Sulfur denitrator experiment

Delphinus · #1 12-10-2006, 10:04 PM

Yeah, I get the point.

I had wanted to have "one tank with a little bit of a sandbed" so I could keep things like my open-brain and plate coral properly (I feel these guys do better on sand). Although at the moment I guess it's a moot point. I lost my plate coral when I was in Hawaii because the Tunzes buried it in sand and my tank-sitter didn't notice and it never recovered, and the xanthid crabs totally went nuts on my brain one day and it too never recovered. Now I have a cube tank with a bunch of rocks, a 20" anemone, and a dozen crabs. I can't keep nothing but the anemone in there and it .. sucks.

I would like for it to be a softey tank one day but I have to figure out how to de-crabbify the tank, I can't *beleive* how many of them came in. The thing that really gets me is that I inspected *each* rock closely before putting them in the tank.

Guess this is turning into a bit of an off-topic rant now.. oops.

Anyhow I'm curious about things like sulfur denitrators and Zeovit. For me, to try this was $25 in ARM sulfur beads versus $300ish to get started on Zeo. Seemed like a no-brainer but I would still like to consider Zeo or Ultralith one day, but maybe in a few months once I get a couple other things settled first.

Delphinus · #2 12-12-2006, 05:05 AM

Day 14

An interesting and potentially discouraging development.

Tank NO3 - still @ 75ppm (guessing, the colour pink does not match any on the chart, going on a guessed intensity)

Reactor effluent NO3 -- instantly off the chart. The colour readings only go up to 100ppm and you're supposed to wait a few minutes for the colour to develop, but the colour was well past the 100ppm right away when the drops of the second reagent were added.

I'm not sure what the next step is. Is this the reactor just cycling? Or is it a failure?

I don't know how much faith to put into this thing to guess how long I should wait before taking it off.

Feeling mighty discouraged ...

If I could make up 120g of SW I'd just do a 100% water change at this point. I don't know what to do.

Psyire · #3 12-12-2006, 05:07 AM

Check your reactor effluent for Nitrite, if it's still cycling then you should have a reading I would think.

Delphinus · #4 12-12-2006, 05:11 AM

Good idea, thanks .. I'll have to see if I have a testkit that can tell me nitrite. I think I had one at one point but I think it might have been my Seachem testkit and I've finished that one a long time ago.

Hate to buy ANOTHER test kit (have I ever mentioned I hate test kits?) but that may be what I have to do..

Psyire · #5 12-12-2006, 06:25 AM

I'm guessing your still cycling the reactor. Exactly 2 weeks would be about the time Nitrate spikes. (give or take 1/2 week)

I wouldn't do anything rash except maybe slow down the flow through the reactor if it's faster than a drip/second.

If you are still showing such high nitrate a week from now, then I would start to worry.

Double check to make sure your recirc. pump is running properly.

danny zubot · #6 12-12-2006, 05:05 PM

I might be coming into this a bit late Tony, but I have a pintpoint monitor that you can borrow if it will help.

I'm curious about something. This sulpher denitrater media, isn't it supposed to absorb NO3 kind of like a PO4 sponge? If so, why would there even be a cycle at all. I understand that it acts as a biological bed so technically there should be a cycle, but in removing NO3 from the equation shouldn't you eliminate the cycling process? Or, is it merily a substrate for concentrated colonies of anerobic bacteria to denitrify the water?

Delphinus · #7 12-12-2006, 07:14 PM

It's the latter case Danny, i.e., it's a substrate for anaerobic bacteria to take hold. I expected it would take some time for the bacteria to take hold, but I didn't expect that it would take hold with the nitrate-producing bacteria (which I thought was aerobic) first. The pH in the reactor went down within 2 days so I thought that meant it was an anoxic zone at that point, meaning from that point forward it would be the anaerobic bacteria colonizing the sulfur beads. I guess it's going to progress through various spikes but now I wonder if I should move the reactor off my tank and instead run it off a bucket of old water change water just to make sure I'm not dumping NO3 and NO2- into my tank unnecessarily (which I assume is not so good for the tank inhabitants!)

I'll send you a PM about the monitor. Thanks!