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Swimming Decorator crab

Denitrifying coil

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I built a few of these over the years and was not crazy about any of the designs but this one I made last month works 100%.
My reef now has a nitrate reading of 40 and I figured it would be a good time todesign a new Denitrification device but I had no idea it would work so good and so fast. They usually take a couple of months to fully work but I had it running for a month and I just tested it. Water going in has a nitrate reading of 40 and with just one pass through the device which takes about 10 minutes, water comes out with zero nitrates. Not one or two, but zero. I never thought the thing would work so well and as soon as I get time I will install it on my reef.
I have some reservations about lowering my nitrates now, which seems wierd considering what everyone thinks about nitrates but for some reason, my tank never looked so good and the corals were never so big. SPS and LPS are larger and look better than ever .

The denitrifying coil is a 3" pipe outside, in that is a 2" pipe with 40' of PVC tubing wrapped tightly around it, that is inserted inside the 3" pipe. Inside the 2" pipe is a 1 1/2" pipe and inside that is a 1" pipe. Then a 3/4 pipe, a 1/2" pipe and a 3/8" pipe. The pipes were grooved on my radial arm saw to give them more surface area but that is probably not necessary.
The water flows from the tank to the 40' coil then into each pipe. One end of each pipe is capped so the water has to flow through each pipe then to the next and next and so on. The capped ends are on opposite ends of each adjacent pipe. The water way is only about 3/16" between each pipe so there is plenty of surface area.
These things work because the coil strips the water of oxygen with the help of Aerobic bacteria, then the oxygen free water travels through the rest of the thing on a 10 minute voyage where it contacts anerobic bacteria which strips away the nitrates.
They can be dangerous because if they are not designed correctly or if they run too slow, hydrogen gas can develop which is poisonous. Once it is cycled, you can't shut them off of the sulfide will develop.
, LPS and leathers are growing faster than I have ever seen them grow.
I doubt it is the high nitrate levels but I wish I knew what it was. I may just install the Denitrification coil for a little while to slightly lower the nitrates to see if it affects the growth rate.
I have been cycling the device with Vodka.
It only processes about a gallon an hour or so but I will measure it exactly when I have time.

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Comments

  1. Paul B's Avatar
  2. Paul B's Avatar
  3. Sisterlimonpot's Avatar
    That's a blast from the past.... I totally forgot about that method of reducing nitrates...
  4. Paul B's Avatar
    Thats OK, I forget everything
  5. Paul B's Avatar
    I am putting it back together with some tweeks and I wil start cycling it again. I changed the flow from bottom to top just to make construction easier and I added 2 air vents and test ports. Right now I don't want to lower the nitrates too much because for some reason the corals are growing very fast. I have a giant mushroom that for 5 years was a tiny mushroom looking thing, now it is close to 9" across and it grew in a few months. I am afraid to feed the thing because it is taking up too much real estate and is covering some neighboring corals which are themselves getting too large for the tank.

    This shows some of the internal parts, two of the tubes are inside other tubes and are not shown.
  6. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
    Paul, that's awesome! I considered one of these at one point, forget why I didn't go with one? Probably just never got around to it.

    I noticed that when I added the algae scrubber to my tank and brought the nitrates down that my mushrooms actually started shrinking! Apparently mushrooms and some other soft corals need a little nitrate to really thrive.

    Phil
  7. Paul B's Avatar
    Phil, I noticed the same thing and it is really astounding at how fast soft corals grow with nitrates. My giant mushroom was tiny for years and now in a few weeks it grew to about 9" across. The SPS are doing fine but not growing as fast as they were but the leathers and mushrooms are skyrocketing. I don't want to lower the nitrates and am actually trying to keep them up. Yes, I know, wierd.