thinking of taking sand out of DT for NO3 reduction

[LAKEM0NSTER]

hey Gandolfe, I think the high nutrients is being caused by your engineer gobies. I commend you for not wanting to get rid of the gobies after having them for 6 yrs!!!

BeanAnimal is right that if you remove the sand, you are going to really bum out your gobies... I think that you should start planning soon for UPGRADING TO A BIGGER TANK or talk to the guys in the Algae Scrubber threads about designing an extra large ATS!!

You think you could post a photo of the gobies? I've never seen one that big!!

 

[srusso]

Hello, I have nitrate issues and was thinking about taking out my sand from the dt. it is about 3" deep. I have 200 lbs of rock, a pair of marron clowns, a pair of 16" engineer Gobies. was looking for any past experience from others wheteh this would help with nitrate issues and whether i should leave 1" or a little less of sand on bottom.I have in tank plumbing running along bottom of tank under rocks for closed loops and this would show if i removed all sand. please give me any feedback or advise.I have tried everything to reduce Nitrates but can't get under 80 ppm. i have done massive wtaer changes with no help, i have a ATS running, no help, a DIY de-nitrator, no help, running a skimmer, have a fuge with 14 mangroves and a huge clump of cheato but still can't reduce nitrates. it gets frustrating going through boxes of reef crystals doing water changes(45 gallons every couple of days with no results) and yes I use r/o.d/i water only for water. I got my po4 under .08 so that took care of cyano issue.Please help with ideas or past experiences. I'm ready to get rid of tank all together

Your algae scrubber is phosphate limited. Are you running GFO? A well built algae scrubber should use those nitrates up in weeks... Can you post a picture of your setup? I am sure we could get you fixed up...

 

[Gandolfe]

I have a DIY de-nitrator too, can't find any pics showing my gobies all stretched out sorry and it's a 125 gallon don't really want to go larger right now, there are 4 cfl 26 watt bulbs shining on ATS, 2 on each side with a mag 5 supplying flow to a 12 x 10 screen

 

[Wopadobop]

Simply put, your screenis about 4 times larger than needed. 1 cube of food is equal to a 3x4 screen lit from both sides with 6 real watts of cfl per side. I'm guessing your at about a cube and a half. Your screen could handle about 10 cubes. The yellow thin growth you are seeing is from an improperly sized screen.

I would recommend that you keep the horizontal size and reduce the vertical by half at first and see what you get. This should get better( stronger) growth and allow your scrubber to power through the nitrates. Keep the skimmer on for now but definitely kill any gfo . You are phosphate limited.

Go with that before turning off your coil denitrater . You can also drape some Reynolds wrap over your screen to get rid of some of that spray as well. At least it looks like it from the first photo. Did you cut your pipe slot on a table saw? I have noticed that over time they tend to "squeeze" shut in the middle. Some food for thought

 

[Steve175]

The engineer gobies are the cause of your nitrates (massive turnover of sandbed)


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[Gandolfe]

well if it is too large then it proves all the ATS threads are bull...sorry but I made it according to the ATS threads... I have a 125 gallon tank with a 40 gallon sump and a 10 gallon fuge, with at least a 100 gallon total water volume and more like 130 gallons. A 45 gallon water change lowers the water level in the DT about a third and the sump 2/3 after i siphon out detritus and then drain down to the very top of my rocks before adding new water

 

[BeanAnimal]

This is where I part ways with the ATS crowd and the "science" prescribed by a certain ATS guy...

I do not advocate (or see the benefit) in removing other filtration systems and "feeding" a scrubber just to get nitrates lower. Honestly, why flood the system with phosphate to grow algae to lower nitrate? There are much easier ways to denitrify the system. If the scrubber is "phosphate limited", great! The entire idea is to rob the system of phosphates before they can be consumed by nuisance algae. Given the choice of higher nitrates or higher phosphates, I would choose the nitrates. Many forms of biological filtration can help to manage nitrate issues, not many can deal with phosphate.

Your experience with water changes and the effect on nitrates indicates that you may need to be more diligant about getting the detritus out of the system to begin with. I ignored "mechanical" filtration for years and am now paying the price with 7 years of detritus and a phosphate problem beyong reason. I now use a filter sock before water changes and a powerhead to blow all of the rock off and stir my shallow sandbed. It is amazing how much crap (a month of doing this) comes out of the system. To think I did not do this for 7 years!

 

[wayne in norway]

Why do you think removing the sand would help. Personally I tihnk it would be a good idea as it's likely not doing a lot of denitrafication and is probably full of junk, but phosphate would be a bigger concern than that.

You are running mangroves, chaeto and an ATS and a denitrafier. Lots of redundancy there. Plus GFO. As Bean says tho' I'd be loathe to start letting phosphate rise and risk some real problems, but it might encourage the chaeto or ATS to grow a bit and use up some nitrate. Do you think the denitrafier is doing anything? If not , take it off, or get it working properly.

Personally I'd let the GFO go a little bit longer than normal and see if the chaeto or ATS start to grow faster. I doubt the mangroves are doing much.