Fluidized Sand Bed Help

[jamiep]

Originally posted by m2434


X amount of waste -> produces Y amount of ammonia -> Q amount of nitrite -> produces Z amount of nitrate

So, the rate limiting step is waste and ammonia. Therefore, to end up with less nitrate, we need less waste, less ammonia/nitrite or need to convert nitrate to something else like nitrogen gas. It's very possible I'm missing something, but I just don't get how you can convert ammonia “too fast”. What's worse, excess ammonia or excess nitrate?

Yes origionally I was going to post this

I think the point is that there is a backlog of Nitrate. If for example it would take 1day to process one unit of ammonia, it may take 7days to process nitrate to Nitrogen so if one unit of ammonia was produced a day, after seven days there would be 6units of Nitrate (7units produced but only one processed in 7days)

But then I realised that the system would just produce more nitrate procesing specific bacteria, and that at most it would only be 6units behind, so ammonia must be the limiting factor!

Answering your retorical questions Amonnia is worse.

At the end of the day, we don't want either though so the fundimentals are the same, regular water changes and regular cleaning for filters, sand beds or blowing detrus of rocks!

Jp