Still being somewhat suspicious of the #'s I tried testing again tonight using a different test kit. The first were done with Salifert, so tonight I tried with Elos.

I suspect that the Elos kits strengths are in the lower ranges. I took two test tubes side by side and did the input and output water together. I had to stare at the colours for a long time before deciding that one did indeed seem "less pink" than the other. The only sorta downer is that the pink matches more like 75ppm and 50ppm. :neutral: I think I must be colourblind because I really have a heck of a time staring at pinks and trying to compare to the colour chart. They're all "fuscia" to me. :neutral:

I talked to American Marine earlier today and I'm told that I'm the first one to call about any problems with their nitrate monitor. (Yay me! Go team!! Wooty!! :( ). Anyhow he gave me some suggestions but there really isn't a lot to work with (short of leaving the probe in the calibration solutions longer). The readings, if not clamped at over-range, are hugely fluctuating. For example tonight I got it to read anywhere from 30ppm to 100ppm to over-range on the 100ppm sample. I'm going to talk to them again tomorrow or Monday, hopefully we can get it working right or determine that it can at least be replaced if nothing else. I'd love to see what the readings are with something that can tell me real #'s as opposed to "in the neighbourhood of 50 to 75ppm".

Well ... I'm at a loss again.

At the end of day 7 I tested NO3 on the tank and the reactor output, using Salifert.

Tank - 25ppm
Reactor - 25ppm

I'm completely puzzled by this. Did the reactor start outputting at 25ppm earlier like I thought it might have been, and it's pulled the tank down to 25ppm in the days following even though the feed is super-duper slow?

Or is it more likely that the chaeto in the tank, which has suddenly kick started a growth spurt, has sucked up some nitrate?

So .. tonight (day 9) I test the reactor effluent with my Elos test kit.

You're supposed to add the reagents, then shake for 5 minutes to wait for the colour to settle. Well within 30 seconds the colour was darker than the darkest colour on the colour chart (much like before on trial #1), which in the Elos NO3 testkit is 75ppm. So the reactor is outputting >75ppm again? Huh? What gives? Does the Elos test kit colour actually fade in the 5 minutes unlike other test kits where it gets darker the longer you wait? Or am I messing up the testing? Or is the reactor outputting a super high nitrate for real and my Salifert test kit is out of whack?

I'm completely at a loss to theorize what's going on here.

The one tool I had hoped would help clarify things, the nitrate monitor I bought on Boxing Day, is seemingly defective, and has been sent to American Marine directly to troubleshoot and repair or replace if need be. In the meantime I'm out the $300 and I'm out the unit until it gets sent back to me. (I trust the issue will get resolved satisfactorily .. I'm not knocking the service I've gotten, I'm just disappointed I can't use the unit as a yardstick for my nitrate levels because trying to make heads and tails of these test results ... simply sucks!) :lol:

Gonna try rearranging my reactor feed situation and see what I can come up with. I'm determined to see successful results dadnamitall!!

If i could only have as much patience, determination and drive as you do!
There are like gazillion people watching this...
How about we do a mass consciences experiment and visualize the following:
All test kits are accurate
Denitrator is working properly
And nitrate monitor comes back very soon in perfect working condition !

On day 9, what did the salifert test kit show? Still 25?

Didn't get a chance to test with the other test kit, by the time I got around to the testing I had only a few minutes before the tank lights turned off, and the (as yet undeveloped) basement is too dark at night without the tanks on. You're absolutely correct though in that I need to do both testkits at once and do a side-by-side comparison to try to makes heads or tails of this.

What's weird though is that my nitrate/nitrite litmus test strips that I was using previously to tell if there was nitrite or not, are not registering any nitrate or nitrite, three tests in a row now where a strip has been dipped and there's been no colour change on it. It is an old set of test strips though, so more than likely the explanation for this one is they finally hit their expiration and I should just toss the rest.

