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

[CNDReef]

Your trying to strip the water of oxygen in the first tube with one type of bacteria and the second tube will house bacteria that lives in zero oxygen levels that consumes nitrate. You’d probably need a pretty long tube to do this all in one shot. The slow drip ( in your case above the tank ) is to make sure the bacteria has time to eat everything going through the reactor.

 

[NVTE]

I went through the thread and sad to hear the news about good reefer Donovan Joannes.

I also wonder if anyone try to put sulfur in reactor along with media so we can stop dosing vodka at some point?

I have 190 gallon with 6" x 24" Calcium reactor that I plan to convert to this one. Do you think it will work with single reactor?

 

[Hexabonal]

Your trying to strip the water of oxygen in the first tube with one type of bacteria and the second tube will house bacteria that lives in zero oxygen levels that consumes nitrate. You’d probably need a pretty long tube to do this all in one shot. The slow drip ( in your case above the tank ) is to make sure the bacteria has time to eat everything going through the reactor.

Thanks, REALLY useful! I presume the carbon dosing just provides a small boost rather than being essential?

 

[Matt Carden]

I went through the thread and sad to hear the news about good reefer Donovan Joannes.

I also wonder if anyone try to put sulfur in reactor along with media so we can stop dosing vodka at some point?

I have 190 gallon with 6" x 24" Calcium reactor that I plan to convert to this one. Do you think it will work with single reactor?

Maybe with a divider 20" long splitting the 1 pipe into 2? Part of how it works is having the in and out on top.

 

[CNDReef]

Thanks, REALLY useful! I presume the carbon dosing just provides a small boost rather than being essential?

It’s feeding the bacteria to grow a bigger colony than it would without it to reduce the nitrates even faster.

 

[NVTE]

Maybe with a divider 20" long splitting the 1 pipe into 2? Part of how it works is having the in and out on top.

The Reactor have circulation pump that pump water from top to the bottom of the reactor (up flow reactor). I just turn off the pump and close the inlet of the pump. The feed water will go down to the bottom of the reactor.

 

[CherBear811]

Hi guys, I'm fairly new to plumbing and the biology going on here, I've tried skimming (sorry, bad pun) the thread but ended up fairly confused.

1) what's the purpose of connecting two pipes rather than just using one and taking the output from the bottom?
2) I wanted to build one for my tank that has no sump. Most of you are just building it in a sump and it drips back in. I presume it would have to be above the tank for the return to work properly?

Not sure what others will say, but regarding...

#1 - space. Not everyone has the room to fit a column of 4-5' in their tank/sump area.
#2 - gravity fed will create the least pressure/back pressure, but if properly sealed a pump will work. The issue is teeing off the pump correctly to get a slow enough fast drip going on. That will put a lot of back pressure on a lot of pumps.

 

[CherBear811]

Wondering..... this build vs coil denitrator... in a coil set up, does the clogging occur in the media or somewhere in the coils? If it's in the media, why wouldn't more careful, layered media (like what is used in this build) resolve the clogging issue?

 

[Tmmste]

Update: It has been nearly 4 months ago since I placed the reactor. Works great for me. I will never go back to a skimmer..

I just dose 5 to 10ml of carbon 1x per day to keep no3 around 3/4. Apart from that I added potassiumiodide which doses 0.03ppm iodide for my tank volume per 5ml.

 

[dportero]

Do you think foam like this would work just as well as all the rubble? looking for the cheapest media option. I was thinking of using the one with the largest pore size. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Aquarium-F...23215620997?hash=item33f8b01385:rk:4:pf:0&var

 

[reefsofty]

what I did instead was make a tower add all the stuff you have and charcoal but my return drains into the tower and out into the sump. works great and no extra pumps your set up is very nice too

 

[Torben]

Reason i went with 2 tubes / U-Style is that inlet and outlet are above tank level, hense reducing the risk of leaks.
I use a Kamoer Dosing pump st the moment as it is less noisy as compared to the DOS.

 

[Salt1823]

First off all i want to thank Mr. Donovan to this wonderful DIY! I want to share my DND and this is really working. I have 100+ nitrate and after 2 weeks, N03 at reactor is zero and DT is 25ppm! I'snt it amazing!

This is such a great design! I'm about to try one myself. Want to make sure I understand & get it right. What is the 2nd valve on top of the side water enters?

 

[Tmmste]

This is such a great design! I'm about to try one myself. Want to make sure I understand & get it right. What is the 2nd valve on top of the side water enters?

1 for carbon.. 1 for tankwater..

 

[Tmmste]

what I did instead was make a tower add all the stuff you have and charcoal but my return drains into the tower and out into the sump. works great and no extra pumps your set up is very nice too

I did that somewhat like that too with GFO / Carbon in a reactor. Unfortunately the bacteria slime did clog the reactor and water escaped via the top of the reactor.

 

[Salt1823]

I did that somewhat like that too with GFO / Carbon in a reactor. Unfortunately the bacteria slime did clog the reactor and water escaped via the top of the reactor.

Thank you for the explanation!

 

[reefsofty]

Your trying to strip the water of oxygen in the first tube with one type of bacteria and the second tube will house bacteria that lives in zero oxygen levels that consumes nitrate. You’d probably need a pretty long tube to do this all in one shot. The slow drip ( in your case above the tank ) is to make sure the bacteria has time to eat everything going through the reactor.

where mine is not closed I don't have that problem this is also where I place my filter media

 

[Tmmste]

Thank you for the explanation!

Welcome. After rising the media to remove the slime, it will take a few weeks before it clogs again. I currently actively run some GFO in a pantyhose and place this in the mediareactor.

Apart from this I also tried to keep cheato along with the dnd reactor. This triggered dino growth in the refugium unfortunately.. maybe due to low nutrients (see picture). I decided to remove the refugium and just stick with the dnd reactor and a reactor with some gfo and some carbon in pantyhoses (easy to rise and to seperate GAC from the GFO, as I want to regenerate the latter)

 

[jhameeh]

This is such a great design! I'm about to try one myself. Want to make sure I understand & get it right. What is the 2nd valve on top of the side water enters?

Hello sorry for late reply. The small valve on top is for carbon dosing. You can close this if you want to pressurized the chamber. The big blue valve is for drain which is always open and you can close too if you want to pressurized the tank, to force the slime out.

 

[Arielo1980]

Hi!
how are you?
Do you think it is feasible to start an aquarium from the cycle with the Donovan's Nitrate Destroyer? and so keep ATOS controlled from the beginning?

Regards,