Denitrator?

[One Dumm Hikk]

Yes, Hydrogen Sulfide, not acid. Brain was gitzy I suppose (Thats my story anyway)

The sulfur ones should stand a power outage but I haven't read far enough into them yet.
Of the three, the bucket appeals to me the most though.

 

[1628mna]

im looking at how im going to hook this bucket into my tank 2 months after i reran my return with a special y so i can run a 5 gal fuge for tumbling cheato in it. well long story short i have an empty fuge space in my sump so i will be filling that up 3 in. from the top. also the power outage will be taken care of by an invertor that will run my mag 9.5 which will run my 2 phos and carbon reactors, my 5 gal cheato bucket and my heater.

 

[therealfatman]

Oolitic sand is actually the ocean sand equivalent to a pearl. It is typically a piece of carbonate covered with many layers of aragonite. There are only a few places in the world where it forms abundantly. Bermuda is one of those places. Oolitic sand has an increase in pore water space which allows maximum diffusion rates of minerals and trace elements. It is typically around 0.5 to .2 mm in diameter. Typically you have to punch oolitics and into a search engine to find it. I do not know why but it tends to get fairly hidden by the online retailers like Marine Depot. If you just look up substrates in the online catalogs you will typically not find it. The cheapest quality brand is probably CaribSea Aragmax at about $22 per 30 pounds. Typically when people or catalogs talk about sugar sand they are talking about oolitic sand.

The reason you should keep a lid on a remote deep sand bed is because you want to exclude light. A lot of the drops in efficiency in a deep sand bed is caused by algae growth. It is best to not intentionally innoculate your remote deep sand bed with any critters. A RDSB purpose is only to function as a denitrifier not as a nitrification filter and denitrification filter combined such as a regular deep sand bed filter. Water should move briskly enough through a RDSB filter to discourage any settlement of detritus. No detritus means no need for critters and no turning into a nutrient sink.

 

[snakeklr]

No problems everyone. I am looking into this actually! We are currently adding a Huge country Kitchen to the house. So Moma's geta a new kitchen and the old kitchen she is letting me have. So with that I saw a system with the Monster rubber maid tubbs ( kinda like 100G tubs) that were filled with RDSB. I was thinkning on the plumbing to run the inlet into a PVC network under the RDSB and then letting the water flow upward thru the RDSB. SOund like what ya'll are talking about? I am thinking about the coil and the sulfer denitrator. just trying to figure which i want. Short term and needs to be disconected is the sulfer. the coil up and running continuos. Sulfer imidiate reaction. Coil slow reaction.

 

[1628mna]

im not seeing how you would be able to put the inlet at the bottom and let it flow up and drain at the top that is what your talking about right snakeklr. im thinking that sand would be so saturated with water the flow up would be a virtual crawl. maybe if you have the flow from bottom to top and over the top too now that would be good i think.lol therealfatman so it would not be a good idea to put the sand underneathe my tank in my sump(the old fuge compartment). i have to turn a light on to work down there but other than that there is no light except from the daylight? i know i asked this ques. before but what about the regular aragonite sand? snakeklr sounds like your gonna have a stove in your fish room/kitchen.lol sound like it will work out good with all that plumbing in there.


thanx mike

 

[snakeklr]

1628mna
That is my plan, to run the PVC pipping in the tub first, then put the RDSB in, so water will flow down from the dispaly tank to the fuge, then down to another tank not sure what it will be than down again into this tub. then it will overflow out to the retrun pump and back into the main display tank.

Today we went shopping and found a 110g rubber maid tub at a tractor/farm supply store marked down. so now have a new fuge system. next time i am in i will get it all plumbed in.

I use the Lowes play sand for my dsb. 75lb for $3. I have used it in all my tanks and have had no problems yet from it. besides the brown effect i dont mind. It is fine sand. Fish, Gobies, starfish's dont mind it. corals are well. so should be an easy task, just set up the PVC system uder it with holes in it to drain from the bottom up then thru the RDSB then overflow to a retun pump. just went from a 180g display, 30 sump. Now will have that 210 plus the 110 will be a 330g system!

 

[NanoReefWanabe]

you DONT want the water to feed from the bottom of a RDSB....that will completely defeat the purpose and the bucket will be very inefficient at removing nitrates....you will in effect create a giant nutrient sink...exactly the opposite of what you want...

the water has to simply flow across the surface...and do so quick enough that poop wont settle on the sand...the deep the sand the better the chances of the water being completely O2 deficient at the bottom and that is where good old NO3 reduction will occur...the deeper the O2 deprived area the more NO3 it can convert...as mentioned dont add any critters to your RDSB...

now your gonna say the water wont flow in the bottom of the bucket...well all i have to say to that is fill the bottom of the bucket with gasoline and run your DSB...do you think the gasoline wont get into the tank? <----Please dont actually do that....as i guarantee you the gas will get into the display tank...

 

[1628mna]

hey nano i actually found some oolite sand it is aragomax i think the name is. i dont think it is live sand or actually in packaged wet. my daughter was with me and i wasnt paying attention to the bag i just seen what it was. will this work for a bottom. your saying in your last post that you dont want any critters, is this includding snails? i have a bunch of little baby snails on the walls in my sump.

thanx in advance mike

 

[One Dumm Hikk]

Gasoline is a bad example because it is naturally lighter than water and will float to the surface even without flow in the bucket. Putting a quart of concentrated koolaid in the bottom, then fill with water will show it better and not be near as potentiall toxic to the tank.

 

[NanoReefWanabe]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13852285#post13852285 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 1628mna
hey nano i actually found some oolite sand it is aragomax i think the name is. i dont think it is live sand or actually in packaged wet. my daughter was with me and i wasnt paying attention to the bag i just seen what it was. will this work for a bottom. your saying in your last post that you dont want any critters, is this includding snails? i have a bunch of little baby snails on the walls in my sump.

thanx in advance mike

the live sand should be fine....might even give you a jump start...but it is expensive compared to dry sand...that sand sounds like it should work too...

snails will likely die, the object is to have no algae growing in the RDSB bucket...so there would be noting for them to eat...worms and mirco fauna are fine as is all the bacteria you could shake a stick at...

Okay fine gas was a bad example, so too is koolaid as the colour would likely be filtered out by the depth of the sand...suffice to say, water is constantly in motion in the bucket...and if working correctly the water at the bottom will be completely O2 depleted...