Sulfur denitrator experiment

[andresont]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Wow 3 months. I was reading through the instructions for the Midwest Aquatic's version as my guide. If there's mention of a cycle time that long in there then I've overlooked it.

I guess it makes sense to take a long time for the right bacterias to colonize...

Wow though, that's a long time to wait .. Guess I'll stop posting my updates every few days that's just not gonna work out as an interesting thread.

"Day 300 reading ... everything is the same as before"

It has been very interesting, hope to see this project going.!
keep us up dated.
thx

[Psyire]

Midwest Aquatic's Sulphur comes with bacteria pre-installed. 'so to speak'

I should have my new unit soon, and I plan to just add some bacteria from my 'Polyplab Reef-resh' kit directly to my reactor in order to speed things up a bit.

[Psyire]

3 months does seem excessive though...

Would it take this long for DSB anerobic bacteria to establish themselves?

[Delphinus]

I imagine it might.

3 months .. I had no idea. I thought reeferaddict saw results sooner than that, so I'm still hoping there's hope.

Seriously if I have to wait 3 months to see an effect, I'd be better off doing a 100% water change and taking this thing offline. 75ppm is WAY too high to live with. Tank looks like crap too .. I dunno. Feeling a bit bummed out about this..

I didn't realize the Midwest unit came with bacteria seeded media. I missed that. I should have used that stuff instead of the LSM then.

[reeferaddict]

My results took about a month to develop and have been very consistent since. Before I did the denitrator I battled hair algae and the sort for a year and a half. The tank now runs a tidy ZERO and that even with not getting to a water change in 6 weeks now.

The sulfur does need to colonize denitrifying bacteria in an anoxic environment. To do this I ran mine on a rubbermaid of 80 ppm tank water with a slow drip rate to begin with to promote the anoxic zone and gradually ramped it up to around the 5X media volume turnover per hour as stated in Delbeek and Sprung Vol 3 and waited to see my test water nitrates drop. I noticed a drop after about 3 weeks and after a month there was no nitrates left in the test water. During that time I had gotten the main system down to a reasonable 20 - 30 ppm. It took about 6 weeks on the main tank before my nitrates really dropped, but after 2 months there were ZERO which is where it's been ever since.

You need to keep an eye on the effluent rate, as I've had mine clog a couple of times and when you start up you get that wonderful rotten egg hydrogen sulfide stench, but even restarting it in the system doesn't release enough to be of concern to the inhabitants. I've seen nothing to compare to the nitrate elimination potential of this system. For the most part it's set and forget when implemented with a little research and common sense. Be patient - about all I can say is you may want to try increasing your effluent rate and see from there. I was dauted by mine at first - but it works beautifully!

[Joe Reefer]

Reefkeeping rule #7234 - Nothing good happens fast.

[danny zubot]

bacteria pre-installed.

**Insert Bacteria Here**

Tony, why dont you do a nice sized water change, and then run the unit out of a rubbermaid. Sounds like a good idea to me.

[Skimmerking]

Originally Posted by Joe Reefer

Reefingkeeping rule #7234 - Nothing good happens fast.

and more so when your married