I should be doing the testing at high noon and comparing the test tube colours outside in full sun. I bet then I'll get some lower #'s! ;)

Okey dokey. End of day 10, got a chance to go a little test crazy:

Tank water:
Salifert NO3: could be 25 or could be 50
Elos NO3: darker than 50 but lighter than 75
pH: 8.2

I'm going to split the difference and call it "50ppm NO3" in the tank.

Reactor effluent:
Salifert NO3: 50ppm
Elos NO3: >75ppm (chart only goes to 75, it was darker than the 75 reference)
Salifert NO3: >= 4ppm (chart goes to 4.0, was at least as dark as the 4.0 reference, I think it was pretty close actually)
pH: 7.6

Soooo ... my interpretation: The Elos nitrate test kit is thrown off by any presence of nitrite in the test water. Reactor is definitely not cycled at this point.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but I shut off the feed altogether tonight and am just letting the water cycle through the sulfur with the recirc pump. If the problem is too much O2 in the feed water preventing a cycle from forming then this should help with that.

I still do wonder if the LSM media is somehow not as good as maybe some other choice. The Midwest Aquatic media that comes with bacteria preseeded, for example, or maybe winemaking sulfur is somehow a more pure grade, or something like that.

Sorry that this is such a long thread.

Day 14:

NO3 - 75ppm (Salifert, not going to bother with Elos until the NO2 is gone)
NO2 - 2.0 ppm (!! :) )

I have the flow cranked way, way back. Like 1 drop per 5 to 10 seconds.

I really do hope I'm seeing a reduction in nitrite and not just wishful thinking. Will test again in a couple of days. I figure at this point there's no benefit to testing every day, but maybe 2x or 3x a week until I see the NO3 drop.

Glad to hear some good news. The other day I stumbled upon someone saying that it can take 6-7 weeks for an unseeded reactor to establish the bacteria in some cases. (depending on conditions and nitrate levels in main tank) Can't remember where I read this though...

Day 21

NO2 still >2.0ppm. Didn't bother testing NO3.

This makes watching paint dry seem exciting. I know I need to be patient but the lack of a visible trend in the #'s really does concern me. Is nitrite reducing bacteria really that hard to get to colonize?

I wonder if I have bad expectations. Is it possible the sulfur won't colonize nitrite reducing bacteria? I.e., should I just increase the flowrate now? Flush out the nitrites and let the remaining bacteria (hopefully there is some by now) just reduce the incoming nitrate?

This is far too complicated. :( All I end up with is questions and more questions and no real grasp of what you're supposed to be doing.

I still wonder about the Caribsea LSM. I've read a few times where people say if their reactor clogged, that getting it going again you get a wicked rotten eggs smell in the whole house. I mean, I have to basically get my nose right into a sample of this water, sniff it as hard as I can, and if I use my imagination I might imagine a slightly sulfurous scent (ie., not even close to Banff Hot Springs kind of scent). Low grade sulfur maybe???

Apparently American Marine did find my NO3 monitor to be defective, it's on its way back to me. Hopefully it arrives soon and I can start using it to track nitrates instead of guessing-the-pinks.

I might as well try a coil denitrator at this point too, what the heck, eh? :lol:

Can you combine coil denitrator with sulphur instead of bioballs?
I guess you wouldn't at this time eh?

I might as well try a coil denitrator at this point too, what the heck, eh? :lol:[/quote]

Have things changed at all?

I just recieved my reactor today, so I'll be starting it up shortly. Should be an interesting experience...

Just tested nitrite tonight and it was off the chart again. Guess increasing the flowrate was the wrong thing to do. :neutral:

Cranked it back to 1 drop per 7 seconds.

I have to wonder that something's wrong with this scenario. There must be too much O2 coming into the unit preventing a proper anaerobic zone. Next time I'm at Home Depot I'm going to buy maybe 50' of 1/4" tubing to add to the inlet. Not sure what's left to try after that.

Someone at RC has suggested to me maybe the problem is that the sulfur interferes with the test kits.

If that's the case, it could explain a LOT.

However if that's the case then I don't know how to tell if the unit is working, or when it's time to increase the flowrate.

