http://www.aquaripure.com/

Was web surfing the other daym and came across this site that offers 'denitrators' for nitrate removal. Anyone have any opinions or experience with this item?



Robert

The best way I can think of is through natural WATER CHANGE.

(WATER) FREE AND CHEAP - (CHEMICALS) continued maintaince and dosing

Seems pretty pricey... sorry, haven't used it. If you do decide to check it out, let us know how it worked for you!

Water changes are definitely the best way to go! There are a lot of products on the market claiming to reduce tank maintenance and Im wary of them. Its just a way to make money and target people who want to keep fish but not have to do the work. There are a lot of people like that out there and I help a lot of them at work. They are the type of people who buy these products but it really isnt beneficial to your fish.

If your nitrate levels are extremely high you need to look at how you keep your tank–how many fish, what kind of filtration, how much you feed, how often and how much water you change.

Hi, I just reduced my NitrAtes from 20 to 5 by washing out the gravel and doing a 20% water change.

I found just changing the water was getting me nowhere :angry:

Hi im haveing that problem to high nitrate i have a gravel cleaner but dont no how to use it lol. i have rockes and marbles now got tired of golfish putting then in there mouth! how do you clean with this hose thingy yours truly lost .

well a gravel cleaner has two ends, one has a little ball pump the other end is a long tube. Stick the long tube in the water, get a bucket and pump it so the water is sucked out

Just stick the tube down into the gravel and shake a bit, and all the fish poop will float into the tube and get sucked out.. hope that helped

Yes! Water changes and try adding some plants. A densely planted tank has less nitrates as the plants absorb this waste product from the fish to use as a natural fertilizer.

I'm wondering how long your tank has been established and if it has a lot of fish, what kind of filtration, etc?

I think if the nitrAtes stay consistenty high it might be time for a strip-down and clean the tank completely. Always save as much tank water as possible to reset your tank, this way it's not so shocking for the fish.

Thats what I did in my previous post when I mentioned washing the gravel.

I also did that with my "green pea soup" tank after algae cure treatment.

Interesting. I've been thinking about building a DIY denitrification unit. From what I've read on various pond boards, the coil denitrification filters do work. Takes about a month for them to "cycle" and you have to make sure the water flow is not too fast and that you filter out any particulates to avoid stopping up the tubing inside the filter. They can release hydrogen sulfide gas tho which creeps me out. I just built a plant filter instead.

Adding plants is great to reduce nitrate. Another way of promoting nitrate removal is to reduce the frequency of cleaning the filter media. When the center of the sponge turns anaerobic, nitrate is converted to nitrogen gas. However, you must make sure that the rinsing frequency does not reduce the water flow of the filter.

De-nitrators are cool but pretty advanced to build. It would be cool to have. The other altenative is a trickle tower which gasses-off ammonia before it ever gets converted to nitrates. I'm almost completed building one myself and can post some pictures soon.

Anyhow, these de-nitrators are not that necessary except maybe for breeding some tropical fish that are sensitive to nitrates. The reason being that there are other chemicals to be concerned about and would compel you to drain a good percentage out of you goldie tank per week anyway. And that is really the best thing. See this post for more information if you are curious about a de-nitrator: http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10371

There is also trickle-tower information with lots of pictures built by one of our members. It's really really cool. Check it out in the DIY section. I'm taking advatage of it reducing nitrates myself for breeding purposes. Pristine conditions make it quite desirable for my application.