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denitrate

my tank has always run pretty high nitrates. this is from a large number of fish and my heavy hand in feeding. I've read a lot of articles and spoken to a lot of people about this issue and there's numerous ways people deal with nitrates from water changes, biopellets, algae scrubbers, refugiums... the list literally goes on and on really.

my experience was initially water changes, but wow that can get old quick. particularly when you read about some of the very well established tanks never having water changes but yet somehow seem to flourish! so I decided at some point that I would carbon dose. and I did begin to carbon dose but my nitrates never seemed to come down and I always worried about using a doser because of the stories where they become more problems than they solve.

after more reading and reading I decided to just set up a refugium. it worked, my cheato was growing well but to be honest I didn't like running two extra lights and I didn't like the constant maintenance my refugium required including the excess algae growth and making adjustments to keep my cheato spinning.

don't get me wrong, I understand a tank is a lot of work and takes time but I was just dissatisfied with the amount of work. I guess if I was retired and didn't have anything else to do maybe but I'm a pretty young guy with very young kids and thought to myself that there had to be a way to cut down on some of the work. really just feeding the tank is a process where I shut down my skimmer, shut down my return, pause my in tank wavemakers. feed my fish. turn the in tank pumps back on. when all the food is gone or at least wedged in the rocks, turn on my return and then the skimmer when water level allows... I am feeding at least twice a day but usually three.

so back to reading about getting nitrates down. but during my reading about getting nitrates down, a funny thing happened. my nitrates actually went down. wow! without me doing anything! well that's not exactly true. one thing that has held true over my last few tanks is that I continue to use the same sump. I built the sump from a 40b. it has 3 compartments. the sock compartment, the skimmer compartment and the return compartment. by luck, not design, I built the sump in a way that has low flow areas. the sock compartment is low flow the area under the skimmer is low flow and a big portion of the return area is low flow... but how low? is it low enough to allow those elusive anaerobic bacteria that convert nitrate to gas to live and function? maybe... I don't know. I think yes. I just happened to buy some brightwell bricks including no3 reducer and a large marine pure block. I also bought a pretty big bag of pumice like 20 lbs? and I have the bricks covered by pumice in the very first chamber. I believe this is the reason for my lowered nitrates. I can't be certain but really there is no explanation why my nitrates are remaining low compared to my bioload and input of food. so back to reading I went.

denitrate and matrix are both advertised to lower nitrates. the rub is that you have to keep low flow. each product has a different flow rate. neither needs a food source nor needs to be replaced. just throw it in a reactor to manipulate flow rate and your nitrates will reduce in a few weeks.

I've also read that matrix and denitrate are really just pumice. but denitrate is just 35$ for 4 liters so why not just buy some and be on the safe side. I personally do not think you can have too much biomedia anyway. a reactor is perfect for this stuff, just make sure you have double or triple sponges to keep the media clean.


de❊nitrate™ is also an excellent media for aerobic nitrification and it makes an ideal biological filter in drip trays, canister filters, sumps, or even box filters. At high flow rates (greater than 100 US gallons per hour), it will function solely as an aerobic filter. At slow flow rates (less than 50 US gallons per hour), it will function as both an aerobic filter and an anaerobic denitrifying filter.
 
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