Jaubert Plenum

[NaH2O]

Nick, I was thinking along the lines of the drainable plenum being beneficial. I'm wondering how often the plenum would need to be drained in order to stop the recycle event from occuring. I don't know...maybe I'm just brain dead and not making any sense at all????

[mojoreef]

I have no idea when he is going to put out the article, he says when he gets some time, lol so who knows.
On the plenum and or our modified system, man I am kinda been set back a few steps here now. I always new thier was some ammonia being circed back but man if we are not getting off gassing at all, I dont know. I got some info from albert theil and he is along the same thinking, that the gas we see is simply co2 not nitrogen gas and that nitrogen based products are just being cycled like everything else in the bed. I have a call into a friend that runs the NOAA and i am going to pick his brain on the phone. One way or another I want to figure this out.

Mike

[ScottT1980]

Nikki, when you say "recylce event," are you reffering to the loss of bacterial flora in the plenum space? If so, I don't think there is any way to avoid this loss. Nevertheless, I would think that most of the bacteria would not be suspended in the water column but be incoorporated within biofilms on substrate. Because the plenum space has no substrate (i.e. it is only water), then the loss of bacteria would not be too great (although perhaps noticable).

So, while I am concerned about bacteria loss, the more I think about it, the more I begin to wonder if this loss is negligable. So with the drain, perhaps you are getting rid of the bad while keeping most of the good. Another question, do the sulfur compunds and other contaminants in the plenum (via aneorobic processess) precipitate or do they remained suspended in the water? If they precipitate, then bacteria obviously would grow on these "clumps of gunk" and therefore, bacterial loss would be significant if these were drained with the water (which is the idea afterall, taking the bad out) although much would still remain.

Just thinking out loud, don't mind me...

Take er easy
Scott T.

[Maxx]

Nikki,
that makes sense to me. I agree w/ you. Admittedly we don't have any of the studies info, so all of this is pure supposition/assumption on our part here, but it would seem to be beneficial to remove from water (and undesirables) from the plenum area. The tough part is as you said, how often?
It takes on average 6 weeks to cycle a new (sterile) aquarium w/ damsels. Keep in mind this is the complete nitrogen/ammonia cycle in a dead (no bacteria at all) environment. And the length of time is due to the bacteria population needing to reach levels that can deal w/ the ammonia/nitrite/nitrates. So I would assume that after the plenum was established, (funtioning bacterial population) that it would take less time than that depending on the systems bioload. Maybe 4 weeks? maybe less? I dunno...Mike you read the study...sort of...what do you think?
Nick

[Scooterman]

Think this could be set up on a 10g Nano. If so maybe we could get actual results without having to experiment on a full blown reef. It still will require time though but may well pay off!

[Cougra]

Originally posted by mojoreef
I have no idea when he is going to put out the article, he says when he gets some time, lol so who knows.
On the plenum and or our modified system, man I am kinda been set back a few steps here now. I always new thier was some ammonia being circed back but man if we are not getting off gassing at all, I dont know. I got some info from albert theil and he is along the same thinking, that the gas we see is simply co2 not nitrogen gas and that nitrogen based products are just being cycled like everything else in the bed. I have a call into a friend that runs the NOAA and i am going to pick his brain on the phone. One way or another I want to figure this out.

Mike

Mike: If there is no Nitrogen reduction in the lower layers of a DSB or Plenum, how is it that so many tanks have little to no nitrate build up over time? What happens to the nitrate? Does it get bound in the system waiting to be released? Are we somehow removing it through other means without realizing it?

As for the P and Si levels in the bottom layers of the plenum, I find that to a big concern as well.

I also think that without a complete understanding of what's going on and all the results from that study, I don't think we should jump to drastic conclusions.

[Maxx]

I don't think we should jump to drastic conclusions.

WHAT???? THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!

