Should I Remove The Nitrate Sponge From My Filter?

[oneblondebrow]

Hi all,

I have a Juwel Biofilter 6.0 in my Juwel Rio 180 which has a nitrAte reducing sponge in it, I have already replaced the Carbon sponge with another blue coarse sponge but am not sure if i should replace this, The reason being that my Tapwater has 10ppm of nitrate in it already.

What do you think? also is there an easy way for me to reduce my tapwater nitrate (easy=cheap )

 

[chrisbassist]

???

As far as I'm aware your filter can't get rid of nitrate. ESP not with a sponge.

And tap water at that level isn't too bad.

 

[raptorrex]

Hi all,

I have a Juwel Biofilter 6.0 in my Juwel Rio 180 which has a nitrAte reducing sponge in it, I have already replaced the Carbon sponge with another blue coarse sponge but am not sure if i should replace this, The reason being that my Tapwater has 10ppm of nitrate in it already.

What do you think? also is there an easy way for me to reduce my tapwater nitrate (easy=cheap )

like chris says. hoodwinking. just use any sponge as media.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree, the green sponge thing is an impossible claim. A true nitrate filter is a much more complicated and messy thing and is not needed in our hobby situations. So when thinking about the sponges (for instance, later on when you may need to replace, years from now) just think about the pore size.. whether it is coarse, medium or fine, when you look at it.

While nitrate itself is something we do want to remove periodically from the tank, it is only one out of hundreds of substances we want to remove. It happens that it is a good "signal" substance. We can measure it and let it serve as a sign to us about whether our "removal maintenance" is doing well or not so well. Often on TFF we see it advised that it works well to try and get into a pattern where your nitrate(NO3) level is maintained at about 15 to 20ppm -above- whatever your tap level is. So in your case that would mean that an NO3 level between 25 and 30ppm would indicate you are doing good gravel-cleaning-water-changing maintenance. If it were to try and creep upward from that each time then a larger water change habit would be called for.

Does that make sense? When we siphon out water we are not only getting the nitrate out, we are removing lots of trace heavy metals and organic molecules which, if left to build up as the water evaporates, would eventually cause our fish to be acclimated to something different from our tap water, which would be a bad thing.

~~waterdrop~~