Nitrate Saga

[gwand]

This is a post for the few of you who have nitrate levels coming from your municipal or well water. This is a continuation of a previous thread. My well water has a nitrate concentration of approximately 30 ppm. One practical solution would be to install a R/O system. If I had chosen that path, the system would have to go in my basement. I need about 30 gallons of water a week for my exchanges. I am an old guy and lugging that water up from the basement is not an option. So I plumbed in a nitrate filter into the sink I use for my water exchanges with a python. The filter worked terrific, but it became saturated after two months of weekly water exchanges. These filters cost $119 a pop so that is just too expensive to purchase six of those every year. Next I bought several bags of API NitroZorb and placed them in the various filter boxes. This product also worked extremely well. The resin gets regenerated in a brine solution. And there in lies the rub. After regeneration and replacement into the filter box, the resin releases sodium chloride as it binds nitrate in the tank water. The TDS went through the roof. Now I am trying a nitrate binding resin that also gets placed in a media bag called cobalt total nitrate. This resin can be regenerated either in a brine solution or a 1 to 4 solution of bleach. Of course, after you soak in bleach, you then do a 24 hour soak in a water conditioner to neutralize the bleach. Then you test for the presence of chloride ions to know it’s safe to put back in the filter box. So far this product is also working well. I may be playing Russian roulette with this product given the regeneration in bleach, but if I’m really careful to neutralize the bleach afterwards I may have found a solution. The product instructions state that the resin can be regenerated multiple times. I will update you as I gain more experience with this product. If you hear a loud scream, it will mean all my fish have died.

 

[Colin_T]

Another option is to have lots of floating plants in the tank to use the nitrates. You can also have containers of water with floating plants in. The plants use the nitrates in the water and when it's clean, you use that water for water changes.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have had an RO/DI unit for about a decade. In fact I am on my second unit. I only needed to use 10-12 gallons a week regularly. But, I batched the water in our guest house building but used it in the main house. I used to make the water every few weeks and then store it in 1 gal. jugs, 5 gal cans and one 6 gal water container. I would have to carry the gallon jugs from the guest house to the main house every week.

When all the 1 gal. jugs got used, I would refill them from the biggers cans. I have been carrying the water now since I was on my meid 60s until a couple of months ago when I sold my aAtum angels for whom I used most of the RO/DI water. There iss no way I would have done this if I needed 3 times as much water. Part of my problem is I can store 3 -4 weeks of water in the guest building but there was no place for doing that in in the main house. I also need to batch the water for a day to make a full load. I have the space for doing this in the guest house but not in the main house.

Oh the things we do for fish........

(Since I have super well water I do not need to prep it in any way. In some cases I can refill a tank directly from the tap at temp. which is adapted to connect to any garden hose size connection. From the utility sink to the tank directly. I credit my well water for a lot of my success with plecos. It is as if my well water contains a natural fish aphrodisiac.)

Had I needed 30 gals/week I would have had to come up with a better system. When I was younger I could carry a 5 gal. bucket of water in each hand and that would be 3 trips from one building to the other. But old age meant that a 1 gal, jug in each hand was how I ended up having to do it. Now, old age has meant I had to let the altums go. So I do not need to batch and carry RO/DI water any longer.

 

[AJ356]

If you can manage to keep your tank nitrates to 50 or under, I wouldn't worry about it.