Do it yourself Denitrator

do you ever have to change out the bio balls?

 

From what I undestand never touch this thing again. As for bio balls in any filter... I'd also tell you never to touch them. There are other opinions though.

 

Now ya tell me! It's funny that I didn't consider it, but hey you'll never here me complain...but I will take a jab at ya now and again after this!

 

LOL Jib Jab I just forgot all about it I need t get some heat shrink for theses or I'll tape them , All who have gotten the coils fix the J tube With in the next week the NO3 will be history . Oh and as for the speed of the drip that you posted The dip a second is all you need to open one up will only set the cycle back as the water moving to fast will allow oxygenated water to enter the chamber and kill your bacteria. Speed of flow has nothing to do with its functioning . We had a clinetwith a 1,200 or 1,400 systm NO3's where like 100plus I madea coil the boss tookit set it up and said it will take a hundred yrs at this drip rate .. Actualy it took 4 months or so . speed of drip has nothing to do with the removal of NO3. Just set it forget it and never open it up ! If you must ? wait for a cool windy day and take it outside

 

This device seems brilliant! I do have a couple of questions. Could I make three layers of the hose (40ft), wrap it around a piece of 1 1/4" PVC, bond the hose to the PVC, and install the pvc pipe and hose into a 3" PVC tube; then fill the center PVC tube with fluval biomax? Does this make any sense? If not, I can draw a little diagram.

thanks for your input

 

A quick diagram

Here is the diagram. Please don't mind the terrible penmanship..

 

So you simply want to substite bioballs for biomax?
Either one will have a lot of surface area, but bioballs will probably have more and you'll probably want more room inside the coil than 1-1/4" to fit enough. Also for the same size filled with biomax (ceramic cheerio tubes) will be significantly heavier than using bioballs.
I'd think bioballs would be less expensive than biomax too.
It might still work ok though, one way to find out....

 

Very true.. I will make it two feet tall to give the bacteria more area to grow, hopefully this will compensate for the lack of girth.. Thanks for your advice! I wanted to use biomax beacause I have an extra box here, but no bioballs.

 

How big of a box? LOL, That stuffs more expensive, I'm sure. You could probably also throw in small chuncks of LR, but FWIW, bioballs will be the lightest and have the most surface area to host the bacteria. And I can tell ya that increasing the radius of the tube will increase the volume inside for the bioballs/biomax more effectively than increasing the length. Volume = 3.14 x radius^2 x Length. You get that squared factor with increasing the radius, so it's more beneficial for adding volume.
That's why they don't sell milk jugs in skinny 3 foot tall containers.

 

Hmmm... That wouldn't be very convenient for drinking!!;D