Hopefully my nitrate monitor arrives back soon. American Marine did confirm it was faulty, and repaired it and sent it back. The only thing is it took almost a full two weeks to get to them (and this was the "U.S. Parcel Expedited" service from Canada Post), and so I would expect it will take at least as long to return. Been about a week and a half since they sent it back so with some luck it does come this week. At least I feel a little vindicated on that one, he had told me that of the hundreds they've sold I was the only one to complain it wasn't working, then when he looked at it he confirmed it had a wiring fault. Anyhow at least it's been fixed but it would be nice to have the thing back soon!!!

I was just thinking ... would it be possible that your recirculation pump sucking in micro air bubbles? That would change a lot of things what do you think? Can this be the unnotocied problem?

Clarity! Finally some answers (maybe)
 

Ask, (or maybe in my case, whine) enough and ye shall receive. :)

Yesterday the nitrate monitor arrived in the mail! "Woot!" :lol:

It looks like it's immune to the sulfur interference. I tested the tank and it read 26ppm and I measured the reactor effluent and it read 13ppm.

So maybe this thing has been working all along... I guess the lesson is learned, you need to take a leap of faith (or find a test kit that's immune to sulfur interference, and FWIW that's neither Salifert or Elos).

There you go! Now you can get the reactor dialed in right. 13 ppm is allright, betcha it takes a few weeks to get the output down to 0ppm. It WORKS!:wink:

One week later and the effluent still reads 13ppm so I'm going to try slowing it down somewhat in an effort to get it to read zero (so that I can increase the flowrate and have it attack the "ambient tank nitrate level").

In the space of one week though my tank has tested as low as 21ppm NO3 (which I thought was pretty good) and as high as 31ppm. In fact, it tested 21ppm 3 days ago and yesterday it tested at 31ppm, so a full ten point increase in two days.

I'm at a complete loss to comprehend such a jump in nitrates. I haven't fed my anemone at all in a couple weeks, and I've been lightly feeding the one fish in there (a juvenile S. virgatus rabbitfish). His tankmates are 2 cleaner shrimp and 2 peppermints, plus some snails and 2 urchins. This is a 110g tank so I would consider this to be on the low end as far as bioload is concerned. The big question mark is the anemone ... near as I figure it is some kind of weird nitrate producing beast but I would have thought that output would correspond to input but it seems as if it doesn't matter if I feed it lightly or feed it heavily, the nitrate is always there.

I am starting to think that the tank needs a major overhaul.. maybe a larger sump so I can increase the rock volume, and maybe a skimmer overhaul or upgrade. I guess there's the possibility of testing errors on my part but it seems suspicious that I'd get a reasonably steady level on one thing and at the same time such a wild fluctuation on the other.

I think this is just a weird tank to be trying this experiment on. Something is just not typical/average here.

Today = February 13
Started = January 2
-> So exactly six weeks

Today's readings:
Tank = 30ppm (up from 23 two days ago again, it crept down over the course of the week until now)
Effluent = 23ppm, 2 drops per second

At what point does one accept that something is just not going to work? I don't know where to go from here. It's bad enough to see a lack of tank nitrate reduction but to see such huge inexplicable jumps is insult to injury. I haven't fed my anemone in weeks, the only thing I can think of is that I fed my ONE fish some NLS pellets and an extra pinch for the shrimp, but to see a 10 ppm increase overnight in a 115g? That has a skimmer and a denitrator AND a remote-DSB AND a chaeto growout AND some mangroves? Doesn't make sense to me.

Compared to my setup I think that the Mag 2 is possibly too big for your application. A slower flow through your sulphur bed would create a more ideal environment for the anerobic bacteria. I'm running an eheim 1250 (a tad smaller than a Mag 2 for flow) on a much bigger reactor and it seems to be running great. Other than that, the only real difference between our setups is that I seeded mine with bacteria. (even though the CaribSea LSM is suppose to have some bacteria already seeded into it)

Update - I'm taking mine offline as soon as I have some time to get on my hands and knees to undo the plumbing and clean out the reactors and recover whatever media. In the meantime it's not hurting anything so I'm leaving it there but it's definitely no-good.

