Tell me about sulfer denitrators...

[EnderG60]

So there is a guy that comes into the store with a 125g reef and ALOT of fish. He has been running a sulfer denitrator for a few months now and says its been working great(0 nitrates since it broke in).

Says its a two chamber setup(about 40 gallons volume) with sulfer and aragonite, and that it gets about 350 gallons per day of flow.

So how exactly does this work?

 

[CaptiveReef]

sulfur denitrator

sulfur denitrator

The way they work, is that the sulphur feeds on bacteria without using another food source. You have to run aragonite in the reactor to buffer the water, due to the bacteria produce acid in the process of their work. This will cause a drop in Alk, they work very well, but you must maintain a proper flow otherwise a byproduct of Nitrite will be produced.
With the flow rate, if it is too slow you will get a rotten egg smell, and if it's too fast you will get Nitrite production, add a valve on the inlet to adjust water flow. You are going to have to monitor the tank water when the reactor is started up.
Also the amount of sulphur beads used depends on the present level of Nitrate in the tank.

CaptiveReef

 

[Agu]

It's old but it's the best description I've seen.

Sulpher Denitrators

 

[Cody Ray]

Seems kind of complicated to get dialed in. I wouldn't hook one up to an existing system thats for sure!

 

[EnderG60]

interesting.

He loves the thing, he has about 38 fish last i heard in that tank and its doing very well with no detectable nitrates.

 

[hahnmeister]

I made one... if you get a chance to do a search, there are several threads here at RC on them.... one thing I would do is buy a hand-held ORP monitor to make sure the ORP of the output is between -50 to -200 to make sure its throughput is correct.

 

[EnderG60]

yeah dont really get much of a chance to search here.

and what is the ORP monitor?

 

[hahnmeister]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=7706378#post7706378

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=7577824#post7577824

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=7577040#post7577040

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=7165942#post7165942

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=6716570#post6716570

That should help you out for a while...