Hot rodding your DT, with sulfur denitrators

[Dr. Dendrostein]

When I started reef keeping, 1983, information was limited. I stopped the hobby, came back off and on , back again today. One thing if you look up cultured pearls, it took 20 or more years to perfect. Edison took many trials and errors till bulb worked right. At present I have 30 gallon DT, Heavy feeding, nitrates 5-10ppm, phosphates 0-.03, no water changes. Do dose 3 ml vodka in each refugium every night. Dose calcium for 8.0-8.6 ph, depending on what time of day it is. I have 3 home made sulfur denitrators, the drip rate, (which I setup using orp, nitrate test kit, water flow test is through 1/4" tubing, connected to discharge of 500 gph pump.
The flow rate is 90-110 ml per minute. Comes out to approximately 2 gallons of water per hour. Must be fine because nitrates are in the range I need.

See my YouTube video showing flow rate of two denitrators under
Hot rodding your DT, with sulfur denitrators pt2, Reef2Reef

Will post pictures soon.

So how do we hot rod our DT. By using sulfur denitrators, Google for history of them. On mine I added prefilter, then 100' x 1/4" i/m tubing. The third sulfur denitrator has 200' of tubing. This assures very little oxygen when water enters SD.

When done assembling SD, I have a pilot plant, fill SD with 20ml vodka let it circulate 24-48 hrs. Then put in production. By adding and removing SD, I'm able to control nitrates,let me know what you think is really happening in SD, by doing this. Pictures coming, I promise.

Happy reefing.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Cool idea! I'll be interested to see those pics!

 

[1WildBill]

I do too.

 

[Peanut]

Ive been using an Ethanol denitrator for 10+ years. I cant imagine a tank without some kind of denitrator. I got the one I currently use here http://aquaripure.com/

Its old and rather than fix it, I am in the middle of building a Methanol Denitrator to replace

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Took some pictures today of denitrators. Lot of spaghetti, but I do know what every hose is for.


Sulfur denitrator #3. Started it a week ago

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

#2 denitrator, was tested, before using. Dropped 160 ppm nitrate to 10- 15ppm in under 3 days. Used potassium nitrate.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

See 100' tubing

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

#1 my favorite, bought from oldtimer an old eheim canister filter, used canister only, made a denitrator. Works great. Also has 100' tubing

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Different angle

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Last one, I use to bring down (nitrates) from used tank water and reuse for DT or algae pool also if I need another denitrator. Feed it potassium nitrate when it needs it

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Inside guts, clear is prefilter, center sulfur, white outer corals sand.

I like this one more simple

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

On prefilter and sulfur, have relief valve.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Two refugiums, one with macroalgae other to grow microalgae. 15 clams. 200 small snail type? Infested with pods also in DT.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

More pictures

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

1600w of heat for night time temps.
12,000 btu's of cooling coming, before summer.

 

[Epicreefster]

From what I've seen if you have enough coral then the coral and a skimmer will keep nutrients in check. The hard part is setup and year one. I would suggest as large a refugium as possible, metered kalk for Ca/alk and most of your topoff and a good skimmer. You need a decent size tank but start with atleast one bristle tooth tang for algae. Lots of light on the refugium, no GFO and when the refugium dies off from lack of nutrients you can add more and more fish.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Right, thank's for the info

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Want to guess how my corals get there
iron?

Look closely at #3 sulfur denitrator

 

[Mikemccafe]

When I first started reefing in the 90's I purchased a nitrate reactor that dosed hydrogen sulfide and utilized bacteria to breakdown the nitrates. I thought it was kind of cool back then even with the rotten egg smell, lol, as a byproduct of the process

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Here's video of flow exiting denitrators #1 & #2

When I first started reefing in the 90's I purchased a nitrate reactor that dosed hydrogen sulfide and utilized bacteria to breakdown the nitrates. I thought it was kind of cool back then even with the rotten egg smell, lol, as a byproduct of the process

There's different designs out there.