Help! Big problem need suggestions

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cd5

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jul 26, 2004
Messages
127
Location
Georgia
So lets start with the backstory, I build a diy nitrate reactor for my saltwater aquarium, It works, It work incredible, zero out the nitrates, I mean just gone

So I build a larger one for my freshwater aquarium, and It is also works incredible, nitrates were at >80ppm, 4 weeks later 0, none

Problem is that the reactor is working too good(for my freshwater only saltwater is fine it is much smaller with less media, better balance i quess), I have hydrogen sulfide formation, Black formation in the media is minimal and I hardly even notice it, however I can smell the rotten eggs in the filter but not in the aquarium

The question is what do I do?

Should i pull the nitrate reactor out completely, and start over

Can I just increase the speed the pump to reduce the lag time in the nitrate reactor to reduce production reducing anoxic or would the hydrogen sulfide be too deadly in the aquarium

Should I reduce the amount of media in the nitrate reactor



Another problem is the nitrate reactor is design so that if the pump is not on then it is separated from the aquarium, but it a terrible pain to get it out of the sump, Can i chlorinate the reactor to kill the anaerobic bacteria and then declorinate, or should i just break done take the thing out and physical wash the media

ANY SUGGESTIONS MUCH APPRECIATED
 
Most FW aquarists don't run Nitrate Reactors on their aquariums, so I don't know if you'll get a lot of suggestions. I'd love to hear more about the design and what you do to solve the problem though.
 
Fixed the problem, no help needed anymore
My design for both of my nitrate reactors is

Tall clear container (freshwater is was a cereal container I got from Wally World)
Maxi Jet (the lowest GPM one I forget number)
Air tubing

I gutted the maixjet down to intake and exit, I reduced the tubing to air line size like use for air pump, It pump into the container which is filled with media, I used sand, The tubing terminates in the at the bottom of the media, The flow is slow enough that the ammonia is treated to nitrate and DO falls out by the time it hit the bottom of the sand bed, Nitrates vanish into N2(gas),

The problem was that I just simply had too much media, So I extracted half the media,(from 9inch sand to 4-5inch) and as the 90% water change was happening, I left the pump on and siphoned off the water above the media layer,

To fix my problem I remember what a sewage operator told me once
"The solution to pollution is dilution"

All of this was done for my 210 gallon freshwater, with sump
 
I think I am missing something here....Do you have a pic?
So the tubing runs into the sand to the bottom? Where is the ph? Is it used only to siphon water from your tank and then pump it back out, into the tank? How does the sand not blow all over the place?
 
Sorry no pic

The ph is in the sump after the filters from the aquarium, It sits next to the return pump to the aquarium, the ph pumps through the tube into the bottom of the container with the sand covering the exit of the tube, The flow is enough to disturb the sand, however the disturbance is limited to one inch, the rest just remains stagnant, since the tube terminates near the bottom of the sand bed the water remains perfectly clear as it slowly rises up from the sand bottom, the container fills up it spills over into the sump, the flow is moving very slow just trickling over back into the sump(completely silent), I think that estimates the flow is like 60 gph,
 
Very clever ... this is like a DSB or Berlin filter. right?
Very clever ... this is like a DSB or Berlin filter. right?

Hopefully, that is where the concepts came from when I was thinking about it, original I was doing this for my saltwater, and because it work so I well I did it for my freshwater, I just hope it keeps working because I have been struggling with nitrates for years in both aquarium, just mad because I could not figure out how to get them to reduce without spending a fortune on constant large water changes
 
I just hope it keeps working because I have been struggling with nitrates for years in both aquarium, just mad because I could not figure out how to get them to reduce without spending a fortune on constant large water changes

Live plants
 
Live plants were the biggest grief for me, I prefer corals over live plants anyday
Live plants
Did it, done it, not again for me
 
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