About two weeks ago I finally gave up hope altogether this would ever work out for me, so I decided I'd take it offline at the earliest opportunity (but left it on in the meantime since it wasn't hurting anything ... not doing any good, but not doing any harm, so I figured it could wait until I was looking for something to do).

Anyhow I stopped testing my effluent on Feb. 20. Sometime between then and yesterday the input line vapour locked and the siphon stopped so there was no flow. When I discovered this I did a nitrate test of the water in the reactor, and lo and behold I got (for the first time since NOVEMBER) a zero nitrate reading on the water inside the reactor.

So, I thought I'd give it one last kick at the can. Restarted the siphon and reset the drip rate to one drop per second.

24 hours later (tonight), the effluent is back up to 20ppm. (Tank is 35ppm.)

So ... I guess that's it. I'm done with this for now. My guess is that there's just not enough media, despite what people keep telling me that "its enough media" I think the numbers just tell a different story.

Psyire, how much media do you have in yours? Can you do a volume calculation? Even just a rough guess, like "1/2 container of LSM" or "3/4 container" or "2 containers" or whatever is fine. I'm just curious to see how it compares - you said your reactor was much bigger than this reactor so I'm curious as to how much bigger it really is.

Sorry to hear....


But to answer your question.. 1.5 gallons (containers) of LSM. With a recirculation flow rate slighly lower than yours with the Mag 2. (this is where I believe your problem lies, but that's just my opinion) If you lowered your recirculation flow I think you would get closer to where you want to be. With a high recirculation flow I think you are getting oxygen present through your entire reactor. This is somewhat proven by your zero nitrate reading once your input was cut off.

I would be tempted to swap out that Mag 2 for a ehiem 1048 or something similar. Trust me, the results of lower nitrate are quite nice, as I have corals growing again that had stops for many months. It's made me a believer... so far.

You're probably right in that I should try a smaller pump, but I figure if I'm going to have to spend money to buy a pump I might as well also try a bigger reaction chamber because the small volume of media is really a wildcard I don't trust anymore. I could try swapping out this reactor for my calcium reactor and make this one a calcium reactor again or I could try to build something. I suppose I could try to find an Eheim 1048 or I wonder if I should just put a 1/2" ball valve on the output of the mag2 and set it to 1/2 or 3/4 to slow down the flow.

Oh well .. I went into this wondering if I could convert "this calcium reactor" into a functional denitrator, .. now I know the answer is "no - not this calcium reactor anyhow (but not to say one couldn't use another one)."

The next thing I want to work on is upgrading my G3 into a meshwheel and reworking the sump. I think it will be an interesting project. Maybe after that I'll look into trying the sulfur again, but for now I'm shelving the idea.

Why not do this before shutting the reactor down? It's a simple thing that may work perfectly... (and cheaply)

Have you tried shutting the recirculation down for a few weeks to see if the media will seed more completely? I don't have recirculation myself, just a single pass through of the LSM (0.6% of the tank volume ... about 3 gallons), so I'm somewhat suspect of that component of the design simply because I've not used it myself. I do, however, have recirculation on the aragonite media to get the pH back up before re-entry into the tank ...

I've shut my unit down several times in the past six months, and during start up the key to reseeding is ultra ultra slow flow, and leave it there until you have a slight smell of sulphur (with your nose right at the outflow), then crack the flow up a bit (wait a few days for the slight sulphur smell to return), and repeat ...

The amount of sulphur relative to tank volume won't affect the zero nitrate formation (after all, the bacteria don't know how big your tank is), but with less volume you definately need slower flow, which can be a major obstacle. If I was to speculate without seeing your system, I'd say the flow is likely the factor that isn't correct yet and as a result, complete seeding of the media has not occurred. As well, if the length of the denitrator isn't at least five times the diameter of the cylinder, the drip rate would need to be even slower than usual to compensate and create the anoxic zone. I use a gate valve for flow control, but those can get spendy.

