ryang85
This is my first post so I figured I'd share something useful . There's not a lot of information available on nitrate reactors for Freshwater but luckily they are heavily used in Saltwater tanks so most of the concepts can be used. I have a 75 gal mixed peacock cichlid tank with a messy pleco and am constantly trying to keep nitrates below 40 . My goal is have to do a %30 partial water change only once per week to replenish minerals.
After some extensive research I build this ugly thing which is a simple design, a 6 foot tall 2" pipe that can be slowly and constantly recirculating and bleed out water slowly. In order to do this I split off the output of my own DIY 650gph canister filter with 1.5 gallons of matrix.( I can post more about that if anyone wants to see how that works) I figured the airaerobic bacteria in the main canisters would help deplete some 02. Then I ran 150 foot of small 1/4in irrigation hose I picked up at home depoe for 10 dollars. I left it in the prepackaged coil so it fits nicely out of the way. I figured this would remove most of the 02. Then had a T with one side of the re-circ and the other side going to the pump, the pump which I used a 12v dimmer switch to control fed directly to the 2" pipe which was filled with a gallon of seachem denitrate. Then a bleeder at the top which I originally intended to use only for bleeding air but actually controls the water output much better than the one I designed. Once I had it all running I injected 10 oz of stability every day for 4 days and let the water recirculate over night, After 6 days of the filter running I am currently moving 18 gallons a day with my nitrate input at 25ppm and output at zero ppm. Overall the cost was about 200 dollars but you could cut 50 dollars of that using pummice or some other bio media instead of the de*nitrate. I put some pictures below and can upload more if anyone is interested, I need to do some organizing of wires and hoses when I get time so just ignore them for now.




After some extensive research I build this ugly thing which is a simple design, a 6 foot tall 2" pipe that can be slowly and constantly recirculating and bleed out water slowly. In order to do this I split off the output of my own DIY 650gph canister filter with 1.5 gallons of matrix.( I can post more about that if anyone wants to see how that works) I figured the airaerobic bacteria in the main canisters would help deplete some 02. Then I ran 150 foot of small 1/4in irrigation hose I picked up at home depoe for 10 dollars. I left it in the prepackaged coil so it fits nicely out of the way. I figured this would remove most of the 02. Then had a T with one side of the re-circ and the other side going to the pump, the pump which I used a 12v dimmer switch to control fed directly to the 2" pipe which was filled with a gallon of seachem denitrate. Then a bleeder at the top which I originally intended to use only for bleeding air but actually controls the water output much better than the one I designed. Once I had it all running I injected 10 oz of stability every day for 4 days and let the water recirculate over night, After 6 days of the filter running I am currently moving 18 gallons a day with my nitrate input at 25ppm and output at zero ppm. Overall the cost was about 200 dollars but you could cut 50 dollars of that using pummice or some other bio media instead of the de*nitrate. I put some pictures below and can upload more if anyone is interested, I need to do some organizing of wires and hoses when I get time so just ignore them for now.



