Nitrate Control With Sugar?

[friendlyfishy777]

I found someone selling a special filter online for freshwater and saltwater fish by aquaripure, it claims to control nitrate with a sugar based solution it dips into the tank.


I have a few questions:

Does it really work, and if so, how?
Is it safe for all fish?
Is it possible to simply make up the solution and manually drip a little in daily, if so, any one here know how?

Oops, sorry for the double post my internet is acting up!

 

[Bignose]

I had never heard of this before. I'd like to see a fair amount of objective evidence showing that it can work, preferably not from the company trying to sell the product. Something like a research paper would be great.

A related concern to me would be: why the urgent need to control nitrates, anyway? Apart from some especially sensitive fish, nitrates usually don't matter much. Posts on this forum cite that fish can tolerate up to several hundred to even 1000 ppm nitrate without any significant health effects. So, really, your regular water changes should be doing a more than adequate job of controlling nitrate in the vast majority of cases. Or some live plants work incredibly well in this regard too. Not sure why a chemical solution really offers a significant improvement over what we have today.

 

[DrRob]

It's an anaerobic denitrifying thingamy. They're usually alcohol driven, and this one appears to be the same. They're also usually insanely expensive.

 

[AbbeysDad]

There is a school of thought that suggests that if we can remove the nitrates and complete the nitrogen process, water changes can be extended. As I understand it, the Aquaripure filter uses a very low flow rate through a filter of sponge media (and a weekly injection of alcohol to encourage anaerobic bacteria that will process nitrates into harmless nitrogen. I'm not sure if removing nitrates is all there is when we do weekly water changes...then again, what if we only needed to do water changes every other week or once a month...
Just maybe, in a salt water aquarium with good filtration and a protein skimmer, a denitrate filter would dramatically reduce the frequency and/or volume of routine water changes. This reduces the cost and effort involved in salt water changes. It's probably somewhat less of an advantage for fresh water, depending on how efficiently you do the water change. Although....just for a second...what if...you never had to do a partial water change? What if somehow the water was fresh all the time, leaving you to merely maintain filters and glass (and feed the fish of course)?

So how might we automate a process so the aquarium water is always fresh?

I'm experimenting with a few things to further improve water quality. I have a 60g Marineland tank (4'x1'x2').
I have a natural somewhat fine gravel to which I have added a fair amount of (pool filter) sand. To a point, this is to emulate the positive effects of a 'deep sand bed'.
I have 2 AquaClear 70 HOB filters on it. Filter #1 just uses sponge and floss material. Filter #2 uses a Fluval pre-filter sponge on the inlet tube and is loaded with Seachem Matrix. Matrix is claimed to have pore sizes small enough to support anaerobic bacteria that can process nitrates. In conjunction with the sand bed, my hope is to reduce nitrates.
In filter #1 I am planning to add Seachem Purigen. Purigen is a regenerative polymer adsorbant said to have an affinity for organics in solution (a freshwater means of filtering out dissolved organics like a protein skimmer does for salt water).
I'm thinking the above measures may produce crystal clear water that require fewer periodic water changes.

Thoughts?

 

[raptorrex]

I found someone selling a special filter online for freshwater and saltwater fish by aquaripure, it claims to control nitrate with a sugar based solution it dips into the tank.


I have a few questions:

Does it really work, and if so, how?
Is it safe for all fish?
Is it possible to simply make up the solution and manually drip a little in daily, if so, any one here know how?

Oops, sorry for the double post my internet is acting up!

even with a few tanks, 25% changes are no chore. its cheap too, and you know it works. because that's what, virtually, everybody else does.

but could i ask why you want to lengthen water change intervals? its far from clear in your post.

 

[DrRob]

I can see the attraction to having a system that controls as many toxins as possible, for as long as possible. Thereby going for the holy grail of a stable state system that doesn't need water changes (and is, on current tech, impossible IMHO).

I can also see the financial advantage to not using so much replacement salt or RO water, although I suspect that the maths won't add up unless the kit you're using costs almost nothing.

 

[raptorrex]

I can see the attraction to having a system that controls as many toxins as possible, for as long as possible. Thereby going for the holy grail of a stable state system that doesn't need water changes (and is, on current tech, impossible IMHO).

