Removing Tap Water Nitrates with Nitra-Zorb (Experiment Results)

[AJ356]

I stand corrected. You are right. Nitrate is exchanged for chloride.

So I don't need to drink the water and check for salt? Was thinking of doing that, just to be sure like @blyatboy

 

[gwand]

It could be worse. Before physicians could measure sugar in urine to make the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, they would taste the urine sample for sweetness.

 

[AJ356]

Hello. I've received a lot of help from @Colin_T and others with my unwell pleco (thread here), so I thought I'd offer up a small contribution to this forum.

As part of this ongoing nightmare, I was struggling to get nitrates down, and found that my tap water measures ~20 PPM by itself.

I dug around, and found a product by API called Nitra-Zorb. It's meant to go in the filter and soak up nitrates for a couple of weeks, then requires recharging in concentrated salty water. There are other nitrate-absorbing resin products too, but this was the one I went with.

I also found an old page from a defunct website (MJV Aquatics) detailing the writer's experience with using to "pre-treat" high nitrate water: https://web.archive.org/web/20210822140717/https://mjvaquatics.com/my-nitrate-fight/

I decided to give it a shot. The pouch came in a few days ago. It took a lot of rinsing to get the dust out first, and the pouch holding the material itself is pretty weak, so I eventually had to replace it.

I filled up a 5 gal bucket of tap water, put the pouch under the intake of a small pump, and let the water circulate:

View attachment 373508

Did it work? Here are the results. First, the fresh untreated tap water:

View attachment 373509

After 5 minutes:

View attachment 373510

After 10 minutes:

View attachment 373511

And just because I really wanted to get the nitrates down fast, here's what it looked like after 30 minutes:

View attachment 373512

Hopefully this will help some others in my situation. I'm sure results will vary with the pump used, body of water treated etc. The fella who wrote the article on the MJV website actually took some discontinued tap water filter device from API, and replaced the guts with Nitra-Zorb. Maybe something like that would work faster, but I'm not sure.

All the best

PS: If anyone has any advice, really struggling to help my poor pleco here: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/please-help-my-pleco-mouth-closed-not-breathing-normally.498300/ Thanks in advance.

My Nitra-Zorb came today but then I realised I didn't have a spare filter big enough to put the pouch/resin in, so thats coming tomorrow. I see that you didn't put the pouch inside a filter @blyatboy and it still reduced the Nitrate.

I intend to use it just for the tap water going into the tank because of its advertised ability to absorb ammonia, and me not opening wanting to interfere with my nitrogen cycle too much, with beneficial bacteria in mind. @TwoTankAmin do you think beneficial bacteria would still get there fill of ammonia from Fish if there was a resin that removes ammonia in the tank? The answer seems an obvious "no", but I was wondering if the beneficial bacteria might "grab" some ammonia BEFORE the resin consumes it?

Also, do you, or anyone else think that a resin that absorbs ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate will remove minerals from the water and interfere with plant fertilizer and plant life? Thanks

 

[gwand]

Before I plumbed a nitrate resin binding filter into my sink, I was using NitroZorb bags in an Aqua clear 110 filter for nine months. My nitrogen cycle never crashed. I determined this by removing the resin every other month, and then measuring ammonia levels. Over the entire nine month trial, I had undetectable ammonia levels whether the resin was in the filter box or not.

 

[AJ356]

Before I plumbed a nitrate resin binding filter into my sink, I was using NitroZorb bags in an Aqua clear 110 filter for nine months. My nitrogen cycle never crashed. I determined this by removing the resin every other month, and then measuring ammonia levels. Over the entire nine month trial, I had undetectable ammonia levels whether the resin was in the filter box or not.

That's really interesting, thanks. Did you switch to the plumbed Nitrate resin for long term convenience relative to having to keep recharging or renewing the Nitra-Zorb?

 

[gwand]

That's really interesting, thanks. Did you switch to the plumbed Nitrate resin for long term convenience relative to having to keep recharging or renewing the Nitra-Zorb?

Yes. Also once the resin bag was removed from the salt solution I would have to rinse it in over two gallons of distilled water before I was convinced it was salt free. I couldn’t use my tap water because it had nitrate.