Poor Man's Nutrients Control - Donovan's Nitrate Destroyer

[Dukereefnz]

Cool, here is where i am at now....
Need to work out how to do the in put / out put - plus vodka dosing.
Plan is to run this of a pump I am using for my algae scrubber, with a tee inline.

Question -
Does it need an over flow hole? As it will be under pressure i cant see why it would need an over flow. Its not like it can explode.

Do you glue it together?
I cant glue the long lengths in the the U shaped bottom as I can get it in and out of my sump if I do.
How often do you have to pull these apart?
I maybe able to run a small bead of silicon around the top of the U tops - to make sure it is 100% sealed.
This would seal it and make it possible to pull it apart.

 

[blazn]

Already looking different, 7 point drop 30 minutes after vodka, increased dosage(12*3ml—>12*5ml). Went from 72ppm down to 65. Ive also noticed the flow is much easier to adjust, more linear. I think the live rock rubble was the problem and around flow rate. Smelled almost like bleach inside with alot of whiteish slime.

Interestingly, my tank nitrates were 31. So half the effluent. Im assuming there was a die off or something from opening it up.

Ive done 4 50gal (~15%) water changes this week to get the tank nitrates down while i wait for this to kick in

Posting detail in case anyone stumbles in having the same problem..

Hopefully the changes you've made will get you some positive results! Thanks for continuing to update your situation, as you never know who will benefit from your experiences.

 

[blazn]

Cool, here is where i am at now....
Need to work out how to do the in put / out put - plus vodka dosing.
Plan is to run this of a pump I am using for my algae scrubber, with a tee inline.

Question -
Does it need an over flow hole? As it will be under pressure i cant see why it would need an over flow. Its not like it can explode.

Do you glue it together?
I cant glue the long lengths in the the U shaped bottom as I can get it in and out of my sump if I do.
How often do you have to pull these apart?
I maybe able to run a small bead of silicon around the top of the U tops - to make sure it is 100% sealed.
This would seal it and make it possible to pull it apart.

I have a 1/2" hole in the top of my input section, serving as an 'overflow', as I don't want it to possibly back-flow. I did not glue any portions of my DND, and I'd recommend not gluing, if you don't have to, as maintenance will be much easier if you can take it apart easily. I've had mine running for 15 months now and I have not had to open it up to clean it out or make any adjustments yet, but as time moves on, that may become necessary.

 

[Duane family]

I have slowly been reading this thread and in principal I am convinced, it just makes perfect sense. I have just finished drawing most of the parts out and started printing the whole lot. I will hopefully start building it in a few days time.

 

[blazn]

I have slowly been reading this thread and in principal I am convinced, it just makes perfect sense. I have just finished drawing most of the parts out and started printing the whole lot. I will hopefully start building it in a few days time.

Welcome to the party! It's a cool, little project with some big benefits. Now that I have one, I doubt I ever run a system without a DND.

 

[SPS clown]

I glued everything but the tops

 

[Duane family]

All my parts are ready but I don't have enough glue to finish putting it all together. Will have glue tomorrow and post pics of the assembled unit.

 

[Duane family]

I am almost finished with assembling the unit and I have an option to restrict the flow into and out of the unit. This brings me to a question, is there any reason to or not to alter the pressure inside the unit by restricting the outward flow ? I'm just curious

I have a 400Ltr/hr USB pump to run it.

 

[Duane family]

Here is the unit, I have lightly siliconed the tops on so that I can cut the seal and remove the tops at some point when needed. I will plumb it up tomorrow and start it running. I used some ceramics bio balls from my sump that are very very well seeded with Turbo start 900. I will take measurements from start so that there are comparisons to measure progress.

 

[SPS clown]

1 week into repacking mine…

My tank nitrates went down this week from 25.6 to 17.2, no water changes.

Unrelated but phosphates are steady at .04

However my effuent measure 75 ppm before, and 30 minutes after dosing it measured…. 75ppm … so i dont have a clue whats going on. Ive had an issue this week with alot of foam in my sump

I did not seed it with any bacteria because i figured it would have enough. Might grab a bottle of mb7 tomorrow and try that. Trying to stay patient

 

[SPS clown]

I am almost finished with assembling the unit and I have an option to restrict the flow into and out of the unit. This brings me to a question, is there any reason to or not to alter the pressure inside the unit by restricting the outward flow ? I'm just curious

I have a 400Ltr/hr USB pump to run it.

When i restrict the efflunt output and create backpressure water comes out my dosing port so i dont do that. Other than that tho i dont see a reason to do it or not… your dnd looks good

 

[twentyleagues]

1 week into repacking mine…

My tank nitrates went down this week from 25.6 to 17.2, no water changes.