I can also see the financial advantage to not using so much replacement salt or RO water, although I suspect that the maths won't add up unless the kit you're using costs almost nothing.

personally i dont see a lack of water changes as a "holy grail". its not that hard, or expensive(even if you have a water meter). and for marine (or freshwater) it would still happen anyway, because of evaporation.
with no water changes, how will we replace the components, from the water, that fish absorb?

I can see your point. but see no point in it, if you see what i mean.
indeed i can see how a nitrate converter, and even a freshwater skimmer, might benefit many freshwater systems. but dont see how this would make water changes a thing of the past.
apart from the, unlikely, reduction in cost.. what benefits would your system bring to the hobby?

 

[DrRob]

personally i dont see a lack of water changes as a "holy grail". its not that hard, or expensive(even if you have a water meter). and for marine (or freshwater) it would still happen anyway, because of evaporation.
with no water changes, how will we replace the components, from the water, that fish absorb?

It's my holy grail, not for cost or hard work purposes, but because it would mean that I had a perfect environment for my fish. If I could get a set up that was self regulating and the right parameters then hopefully all the better for them. From the work point of view there'd still be all the usual cleaning and tidying to do, and I suspect that more tech items would have maintenance to do on them anyway.

Your last point, which is entirely fair, is why I don't think it's possible on current tech, but I can dream.

 

[CezzaXV]

But I guess in theory, if they did make a system that could entirely remove nitrate from the water so you didnt have to do water changes, they could make bottled minerals or whatever to add back into the water periodically, much in the same way you do with RO water.

Of course, this isn't going to get rid of the poop and such that builds up on the substrate, but it is something to think about.

 

[Essjay]

Nitrate isn't the only thing that builds up in the water between water changes, there are lots of biochemicals secreted by the fish and any plants in the tank. These would also need to be removed, and water changes are the only way to do that. These are the organic compounds people refer to when they say to add enough dechorinator to treat the whole if using a hose pipe as the dechlorinator gets used up by organic chemicals in the tank.

 

[CezzaXV]

Just out of interest, what is it that happens out in the wild that converts nitrate to nitrogen that we can't achieve in our tanks?

I'd be interested in something that gets rid of nitrate, if it did truly exist. Not that I'd stop doing water changes, but it'd be nice to know that the nitrate levels are always reasonable.

 

[Bignose]

Just out of interest, what is it that happens out in the wild that converts nitrate to nitrogen that we can't achieve in our tanks?

I'd be interested in something that gets rid of nitrate, if it did truly exist. Not that I'd stop doing water changes, but it'd be nice to know that the nitrate levels are always reasonable.

Plants. Lots and lots of plants. There are also anaerobic reactions that effectively follow the cycle backwards all the way back to nitrogen gas, but because there is no oxygen, it tend to happen in living rock/living sand type places. Some marine setups use these to remove the nitrogen wastes.

And, actually, most aquatic plants prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source, not nitrate. So, they actually remove the wastes up front, not necessarily after the ammonia has been converted to nitrate.

And, on that note, a heavily planted tank can go without water changes for months. They get their nitrogen from the fish liquid waste, a lot of micronutrients from the fish solid waste. And, the plants take up all the ammonia. Diana Walstad has successfully kept tanks like this -- water changes every 6 months or so.

 

[LongS]

Interesting thread, reading the point about plants preferring ammonia to nitrate bignose; could this mean in a superbly planted tank the plants could compete with the biological filter? even creating mini cycles or completely starving it?

 

[Bignose]

Interesting thread, reading the point about plants preferring ammonia to nitrate bignose; could this mean in a superbly planted tank the plants could compete with the biological filter? even creating mini cycles or completely starving it?

Not just competes with, but the plants actually take the place of the biological filter. You may want to explore some of the works by Diana Walstad -- she runs tanks with no filters at all. I think she just has a powerhead to circulate the water a little bit. But, her tanks have so many healthy plants that they is no need for bacterial breakdown of ammonia -- the plants takes care of all of it.

 

[ainsy]

This was something that was talked about a few years ago in the salty side of things.

I tried it in my 1200l reef tank using a combination of sugar and alcohol (vinegar was also mentioned sometimes)

IMO it is complete snake oil - It had absolutely no beneficial effect on my tank.