That zero reading you had would indicate that a super slow flow rate would give you success. For readings, I've found that the Jungle test strips aren't affected by the sulphur. Of course, you need to extrapolate between colours rather than simply reading from a digital device :biggrin: :biggrin:

I still swear by these devices for FOWLR systems with high bio load and heavy feeding.

New update ... This has taken a bit of a backseat since March but I got it going again recently.

I've reworked the sump baffles, I've modded the skimmer to meshwheel, and now I use a 100micron filter sock on the sump intake. I'm now happy with the tank and removed what I hope were stumbling blocks in its ability to process bioload.

I took offline my other calcium reactor from the other tank, and replaced it with the smaller unit (left it as upflow). Using the larger reactor now, I modded it to upflow (switching the tubes at the bottom, using a T at the top of the chamber for the intake, cut some eggcrate and got a filter at the top).

It's -just- large enough to hold an entire container of LSM media now.

The recirc pump is a mag5, the feed pump is a lift pump (looks like an airpump but for water) that pushes water, and flow control via an irrigation dripline needlevalve.

Using a 5g bucket of outgoing water change water, which tested at 21ppm NO3, I cycled the reactor (@1 drop per second) on the bucket and the results look like this:

(Date/Effluent Nitrate ppm)
2007/04/29: Not tested (source water = 21ppm)
2007/05/02: 15
2007/05/03: 10
2007/05/04: 7
2007/05/05: 0 (source water now = 4ppm)
2007/05/06: 0 (source water now = 0ppm)

So ... quite an astonishing change from the previous trials. Of course this is on a small volume of water with a static nitrate condition (ie. not being produced), but still, a reduction of 21ppm to 0ppm in 7 days to me seems pretty keen.

I'm more convinced than ever before that the problem in the previous attempts was inadequate media volume.

Incidentally the lift pump seems to be the answer to producing a nice slow flowrate. It has been rock steady at 1 drop per second all week and what tickles me most is that it's a $10 item. :)

I moved the reactor over to my 110g tank tonight, which tested at 33ppm NO3 (there is a good chance of error on this reading as I did it with the unit uncalibrated on the high range reading, but it is definitely in the ballpark).

It will be interesting to see how it does now that it's moved over into "production mode."

Awesome News/Results

Glad to see you are giving it another go, hopefully with much better results this time around. I haven't posted any updates to my situation, but things are still ticking along just fine with my reactor and my tank has never looked better. (and tested better)

Murphy's Law had to kick in sooner or later.

This week's run started off promising, but has ended not so good.

Date/Reactor Effluent/Tank nitrate readings:
May 7: 10 / 33
May 8: 1 / 31
May 9: 0 / 31
May 10: 14 / 34
May 11: 21 / 32

Not sure what happened on the May 9/10 there, but ever since then Murphy's Law has been showing up. Haven't been able to keep a consistent drip rate since then either, so last night I switch the feed pump / flow control valve around so that the pump is Aqualifter pushing into the reactor (as before) but with the dripline irrigation valve on the output.

Worked awesome to get a nice steady rate, but, it looks like the reactor just can't handle the pressure. Although I have my flange bolts as tight as I can make them, water just seeps through the flanges like crazy. I wish I had noticed this last night (or this morning). I came home from my bike ride today (I left before the tank lights turned on), checked on the tanks and found a good 5-10gallons on the floor. Argh. :( And, I found that the intake tube had wiggled its way out of the sump and the reactor was just full of air bubbles. I figured at this point the bacterial cultures are a total writeoff and I have to start the cycle from the start all over again.

Bummer. For an inanimate object, it sure seems as if it's quite determined not to work. I tell you, between the nuisance crabs (who just killed a fish on me :cry: .. I have to declare an all out war on the little bastards now), the out of control nitrates and the out of control phosphates, and faulty test meters, my patience for this hobby is wearing dangerously thin.

Oh well, next week's another week, we'll see where it goes...