How do you get Nitrate close to zero?

[Delphinus]

I experimented with remote sand beds and sulfur denitrators a few years ago when I had a 24" ritteri anemone in a 115g cube which was a nitrate producing factory (it would get up to 50ppm or more unless I did huge huge wholesale waterchanges (like 75%) which were very expensive and impractical).

In the end I scrapped both ideas, they just didn't work for me. I think my case was a bit of an anomaly though on account that the NO3 production was off the charts and my efforts were like draining a lake with an eyedropper.

A sulfur denitrator isn't too hard to set up though, if you can get ahold of a midsized calcium reactor you could easily convert it to a denitrator, basically you want to convert it so there's no CO2 input, use sulfur beads instead of calcium media, and you need a slow slow slow slow feed rate to keep the reaction chamber anaerobic/anoxic (too fast a feed and it becomes too oxygenated and the bacterial colonies crash).

But it's still a PITA. Myself I'd steer you away from this even if I had had more success with them (I tried it in two separate reactors, both were complete failures). Also sulfur stinks.

Seriously, more rock and beefier skimmers can make a tank able to process nitrates down to the point where nitrate consumption exceeds production (leaving you with a nominal or zero nitrate reading).

Zeovit and Ultralith systems or Reef-Resh systems can do the trick too, but that's a whole different discussion.

And one last possibility is these carbon-based-polymeric pellets (what untamed referred to as "solid fuel balls"), a fairly new product but from what I can see they look pretty promising. Just run some in a media reactor (ie. phosban reactor) and you could be set. It's basically carbon dosing without the actual daily dosing.