Nitrate levels in the big tank are still around 25-30 despite on going water changes, the ALR2 light reactor was working and growing a bit of chaeto, but is rated for only 50% of the capacity needed for this system. Now I know these levels are not the end of the world, but long term it’s to high and I definitely don’t want them any higher
The 56 litres of Seachem Matrix can’t bring it down on its own, although the levels haven’t increased they’ve stabilised
Water changes will work, but it’s going to be an ongoing expense because of the water volumes involved, and I don’t like changing to much because it upsets the water parameters
So what’s a boy to do....
Firstly I put the ALR2 on the auction site with £100 of the new price and it sold within about an hour
So now were going to the ‘nuclear’ option, and hopefully the long term control of nitrates within the system. Ive been researching these for months, control etc. The principle is fairly straight forward so we shall see.
Deltec NFP512 Nitrate Reactor
Kamoer FX STP2 - to control the constant drip rate through the reactor very accurately
DD P1 Pro dosing head - automatic addition of the nitrate fluid, vodka
Now for those of you with eagle eyes, you will see a bottle of ATM Colony and also a bottle of Seachem Stability
I ordered the Colony to seed the reactor. But I thought about this, and Colony is designed to cycle a new reef tank and as far as I can establish only contains aerobic bacteria, to complete the nitrogen cycle. We don’t want those.
I don’t want to complete the nitrogen cycle, I want to convert nitrate to nitrogen gas, and the principle of the reactor is to establish a colony of anaerobic bacteria to do this. Seachem Stability contains a mix of aerobic bacteria, but also anaerobic bacteria amongst other things, which is what we need to give it a good kick start, so that’s what’s going to be used.
Anyway here’s the equipment just delivered and as usual the Deltec equipment is very solid and well built