Unrelated but phosphates are steady at .04

However my effuent measure 75 ppm before, and 30 minutes after dosing it measured…. 75ppm … so i dont have a clue whats going on. Ive had an issue this week with alot of foam in my sump

I did not seed it with any bacteria because i figured it would have enough. Might grab a bottle of mb7 tomorrow and try that. Trying to stay patient

My guess is that the flow into and through the DND is to high.

 

[Duane family]

When i restrict the efflunt output and create backpressure water comes out my dosing port so i dont do that. Other than that tho i dont see a reason to do it or not… your dnd looks good

Understood, thanks

 

[Duane family]

Well I have some feedback. This is interesting

I didn't have the patience to wait till Sat to do the plumbing so I did it on Friday early evening. This means it's running for around 54hrs now.
I filled about 70% of the reactor with bio balls which came from my sump and which had been seeding since the tank has been running which is 3 months. I have been dosing Turbo start fairly frequently on this system so we can say that these bio balls were well seeded from a bacterial pov.
I injected 5ml of Turbo start on Sat and Sunday morning. I injected 6ml of vinigar/sugar solution 30min after the Turbo start and then again the same solution and same volume in the evening.
I tested my Nitrates on Sat morning and it was 0. I haven't tested N03 for a long time so was unsure where it was at. I have a slight slight bit of diatom going the last w weeks and I think this is why my Nitrates are low, but also factor in I have a natural DSB and the Turbo start dosing, also there is only 5 small fish in a big tank with some CUC. It's a pity the Nitrates are 0 its takes away any chance of a measurement but it is what it is.

Now here is the interesting part, this morning I woke up to a pretty clear tank which was nice. This afternoon I had to adjust the reactor flow as it went from a slow slow stream to a drip. If I look at the tank now it's 10pm here, I have the most crisp clear water I have ever seen in my life and the diatom growth looks like someone poured bleach onto it.

I've done nothing else at all, can this thing really work so fast and with such and impact ? I'm just not sure it's possible. But what else ?

BTW I'm only adding coral next year so not worried about 0 Nitrates and before anyone asked I tested twice with the Hanna set then tested my QT tank and there was plenty on N03 there

 

[Duane family]

In light of the N03 readings I will stop dosing any carbon into the reactor for a while and see if there are any changes on the system.

 

[SPS clown]

My guess is that the flow into and through the DND is to high.

I have at it as low as a drip every 5 seconds (which seems too slow based on where other DND in this thread are) and as high as 1 ml per second, which seems about right based on others. this is fed by a 1/4 RO line off a manifold on my return pump that i control with a john guest ball valve

Im dosing MB7 and MB starter into the DND this week to see if that helps it. Current flow is a little less than 1ML / second

 

[jamesRedsea65G (newbe)]

My FTS this morning. Ignore the green coating as I purposely runs my colored led channels 85% for 4 hours daily (i am doing some evaluation on SPS coloration under different spectrum). I lost quite a few snails due to starvation, that green algae helps a lot

Wow that's a dream for me

 

[twentyleagues]

I have at it as low as a drip every 5 seconds (which seems too slow based on where other DND in this thread are) and as high as 1 ml per second, which seems about right based on others. this is fed by a 1/4 RO line off a manifold on my return pump that i control with a john guest ball valve

Im dosing MB7 and MB starter into the DND this week to see if that helps it. Current flow is a little less than 1ML / second

Is it possible the media is too compact?

 

[SPS clown]

Is it possible the media is too compact?

At this point im willing to consider any possibility … but i used 90% ceramic rings so that wouldnt happen. This pic is when it wasnt full but this gives an idea

 

[Duane family]

This reactor is still just motoring away at biological filtration. The tops of my table top rocks which are (between 30cm and 42cm below the light units) bleached white with spots of coroline algae now starting to develop in localized areas. On a tank which is just a few months old and at what should be the peak of the ugly phase. This is freakish, I've never ever had a tank this sterile. I've started dosing phyto the last few days to create some nutrients for the GSP and Xenia which I'm trying to grow onto printed domes. The Xenia was starting to show signs of a lack of nutrients. It still is but I recon that in another day or two it should plush up again.

I felt in theory this method had merits but I could never have guessed this would be the results.

I'm busy building a second, identical unit which I will install on a friend's tank which is a GHA orgy tank and let's see what happens. Although this tank of his I don't think has a DSB as it's a production built Red Sea tank. But there are merits to that fact as it's then a real test for the reactor unit.