Nick

[mojoreef]

OK Coug I am going to give it a shot, hopefully its understandable. We as hobbist think that the nitrogen cycle is a simple thing, ammonia-nitrite-nitrate-nitrogen gas, all this is done by bacterial action. Well of course its not quite like that. Thier are basically two types of processes that can occur Both with simular results but with some big differences. The two processes are called assimilative and dissimilative. Ok now before we go thier you have to understand this. In the reduction process (as in ammonia to nitrite and so on) is a process done by selective baceria in each step, now each bacteria uses a distinct enzyme to catalyze a reduction (so no enzyne no reduction). Ok here we go, the process we are all used to is the Dissimilative dentrification. In this process nitrate replaces oxygen as the electron acceptor in the biochemistry of the cell. Basically the bacteria uses nitrate in place of oxygen to respire. the result of this is the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas. now the bacteria that does this are fuclative and can live in either oxygenated or suboxygenated water. Ok now for assimilative denitrification. what happens in this process is that with the presence of ammonia, the ammonia represses assimilative nitrate reductase (which is the first enzyme in this nitrate reduction pathway ) the result of assimilative dentrification means that ntriate does not turn into notrogen gas but instead to ammonium, the ammonium then would perk through the bed and enter the cycle once more at the ammonia to nitrite reduction part of the cycle.
Ok now looking at the results of Charles study he is saying that ammonia was present through out the bed and in the plenum. So if you take these results and apply them to how the cycles work it would mean that only assimilative dentrification is occuring and not the off gassing we are looking for.
Did I make a muckery of trying to explain that??????????

Mike

[Cougra]

So in other words, we are just giving more ammonia to the system and the bacteria we need to process it just multiply to utalize an ever increasing demand?

Wouldn't there have to be some sort of nitrogen release in the system? We are adding a lot of it, I still have a hard time believing that it's not going anywhere besides in a perpetual cycle!

[NaH2O]

Mike, I think you did well in your explaination. My problem with Chemistry and Biochemistry, is I'm a visual learner (the little ball models helped me a lot) and I have a hard time without a diagram of some kind. I do think I have a grasp on what you are saying, and it makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to put it out there, as I'm slow on the uptake

[ScottT1980]

Perfect explanation...

[mojoreef]

Nikki that is to funny. I am the same way just opposite, I have a hard time explaining things with out drawing pictures and lots of hand motions, lol

Mike

[mojoreef]

Wouldn't there have to be some sort of nitrogen release in the system? We are adding a lot of it, I still have a hard time believing that it's not going anywhere besides in a perpetual cycle!

I here ya Cougra. let me go a little deeper
thier are two forms of nitrogen, inorganic and organic. Ammonium/nitrite/nitrate/Nitrous oxide/Dinitrogen are all inorganic and stuff like protiens/Nucleuc acids/amino sugars/urea are the organic forms.
Nitrogen can transform by several methods, but here are the two we are really relating to
>Ammonification is wher organic N is broken down into Ammonium
>Immobilization is where inorganic N matter is built up to form Organic N.
In the second process this is part of the organic goo I was always refering to in the DSb debates. Its a sink.



Mike

[RogueCorps]

Hmm... For the process "not" to be working, we sure have a lot of fairly successful tanks running. Couldn't it just be that ammonia is present but it is being broken down at a rate the same as it is being produced? If there were some fault in the process, ammonia would quickly overrun and leach from the substrate wouldn't it?

For what it's worth, what if we're making this all more complex than it really needs to be. Maybe with a sufficient amount of surface, be it sand, plenum, mud, etc. and flow, nature is able to adapt to best make a solution for itself. There are a whole bunch of different setups who people all claim is the best, eh? (DSBs... DSBs...)

So this inedible "goo"... This must be pretty far down the food chain because there are some bugs who will eat pretty much anything. I still find it hard to worry about the goo with too much urgency. Some sinks are lasting a good long time.

-Rogue

[ScottT1980]

Ok, so the ammonium (NH4) is not broken down initially broken down into N2 but instead, incoorporated into amino acids and perhaps ultimatly, proteins (which might also be a good sink for our sulfur since disulfide bonds are important to protein tertiary structure). This protein can either act as a sink or be broken down by some sort of scavenger, thus giving the nitrogen the oppurtunity to be gassed off again?

I have never seen in the literature that a protein goo acts as a sink. Is this just speculation or is this actually a pretty consistent dogma in the hobby?

It seems that there either has to be this goo, N2 is gassed off, or there is some other sink because most of our tanks have very low nitrogen readings (if properly maintained)...

Ah, I am lost again in all the ideas, someone please find me...

Take er easy
Scott T.