My new sulphur denitrator setup

[Delphinus]

If you want more reading, try these:

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=28791&
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=26299&
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=26313&

[Psyire]

Tony answered the above questions well, but I can definately add some info regarding ORP.

The denitrification process taking place in the sulphur media is one of reduction and requires an anerobic condition. An ORP value of -50 to -300 is perfect for the stabilization of these anerobic bacteria. Higher than -50 and you get too much oxidization or oxygen present, and lower than -300 and you get a byproduct of Hydrogen sulfide. (H2S) The ORP probe is in there to monitor ORP so I am better able to adjust my 'flow, or drip rate' through the reactor. This will inable me to have the best possible environment for these anerobic bacteria at all times. Atleast that is the theory behind it...

[Psyire]

So I now have the unit running on around 15g of water I just pulled from my tank during a water change. I have the drip rate set at about 3 per/second and I plan to leave it that way until the effluent tests zero for nitrate. The water is currently reading about 30 ppm of nitrate.

Here is a picture of the setup:


note* Probe ports and flow meter will not be used until unit is cycled.

[Delphinus]

What test kit are you planning to use to test the effluent?

FWIW I can't get my effluent to zero nitrates yet. It's been steady at 13ppm for the last week so I slowed it down a bit last night and will retest after 24 hours again. Actually before I hijack this thread any worse I'll go update my own with the latest results because there are some headaches there again.

[Psyire]

Great News!

(The following tests were performed by the same nitrate kit that I used above and in the same manner. Salifert)

I have just tested the effluent and it's reading ZERO nitrate! (3 drops per second roughly)

This is after roughly 1 week of operation.

Now for the really amazing part... the source water in the red bucket is reading around 0.2 nitrate. (just barely see a pink tint when viewing from the side)

So this unit reduced the nitrate in 15g of water from 30 to 0.2 in the same time frame. Very cool.

The one thing that I did that I believe made a big difference was after I had it running I fed a dropper full of bacteria straight into the reactor. I used the bacteria that comes in the Polyplab Reef-resh system and it apparently contains 6 different strains of anerobic bacteria. So I believe this helped it establish a culture, quickly. I'm sure you could use bacteria that comes with any of the zeovit type systems as well.

[Delphinus]

Cool idea to seed it. Seems to have made a huge difference. Awesome results..

For comparison I'm still not reading zero on my output after 6 weeks (although output < input). And weird that your Salifert doesn't have interference whereas mine did. I dont understand why I'm always the statistical anomaly...

[Psyire]

I thought the interference was isolated to the Nitrite test? I never did test for Nitrites, only Nitrates.