Yeah this thing is garbage, for 5 straight weeks when I give a good shake hundreds of bubbles float to the top. I have sealed this thing so tight, I don't see any water leaking. My aqualifter pump intake line is fully submerged in a calm low flow area of the sump.
It's just spewing nitrites into my system and it wont even do an even drip. I doesn't drip for like 10 seconds and then pours out in a stream and stops to no drip for 10 seconds and pours out. I don't know where the air is coming from...I might just take it offline and throw it in the trash outside. At least it was on sale for $270...
So many things in this hobby are hit and miss and nothing is black and white. So frustrating that you have to gamble on whether or not something is going to work.
Maybe my system is killing all bacteria as it enters? 50+ nitrites and no change after two massive water changes; carbon dosed 2 cups vinegar daily for 7 months and still 0.0 reduction of nitrates. Tried the brightwell blocks rated for 1000G, put 4 of them in my tank and nothing. My nitrates go up and up and up. I even tried stopping feeding and feeding every other day and then to once every three days.
I am starting to believe that nitrates can leech into a system. How much of my tank do I pull apart before I find it?
What is wrong about a normal simple bio-filter? The low price?
This SD works as a batch reactor!? This explains a lot. It should be a continuous flow! What is used as a flow regulator? If batches are created your SD can not build up a propper balanced biofilm. Do you wonder why nitrite is produced!?
An SD should have a continuous drip rate at startup and a continuous flow after startup. Normal flow is between 2l/h and 4l/h for every liter of sulfur used once the nitrate level is at a normal level. The reactor must be big enough! (
ref:)
BADES reactors operate at a daily flow of +- 1x -2X the total system volume while maintaining a low nitrate level of +- 1-2 ppm exporting a daily nitrate overproduction of +- 1-2ppm daily., even when targetting 0 nitrates in the effluent.
Your system is not killing, you are! Promoting one type in the competition for the same nutrients will kill!
Managing a life support system is not a game nor gambling. A lot of vinegar was added daily? This is in ppm?
Did you take into account all other building materials which are needed to support the growth wich must remove all that vinegar, including phosphate? How did you stop dosing, slowly, or from one day to another? Adding organic carbon supplements DOES NOT export nitrate-nitrogen or any nitrogen, it only stimulates heterotrophic growth and produces protein if all building materials needed are present. If that produced protein is not exported, most will be recycled and remineralized, producing building materials and nutrients, ammonium, phosphate and CO2, which then must be assimilated using another dose, replacing the carbon exported as CO2, and so on. What if your skimmer is not very effective in removing TOC? A good skimmer only removes +- 30% of TOC ( Total organic Compounds including DOC),
(ref:)
Dosing organic carbon is gambling with the risk of losing the carrying capacity needed to support the bio-load.
Dosing organic carbon based on the nitrate level does not prevent overdosing and may harm, even kill corals.(
ref:) Corrals do not like a high C/N ratio. (
ref:)
And you must not throw away the SD, as was explained it is easily turned in to a BADES bioreactor. If the reactor is not big enough to manage the nitrate content, it will be able to lower a high nitrate level until its limits are reached.
Do you have any idea about the daily nitrogen overproduction? For managing a marine system one should know what is going on.
Having nitrate production is a good thing as it shows this tank has still an autotrophic carrying capacity which means dosing carbon did not remove it, which also means a lot of the biowaste is recycled in the tank and not exported, producing a lot of inorganic nitrogen. Normally dosing organic carbon removes autotrophic carrying capacity as overdosing OC steals most ammonium. Fast-growing heterotrophs prefer ammonia-nitrogen as a nitrogen source.
