna have a stove in your fish room/kitchen.lol sound like it will work out good with all that plumbing in there.


thanx mike

[snakeklr]

1628mna
That is my plan, to run the PVC pipping in the tub first, then put the RDSB in, so water will flow down from the dispaly tank to the fuge, then down to another tank not sure what it will be than down again into this tub. then it will overflow out to the retrun pump and back into the main display tank.

Today we went shopping and found a 110g rubber maid tub at a tractor/farm supply store marked down. so now have a new fuge system. next time i am in i will get it all plumbed in.

I use the Lowes play sand for my dsb. 75lb for $3. I have used it in all my tanks and have had no problems yet from it. besides the brown effect i dont mind. It is fine sand. Fish, Gobies, starfish's dont mind it. corals are well. so should be an easy task, just set up the PVC system uder it with holes in it to drain from the bottom up then thru the RDSB then overflow to a retun pump. just went from a 180g display, 30 sump. Now will have that 210 plus the 110 will be a 330g system!

[NanoReefWanabe]

you DONT want the water to feed from the bottom of a RDSB....that will completely defeat the purpose and the bucket will be very inefficient at removing nitrates....you will in effect create a giant nutrient sink...exactly the opposite of what you want...

the water has to simply flow across the surface...and do so quick enough that poop wont settle on the sand...the deep the sand the better the chances of the water being completely O2 deficient at the bottom and that is where good old NO3 reduction will occur...the deeper the O2 deprived area the more NO3 it can convert...as mentioned dont add any critters to your RDSB...

now your gonna say the water wont flow in the bottom of the bucket...well all i have to say to that is fill the bottom of the bucket with gasoline and run your DSB...do you think the gasoline wont get into the tank? <----Please dont actually do that....as i guarantee you the gas will get into the display tank...

[1628mna]

hey nano i actually found some oolite sand it is aragomax i think the name is. i dont think it is live sand or actually in packaged wet. my daughter was with me and i wasnt paying attention to the bag i just seen what it was. will this work for a bottom. your saying in your last post that you dont want any critters, is this includding snails? i have a bunch of little baby snails on the walls in my sump.

thanx in advance mike

[One Dumm Hikk]

Gasoline is a bad example because it is naturally lighter than water and will float to the surface even without flow in the bucket. Putting a quart of concentrated koolaid in the bottom, then fill with water will show it better and not be near as potentiall toxic to the tank.

[NanoReefWanabe]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13852285#post13852285 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 1628mna
hey nano i actually found some oolite sand it is aragomax i think the name is. i dont think it is live sand or actually in packaged wet. my daughter was with me and i wasnt paying attention to the bag i just seen what it was. will this work for a bottom. your saying in your last post that you dont want any critters, is this includding snails? i have a bunch of little baby snails on the walls in my sump.

thanx in advance mike

the live sand should be fine....might even give you a jump start...but it is expensive compared to dry sand...that sand sounds like it should work too...

snails will likely die, the object is to have no algae growing in the RDSB bucket...so there would be noting for them to eat...worms and mirco fauna are fine as is all the bacteria you could shake a stick at...

Okay fine gas was a bad example, so too is koolaid as the colour would likely be filtered out by the depth of the sand...suffice to say, water is constantly in motion in the bucket...and if working correctly the water at the bottom will be completely O2 depleted...