Aquaripure denitrator

Has anyone had any experience with this product? I purchased one and hooked it up last week. It seems to be of good quality and is functioning as advertised. It needs to cycle so I won't no how well it removes nitrates. From what I've read in the advertisement it should help save on water changes. I currently have to make 30-40 gallon water changes a week on my 270 gal system and that's just to keep the nitrates at 50 ppm. It's an aggressive set up with large fish. As you can tell it's expensive to maintain. I'm looking for the silver bullet to get back to just water changes once a month.
Any feed back on this product will be appreciated.

Information

Hi, I saw that you post this message in the year 2003, I want to know your opinion for this product Aquaripure Denitrator. Tks.

I posted that question on 5-10-05. I bought one and so far it's not working. It's pretty much stayed clogged up since I got it. So we'll see. So far nothing positive. I'm waiting for it to start flowing again. I'm getting about a drop every 3 seconds. I should be getting about 8 drops per second. Not good.

Looking to buy that brand of denitrator....and info you can offer after using it a few months

anyone?

I am by far no expert on the subject, and am only a beginner in this whole hobby. So please take whatever I say here with a grain of salt ;-). I have been attempting to start a FOWLR tank for about a year now, with plans on migrating it to a reef setup once I got the hang of it. I followed all the information I could find, performed 50% water changes every week to try and keep the nitrates down - which incidently were not really all that high. I was plagued with green hair algae - it covered EVERYTHING ! Live rock, glass, snail & hermit crab shells, every couple weeks I was scrubbing it all off. About two months ago I purchase one of these Aquaripure Denitrators. BEST INVESTMENT I EVER MADE. After two months of running, not a sign of algae anywhere. Nitrates, Amonia, Nitrites and phosphates all at undetectable levels... all inhabitants appear to be happy. I haven't performed a water change for the past month, and still no rise in levels. The cost savings in salt alone will soon pay for the denitrator. I personally highly recommend one.

What size system are you running yours on?
I've had mine hooked up for about 7 months now. I still haven't had great progress with it. I'm glad it's working for you. But, I think in my case the bioload (7 Fish) is just to much for the system. It's been a consistant battle to keep the water flowing at the correct rate through the unit and I'm not sure that it has really helped. I was trying to avoid the weekly 30 gallon water changes if possible. So far my Nitrate levels are maintaining about 50ppm.

My system is rather large and my fish are rather big too. My smallest is a 4" maroon clown. The largest is a 16" puffer, Two hand size tangs, a 8" Huma trigger, 8" Lunar wrasse and a 5" clown trigger.
300 lbs of LR and 270 gallons of tank, sump & fuge. I bought the large unit. Not the huge unit though. I just couldn't part with the 500 bucks. They were very nice and offered me a full refund if I got the commercial size unit. I've been thinking about it. But, it's too close to Xmas to buy it now. I'm glad it's working for you.. It gives me hope.

OK, this past week I think I started to run into similar problems you encountered. I could only get a drop every 10-15 seconds, and this was with the outlet valve wide open. I'm sure it would come to a complete stop eventually. I went to the Aquaripure website, and followed the recommendation they listed - pretty much what I had suggested earlier. They recommended injecting air into the OUTLET valve - not the inlet. I took a pump used to fill your regular everyday air matteress, and pumped in a few shots. It worked in that I got my steady rate of 1 drop per second, but that was still with the valve wide open. This worked for a couple hours then it slowed down again. Did this four or five times, and eventually I got a nice steady stream and had to quickly shut the valve again. I'm pretty sure its now good for a while. The web site also recommended not to "feed" the unit for a week or so, as the problem is a build up of the "good bacteria" and feeding it more would compound the problem.

After reading about it. It looks like a very good option. My nitrate is still around 50-70 ppm.
My fish seem OK and very active. But, I still have to do a 30 gallon water change weekly. To maintain that. Which leads me to believe my system can't be balanced out without some more outside help.
Thanks for the info.

What size sump do you have? Is your refugium loaded with rocks,sand, and plants? What kind of skimmer? Are you using bio-balls?

