I saw a Deltec nitrate remover today at the LFS, it look fairley easy to make and the LFS said they can get the filter medium for about £15-20, has anyone ever made/used one? it looked like it used a pump to re-curculate the water in the tank.
I cannt have another 'little' tank above it with plants in to remove the nitrates

Hi Paul,
Could I ask you why you would want to actually remove your nitrates in a planted tank?? Most folks have difficulty maintaining high enough nitrate levels as it is. If you read the atricles and threads on this site you'll find that the general concensus is that the lack of sufficient levels of nitrates is a contributing factor to poor plant health and of algae proliferation.

Adding a nitrate removing aparatus to a planted tank is therefore counterproductive. My advice would be to save your €25 and buy more plants and more Potassium Nitrate.

Cheers,

Sorry, I should have said, this is for my unplanted Tanganykan tank, the fish need the water to have a nitrate content lower than 20, I am now using Amquel plus, but its getting a little expensive...

I read in another post of yours that your tap water has a Nitrate level of 40mg/l. I would first double check your Nitrate readings with another test kit or take a sample to your lfs to test.

If that level is confirmed, why don't you invest in an RO unit instead of this? That'll give you a nice clean base water (with 0 of everything) to start with and then you can either mix it with tap water or reconsititute it yourself with CaCl2, MgSO4 to get the GH up and baking soda (NaCO3) to get the KH up...

Voila, no nitrates! Then it would just be a question of water changes to keep the Nitrates down.

I'm also skeptical that any fish absolutely requires a Nitrate level of below 20 in order to thrive. I keep my planted Discus tank at around 25 to 30 with no problems. Tangs are a lot tougher than discus...

I have just found this link about the water stats in the lake
Nitrates of 40 is not unusual in this country.... I dont have the space or particulaly want an RO unit I found this which from what I can tell, is run with an air pump and recirculates the water constantly but costs £80

broken link?

Paul, use a plant filter.

Then you can do it.
Also, see the gallery and there is a 240 gal tangy tank full of plants that are actually from Tangy.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Its pretty much a waste of time, I came home tonight to find all four orntapinnis and one petricola dead.... and only 2 petricolas left alive I will check the stats and come back later

got a feeling it might have somethin to do with the kh dropping from 24 to 15 in one water change, love to know how it got so high so quickly... algae is still alive though.
I dont want to do the nitrate tank idea as I dont have the room to have one and ro is a no go as my tap water is better for the plants than it is for me and I have no space for an ro unit.

The Deltec remover is new i think, this is a desription of it, dont know why that link didnt work...


Sulphur Bead Denitrator

New from D&D the UK's Deltec distributors.

For tanks up to 133 gallons.

This denitrator uses sulphur based beads to grow bacteria which literally consume nitrate. The reactor requires no additional feeding and does not need to be controlled via a redox/mv computer. We have found the Deltec denitrator to be the easiest to set up and run of all the nitrate reactors on the market today.