DIY Sulfur Denitrator

After about 2 and a half months of use ,the last two weeks of which were at 0 nitrate mine did that . Shortly thereafter it began producing hydrogen sulfide.When I opened it up the clogging was from bacterial mats. I used carrib Sea lsm. There were no fines.
 
Never had that problem with mine, & it's always good to rinse the media well. LSM media is more of a crushed media, with varying size's from fine to coarse. I opted for the Midwest type media ( pearls ) to prevent this problem & have less channeling throughout the media.

Steve


:smokin:
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14821934#post14821934 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Steve 926
Never had that problem with mine, & it's always good to rinse the media well. LSM media is more of a crushed media, with varying size's from fine to coarse. I opted for the Midwest type media ( pearls ) to prevent this problem & have less channeling throughout the media.

Steve


:smokin:
:) LSM is not crushed or variable grain. It is like a bunch of small split peas ,relatively uniform in shape and size.
 
thanks everyone...
will work on it this weekend. Will first try cleaning out the output and input valves. If that doesn't help, will open her up and check for any internal clogs.
overall.... was very happy with the reactor. It dropped the nitrates in the tank from over 200 down to about 20 over the months it was running at full throttle. Did have to supplement the tank with sodium bicarb and kalkwasser to keep the pH at 8 or so.
Will let you all know how the fix goes..............marc
 
I have had mine offline for over a month . I started dosing some vodka and sugar and it is holding the nitrates down around 2ppm.
 
I have a question:

If my perimeters are all within correct amounts: (i am running a denitrator) Do I have to do water changes? Even if they remain correct? If so why?

I do add Trace Elements, Strodium, Alk, Calcium and Magnesium.

My system is about 400 gallons, everything looks great and is growing.

Just makes me think, if it ant broke don't fix it?????
 
I need some help. my denitrator has been working great took it from 160 down to around 10 right now. my denitrator is 6" tube 36" tall with 4L of bio matrix and 2 gallons of LSM. system is around 1100 gallons, I had some weird deaths and noticed a clear snotty growth in areas of the tank. I traces this back to the same looking stuff in my denitrator, so i took it apart for cleaning, it was full of brown and white stringy snot. pipes and everything barely any flow was making it around and was just NASTY. my question is now that nitrates are down, should i use less media and just have the denitrator buffer, I know i cant leave it off because of my bioload the nitrates do go back up. water changes can not keep up and for some reason neither does my large DSB, so the Denitrator is the only thing that worked. so what to do now? a 1/3 of media put back in? just to handle the 10ppm and get it to 0 and keep it there without turning all nasty again, i hate to imagin was was being put back into my tank.. any help is appreciated.. thanks

jarrod
 
Jarrod clean out the whole unit. Save 1/4 cup of the media before you clean it out. put 1/3 back in and let it run again. You will not be able to run it at the flow you were running before. You will have to recycle the unit again but it will not take as long due to the 1/4 cup of used media.
 
Hello. I've been gone for a while but glad the thread's still going.

As for my reactor... to quote Saltydog, "Sounds like u have her under control, but do we ever?"

I had major run of unexplained coral sickness and death, and at the same time I was experiencing a lot of leakage with my reactors (1/2-1 gal/day combined. On top of this I was gonig on back to back vacations, so I decided to turned off my SR. I didn't trust my house sitter to monitor it or handle any problems well.

(btw, DJFRANKIE, back towards my last entry when I posted about my suffering coral, I missed your response. Didn't mean to ignore you, just didn't see it.)

I'm bringing my original reactor back up now and I have a few redesign thoughts for my new, non-leaking SR. Haven't had a chance to review what i've missed, so excuse me if I'm repeating something.

The original design (which I followed) has the effluent out above the top of recirculating pipe. It seems to me this creates the possibility of a "dead flow" or stagnant water space.

I've been thinking of putting my efluent out hole between the top of the sulfur medium and the recirculating pipe. Any thoughts on this?

I've noticed some of the newer designs have their effluent out in the same piping as the input from the tank. Has anyone experienced any negative results from this?

Also, a quick chem question. I have GFO medium on the top of my second, Ca, reactor. My understanding is that any sulfide that runs through it will turn to pure sulfur. What are some thoughts about this sulfur getting into the viewing tank?

p.s. glad to be back. This reactor is the only thing I've seen that actual brings Nitrates to zero.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14833932#post14833932 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Black71gp
I need some help. my denitrator has been working great took it from 160 down to around 10 right now. my denitrator is 6" tube 36" tall with 4L of bio matrix and 2 gallons of LSM. system is around 1100 gallons, I had some weird deaths and noticed a clear snotty growth in areas of the tank. I traces this back to the same looking stuff in my denitrator, so i took it apart for cleaning, it was full of brown and white stringy snot. pipes and everything barely any flow was making it around and was just NASTY. my question is now that nitrates are down, should i use less media and just have the denitrator buffer, I know i cant leave it off because of my bioload the nitrates do go back up. water changes can not keep up and for some reason neither does my large DSB, so the Denitrator is the only thing that worked. so what to do now? a 1/3 of media put back in? just to handle the 10ppm and get it to 0 and keep it there without turning all nasty again, i hate to imagin was was being put back into my tank.. any help is appreciated.. thanks

jarrod
:) Mine has been offline for over amonth . Carbon dosing( vodka, vinegar and sugar ) are holding nitrates down for now. My reactor had the same snotty stuff( I ssume it was bacterial) in it,restricted flow and was producing some hydrogen sufide after4 running it for about 10 days at 9 nitrate. If I put it back on line I will try it with 1/3 the sulfur I was using( ie 1 liter instead of 3 for 550 gallons).
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14830629#post14830629 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by swampthing
I have a question:

