de nitrate

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thomas712

Guest
Sometimes such things are necessary, sometimes a simple water change with RO/DI water is all it takes. Sometimes less is more, by that I mean that you need to ask why you might need something like the seachem product, what is happening to cause the nitrates and ammonia to spike for you. Its your system, take a look at how its running, feeding habits, maintainence, cleanup crew..etc.
Hey if you feel you need it and have tested for it then use it, but there are many ways to help with nitrates, explore them.
Thomas
 

spanko

Active Member
Hey Thomas, welcome fellow Michigander.
Anti, tell us more about your system, equipment, age of setup, inhabitants etc. and that will give us some indication on why you may be considering the need to use this product, and some possible avenues to avoid it.
 

pete159

Member
I like that stuff, you can go longer without doing water changes as it has helped keep my nitrates at .20 and they never seem to go above that in my fish and live rock tank.
i use it in a canister filter instead of bioballs. It is a bio filter media, meaning it does not start working right away, it takes time for the bacteria to build up. Purigen is also good but totally different as it works more like a better version of activated carbon.
 

anti

Member
I was thinking of using it to cycle a 30 gallon tank.
I was wondering if it helped remove ammonia and nitrates any faster then ceramic media?
 

beaslbob

Well-Known Member
IMHO chemicals/equipment to remove nitrates are at least unnecessary and at worse detrimental.
they are unecessary because all you have to do is increase your nitrate consumers (plant life like macro, corraline, turf and other algaes) and you will have unmeasureable nitrates regardless of what else is going on in the tank.
detrimental because the chemicals/equipment I had looked at do nothing to remove phosphates, consume carbon dioxide, or return oxygen. With a low nitrates with some phosphates you get cyano bacteria. Especially with carbon dioxide. By contrast plant life consumes both nitrates and phosphates plus carbon dioxide while returning oxygen. Plus if something goes bump in the night the resulting ammonia spike is consumed by the plant life which can prevent tank crashes.
So instead of chemicals/equipment, conducting water changes and so on, I just increase the plant life.
just my .02
 

spanko

Active Member
Hey beaslbob, do you have a thread with pictures of your tank(s)? Would like to look at how you have them planted. There seems to be a lot of saltwater planted tanks being set up over on the nano reef site, and they look pretty nice.
 
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