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!
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-- Tony
My next hobby will be flooding my basement while repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall and tearing up $100 bills. Whee!
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