HackingHardware

I may have just figured out a way of lowering nitrates in my aquarium. Having viewed some commercial biological nitrate filters it is clear that to remove nitrates you need anaerobic bacteria. With a normal external canister filter that circulates water from the main tank at a relatively high rate you have too much oxygen for the anaerobic bacteria to thrive.

In order to breed the anaerobic bacteria you need a flow rate low enough to guarantee that your canister filter contains oxygen depleted water. The commercial systems use a drippier to feed the filter with drops of water, where the flow rate is 1 - 4 l/hr ( 0,25 - 1 gph) for a small tank (5 L canister) and 12 - 30 Liter/hr ( 3 - 8 gph) for a large tank (30 L canister).

Building a drippier system is complex but putting a timed relay on a normal canister filter isn't. I set a relay timer circuit to 90 seconds off, 2 seconds on. I measured the flow for one pulse to be 100mL, which averages out at roughly 4 liters per hour. I used a spare AVEX 600 external canister filter with a volume of 2.3 Liters. I replaced some of the filter medium with porous clay pebbles to increase the surface are and encourage bacteria growth inside the pebbles where the oxygen will be at its lowest. I used a Velleman adjustable interval timer placed inside a plastic box with a 12V wall mounted power supply.

http://www.vellemanprojects.com/be/en/product/view/?id=366732

I took some water out of my tank with quite high nitrates and put it in a test tank. I then left in with my anaerobic filter for about 1 month. When i measured the Nitrates they had fallen to zero. I have since connected the filter to my main tank and I'm eagerly awaiting the results. (6-May 07)

Well it's been about 4 months and I can positively say that my timer system works, and nothing has blown up or died. I'd say that is pretty conclusive. I might make some final readjustments by to increase the off time to 5 mins and fill the canister completely with clay pebbles.