Diy Dentrifier

[mattbeau]

ok did some research on anaerobic bacteria ( the bacteria that in an un oxiginated medium will use nitrate instead of oxygen). Im thinking of 3/8 in. tubing looped five times and hooking it up to my fluval 3 output. this will give 29 ft of surface area. Essentially if I get the flow to about 3L, there should be no oxygen left about half way down the tube.

This should be an easy retrofit as I already have the filter running now for a little over a month (or has it been two yet?) either way the media is well established. this should help resolve the issue of having a clogged tube as others have run into as its prefiltered.


now I really only need is to find a valve that will do the trick amd figure out what type of tubing.

are my hopes too high or am I on track
I got some of my ides from here


heres a picture of what I am thinking (i'm not an artist)

 

[Lateral Line]

De-nitrators of the type you are talking about are a real problem to establish, and an even bigger problem to keep stable.

You can add a tee piece to the filter return so the bulk of the flow goes straight through, and the side branch connected, via a tap to the length of tubing you want to use as a denitrator. It is not difficult to rig up. When I experimented with it, I used standard Eheim parts.

The anærobics need a medium to grow on, a simple empty tube has just the wall of the tube, you will get a lot more area if you loosely fill the tube with something. I tried all manner of things, none worked really well, even with filtered water, some crud gets in and stops the flow. What you then find is you are opening the tap more and more to get the required flow rate, ultimately, you need to pull it out, empty it, destroying your bacteria and setting it up again. The alternative is to throttle the normal tank return to force the water through the denitrator but then you reduce the flow through the filter proper and start to cause other problems.

Another issue is a food source for the anærobics. Yes they use nitrates, but you cannot build proteins etc., from nitrates alone, they need an organic Carbon source. Vodka is often used.

Another issue is sulphur. Many anærobics, once established, also produce Sulphur containg waste products. At best, these are solids like Iron Sulphide, at worst, Hydrogen Sulphide which is mildly toxic, both to the tank and the humans around the tank, and in any case absolutely stinks, you will NOT want this in your house.

My advice would be not to bother, the effectiveness is only ever marginal. There is no need to de-nitrate unless your source water is polluted, and then it is better to treat that before putting it into the tank. Water changes will remove the nitrates. Remember, water changes remove more then just nitrates, so de-nitrating your water will not remove the need for regular water changes.

Plants are probably the best de-nitrators. A well planted, well lit and well nutriented planted tank requires nitrates to be ADDED.

 

[mattbeau]

great replay,

how about if I were to score the internal part of the tubing with a snake and a sharp rock like quartz making at a bit pourous, in order to increase my surface area.

would having carbon media inside the fluval remove most of the sulfar?

when you say organic carbon source. would regular good old carbon found in filters work

if so could I build an internal sealed canister and place that at the outlet and have the water release throught that like a reverse filter

water changes would still be required in order to remove the Totally disolved solids in order to avoid a PH crash -thanks to wolf for the link here

if plants would work, what about algae, perhapse build a clear case above the waterline just under the light and have water pass through that.

I dont have polluted water and I'm not lazy enough not to do weekly water changes, It would just be an interesting experiment.

I was thinking of perhapse trying it first on the snail factory instead though.

 

[Lateral Line]

Roughing up the inner surface will increase the area somewhat, but the greater volume of the pipe will still be empty space. The bacteria are not water borne, if they were, they would just wash out of the pipe with the flow, they live "on" something.

Carbon in the Fluval may take some of the suplhates etc, out for a short while. Never 100% and not for very long. Carbon in an aquarium filter is of little use in normal filter operations.

Organic Carbon is not the same as amorphous or crystalline carbon. Alcohol, methane, sugar are organic sources. Organics are molecules which contain carbon, but are not just carbon. Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen containing molecules.

>>> an internal sealed canister

Not quite sure what you are getting at there.

Plant and algae based scrubbers are not uncommon, if you google, you'll find sites where they are discussed.

Also at TheKrib.

 

[mattbeau]

thank you lateral line for all the info,

I think I may go with something different.

I just did a quicky presentation on PH and well now I know that the higher the concentration of hydrgoen atoms I have the lower my ph is.


lol, you know I never did take a chemistry class it was never offered in HS. I never thought I would ever use it anyways, and low and behold this hobby has almost forced me to take a class in collage.


this is a very interesting site it goes into a little more than just PH though

the reason I bring this up is most people are going with co2 injection with heavily planted tanks to foster strong plant growth. by introducing lots of co2 they are also releasing lots of oxygen as the plants generally take in the CO2 and H20 and get there C6O12H6 or suger and release the remaining oxygen O4 in this case.

if the oxygen is released I would presume that it would attempt to bond with available hydrogen to create water, I hope I have this right.

if that is the case if you over do it witht the co2 couldnt you essentially raise your PH up as free hydrogen ions are reduced?

what causes a PH crash, if the plants are doing there job, I would expect the PH to go up not down.


thank you

matt

 

[Lateral Line]

>>> CO2 and H20 and get there C6O12H6

Should be 6CO2 + 6H20 -> C6H12O6 + 3O2, (grossly simplified of course), if the formula was as you stated, the reaction would evolve Hydrogen!

The Oxygen evolved by photsynthesis of carbohydrate is molecular, not ionic, i.e. it exists as discrete O2 molecules, uncharged. To react with h+ ions, you would need ionic Oxygen, o--, (or another negatively charged ion), but this reaction is readily reversible so 2H+ + o-- <---> H2O, so the pH of your water is not really affected by the concentration of dissolved Oxygen molecules.

CO2 is a less polar molecule then O2 and can react forming a weak acid called Carbonic Acid, H2CO3, which readily dissociates into 2H+ + CO3--, thus the dissolving and dissociation of CO2 decreases pH by increasing the Hydrogen ion concentration, (remember pH is the log of the reciprocal of the H+ concentration).