If my perimeters are all within correct amounts: (i am running a denitrator) Do I have to do water changes? Even if they remain correct? If so why?

I do add Trace Elements, Strodium, Alk, Calcium and Magnesium.

My system is about 400 gallons, everything looks great and is growing.

Just makes me think, if it ant broke don't fix it?????
:) There are many elements beyond those you can measure that come in and out with water changes. Copper, zinc, maganese and various organics to name a few.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14839343#post14839343 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by williah

The original design (which I followed) has the effluent out above the top of recirculating pipe. It seems to me this creates the possibility of a "dead flow" or stagnant water space.

I've been thinking of putting my efluent out hole between the top of the sulfur medium and the recirculating pipe. Any thoughts on this?



When I set my reactor up, I had to switch the input and output around,
because there was too much pressure from the recirc pump for my feed pump.
I've had no problems, having the effluent output come from the reric pipe.
I wouldn't put the out directly in the reactor body, if it's lower down, to avoid getting sulfur pellets stuck in the airline. (Though I may be totally misunderstanding your question! :D).
 
Alright, we're up and dripping. My current Nitrate is 47 off the Pinpoint meter.

I've got a double-bagging of CFO in my CA reactor componant to counter the Sulfide, so let's do it!

I'm going to try a slightly different calibrating technique this time.

Usually when it was running for a while and I opened, I had a lot of rotten egg smell, which means I wasn't feeding enough to it. The problem was detecting the smell without opening it.

Now, I see it as: feed too slowly, get Sulfide (rotten egg). Feed it too guickly, get Nitrite but no Sulfide.

So this time, once I think it's "up to speed," I'm going to actually push it so that I'm feeding it slightly too fast and am getting Nitrite on the output. Then I'm going to back off the feeding speed until it all goes to zero. I think this will help me to calibrate more safely, working off the faster end than the slower end.

With careful, daily monitoring I think is safer to have a bump toward Nitrite than a bump towards Sulfide. Let's see.
 
Hello All,

I have cionverted my Korallin Calcium reactor to a Denitrator with 3 weeks sample bucket program to reduce ammonia and nitrate.
Now my readings are all zero and today I have set it up on the DT with the out flow going to the skimmer.The nitrate in my tank is 0.5PPM with DPM set at 1 drop per second.

Is there anything I need to do more.

Tx,
Haksar
 
Hi everyone. Back after a long absence. Reviewed pages since last entry
#1: Jarrod... the "goop" you are noting are a type of cyanobacterium. Sometimes they simply show up for no apparent reason. A treatment with ChemiClean (or a similar product) should get rid of it in 3-4 days. Then turn your protein skimmer back on, it will work overtime for 2 days, and your tank will be back to normal.
#2: When last WE met, my denitrator ("big brown") had come to a stop -- no output. Couldn't figure out what was wrong - with top opened all looked OK. Sometimes the most obvious cause is exactly that....it turned out that the hose returning the effluent to the tank was located right under the T5 lighting and the tip of the hose got clogged with algal growth. I Cut off 12" of tubing, cleaned rest out with a pipe cleaner and POOF, my unit was up and running again. Nitrates had gone back up to about 80 and now a week later they are down to between 20-40. Another week or so and they will be back to about 10 where they leveled off to before the problem. (the nitrate level never got down to 0 even after months of use).

Glad to see thread still up and running. Keep up the good work.
...........marc
 
I put my denitrator back on line and cycled it, but whenever I get past 5 drops per second, it can't keep up with the nitrates anymore.

I didn't put nearly as much sulfur in as last time, because it took the nitrates down very fast, and this time my nitrates were much lower to start with (appx. 20ppm).

Is it the amount of sulfur that makes the denitrator tap out at 5 drops per second?
I don't really mind not getting a faster output, but just wanted to make sure that it's okay and not a problem.
 
Yes, the less sulfur the slower you can run it once it's fully cycled. I believe somewhere back in one of the links off this thread it is noted that you can go 3 to five times the sulfur volume per hour. So 1 liter of sulfur could process between 3 and 5 liters per hour. I was able to get 5x when I ran mine.
 
Thanks! That makes sense!
I'm actually happy that it processes slowly! Maybe that way it can stay online longer and won't impact my pH and Alk as much as it did with a full load of sulfur.
 
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