My tank is a 175 BF with 300lbs of LR... with 3 interconnected sumps. A 30 gallon fuge with a DSB filled with micro algae. A 30 gallon sump under the tank with all my pumps for the Chiller, UV sterilzer & EV180 skimmer and a 40 gallon Emergency medical tank that has a AquaC Urchin skimmer running in it along with the Aquaripure Denitrator that feeds back into the system. Here is a picture of some of my fish. They are all very big.

I'm running the H&S sulphur denitrator, works very well. Actually be careful upon first adding it tot the tank it will drop nitrate levels pretty quickly.

Which one do you think I should get Tony. Cause I just checked the Aquaripure and it's going in at 50ppm and trickling out at 25ppm. And that's after almost a year.

i just purchased the large denitrator and i was wondering what you fed the denitrator and if you used vodka like the aquaripure website says, what proof of vodka are you using

I set up the sulfer denitrifier by Midwest Aquatic 6 days ago. It comes with freeze dried bacteria in the sulfur for a quick start. This morning I got a reading of -0- nitrate at the outlet. If my math is correct, I should be pushing 13-15 gallons a day through the sulfur denitrator. My tank is pegging any Nitrate test kit I've tried. I would guess 200+ nitrate. (Short version of the story - I had a bad test kit and was ignoring the obvious signs of runaway nitrate, the old test kit said 20)
I have a 120 gal tank. If things progress as I'm calculating they should, Nitrates should be around 40 within approx 10 days from now.

I use the cheap aristocrat vodka. 15-20 ml per week. I hope it works out for you.

Wow Nolan

6 days, 0 nitrate. What is the reading in you tank? What kind of alcohol are you injecting into the denitratorfyier?

Wow, reefguy Which denitrator did you get? I would say the sulphur for that action. As soon as I get a little scratch saved. I think that will be the next big purchase for me.

ReefGuy888

It is the Sulfur Denitrifier XL by Midwest Aquatic. They send the sulfur mixed in with freeze dried bacteria. The freeze dried bacteria is supposed to jump start the system so you don't have to wait 4-6 weeks for the denitrifier to grow the bacteria. Midwest Aquatic thought it should be about 21 days to get a -0- reading at the outlet. I don't know why mine "matured" so quickly. Maybe my stupidly high Nitrate reading accelerated the process? The sulfur is the food, you don't have to feed it anything else. If I understand it correctly, the water passes through the sulfur where nitrate is broken down by the bacteria which breaks down the nitrate for it's oxygen. The water becomes acidic then passes through the Calcium Carbonate to be buffered before returning to the tank?

My nitrate tank reading is over 200. It pegs a quick drip stip and my drop style test kit is as red as you can get immediately even though it is supposed to be given 10 minutes to develop. Last night I tested 2.5ml tank water with 2.5 ml R/O water with my drop test kit (max 100 reading) thinking I could multiply my reading by 2 to get the actual but it was off the chart.

I had been fighting a nitrate reading, that I thought was 20, for about 6 months. BTA, snails, leather, etc had all seemed to be sliding downhill plus I was really having a lot of algae. I increased flow, removed undergravel filter, removed fluval pads, added de-nitrate, added nitrate sponge, added skimmer, cut feedings, removed fluval bio media, added more rock, tried AZ-NO3 etc. No change at all in 20 nitrate reading, but tank continued to not seem right and get worse. My zoos started to deform which led me to find that can happen in an extremely high nitrate tank.

Finally:
I decided to double check my readings with a quick dip. Turns out my Nitrate test wasn't working and Nitrate was acutally over 200.

My knee jerk reaction was to attempt a massive water change, but decided instead that they have probably been high and rising for 6 months so I wanted to take the time to find a permanent solution (other than daily massive water changes and the 50 other things I tried).
I'm estimating that I'm getting 10-12 gal a day of nitrate free water into the tank through the sulfur denitrifier.
I suspect that I'll be able to get about 15-20 gallons a day of nitrate free water out of the outlet as it matures. This should allow my nitrates in a 120 gal tank to drop pretty quickly and stay near zero.