denitrators

I have a nitrate removal thing in my filter I think its called Nitrasafe.
Works by anion exchange and claims that nitrate wont leak back into the tank
once the sachet is saturated. I have been using for about a year, although
not on a Malawi tank. I set up the Malawi tank about 3 months ago and have
been using it on the tanksince. I think it means that I only have to change
25% of he water every two weeks rather than every week. The only problem is
that it was quite expensive (about £12) and for a tank your size you`d
probably need about 4 or 5 AND room in your filter to put them all!

On a different note I am thinking of buying a bigger thank (about 650L) and
have been thinking about the logistics of carrying out 25% water changes
every week. Iam sure some type of nitrate removal would help! Anyone had
experience of nitrate removal on this scale?

Phil


"bannor" bannor -at- echoes - net - mind the spam block wrote in message
...
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 05:03:47 -0000, "SkyCatcher®"
wrote:

Hi,

Anyone using these or can share their knowlegde on their usefulness? I
thinking about getting a largish setup (2000 L) and was wondering if one
of
these could help keep the water changes to a manageable level?

I was looking at the http://www.aquaripure.com/ website - anyone with any
experience of this product?
Sky

Hmmm... I would suspect that this is simply a de-nitrate coil... which
you can create yourself for just a few dollars. All you really need
is a long, as in 15-20 feet of small diameter tubing, airline size
works, but it has to be completely blocked from all forms of light.
Any, just a slow, almost drip type flow through this tubing will help
eliminate nitrates. This can not be run by a very strong power head
without some form of flow control to limit the speed of the water
through the system. The slower the better.

From the pictures on that site, they are only using about a 1/4 inch
tubing, and there may or may not be a power head contained in the
box... of course they are not going to be willing to tell you that
this is very simple technology. The only downside to these types of
de-nitrate systems is that since they are a small diameter tube
system, the flow rate is sooo slow that the nitrates in your tank may
still continue to rise if there is not enough turn-over.

Shoot, it looks to me like it is a BIG rip off... there is nothing to
it but a coil of tubing hidden in a 'black box' to block light.