well by the next week im gonna have mine working on the tank. i will try to post every pic on how to do it and how to intall it. inlcuding a list of material.

rsman thank for all does reply. you really help me on some stuff i also didnt knew about it

not to be mean or insensitive to others that know how these work, but ask now, ill be out of town and away from the internet (donno what im gona do bout that, itll be a first in over 5 years :D ) for over a week starting sat early. im glad to help out until then.

So you saying ask for the 1/4" ? heh joking :) ok ... looking for .170... so running 50 ft of that in a 4" x 20" tube with balls in the middle should make a nice denitrator?

ooh yea if you have a heat gun and can get the cheaper thin pvc you can wrap the thin pvc with the tubing insert that combo into your bioball chamber. drill 2 holes in the pvc at the top and bottom to thread the tubing thru. otherwise wrap the inside of your 4" tubing with your tubing both will work. dual coils for a 125 is better than 1, and more is generally better. longer is not better and will not increase processing ability.

I built one of these last week and took pictures if anyone is interested. It is up and running now so we'll see what happens. It is on a 65 gallon system right now with medium bioload. I will take some measurements and see how it goes.

Should hae asked this before but does anyone know of where some of the info can be found for ammount fo media vs denitrating capability etc?

Ied like to see the pictures

[b]Should hae asked this before but does anyone know of where some of the info can be found for ammount fo media vs denitrating capability etc?[/b]

it doesnt quite work that way, generally speaking once its cycled the setup will remove all of the nitrate that enters the unit, your limit isnt the amount of media, but instead the coil is your limit. but that is generally speaking of course so if you get overly creative your on your own :D the reason the media works better than just the coil alone is because the bacteria that removes nitrate does best in a lower flow area as they are fragile, the coils where the oxygen is removed does not have that limit.

right , my thinking though is that the coil could remove all of the oxygen but there should be some minimum ammount of media to remove nitrate of a given total ammount. For example 75 ft of tubing and X ammount of media is good for X ammount of nitrate...\

Also I forgot to add that mine is gravity fed.

By the way, can anyone suggest a good place to post these pictures, When I try to post them in my gallery I always end up with small pictures that are tough to see in detail. would also be better to post text with it. I'll put it all together I just need a place to post it all.

Chris

there is a nasty formula its based on flow rates in gph and surface area of 1' of the coil and surface area of the medium, i said its nasty right :D you can find it in 1970's waste water treatment data. but it comes out to about the same surface area as 2' of the coil length, which would be like 1 bio ball.

[edited added]
but thats a minimum. and a few bio balls are better

ok I threw togther an MS word document wih text and photos. If you want it Pm me and I'll email it you. Otherwise you can wait until I find a place to post it as a web page. I used front page express to build it into a website, I'll try to find a place to post it and I'll update this thread when I do.

ok try this link, tell me if it works for you and if the thing makes sense

[url]http://2hot2cool.com/4/afishianado/afishian.htm[/url]

Chris

ok got to get the IMG tags right, i'll post here again once it is right

ok if someone is willing to try out the link please elt me know if it works now.

here it is again

[url]http://2hot2cool.com/4/afishianado/afishian.htm[/url]

werks, gewd, but umm those insert connectors were probibly a bad idea, as they will clog :( one way to get around that would be to build a pre filter instead of tearing it all apart :D at least thats something

Cool, thanks for verifing it. I hope someone finds it useful. I know that mine is a bit different than what other people have but I was going off of those plans that made me want to make some with photos.

Clogging? hmmm, I've used these things forever on all kinds of things, only ever seen one clog and then it just screws out, run under the water and screw it back in, good as new. Guess you could use straight ones too, the 90s just keep the hose from kinking. I used to do the old drill a hole, stick the tube through, and slop glue all over it. It works but looks like crap when I do it.

oops not the fittings the ones used to extend the coil from 25' to 75'

remember you cant open this, if you do you will have issues at best.

ooh hadn't thought of that. guess I should have used the next size up tubing for splicing. We'll see how it goes.

Just wanted to say that I built a couple of 2' tall x 4" dia coil denitrators almost a year ago.
They do help with the nitrates, but a 2' unit is limited to a 30 gal tank. I run one on a 37gal & another on a 75gal. They do work to keep the nitrates down, but not to "0".
I have the water coming out at about 1-2 drops/second into the top of a spray injection skimmer. This quickly adds O2 to the water.
They do work better than the deep sandbed in my 56gal.

prugs

whats the nitrate and nitrite from the output water, and what size tubing did you use for the coil?

a guess as i dont know the setup yet, but you might be running too slow.

you didnt really provide a lot of info, but the height alone isnt the issue, size of the coils really makes the difference.

Thats a good ?. I never did check to see what the nitrate & nitrite output was. I have no measurable nitrite or ammonia in the tank.
From all the reading that I have done. 1-2 drops/second is suppossed to be about right.
The coils are made from appox 75' of .170 ID ice maker tubing (polyethylene).
The center of the chamber is filled with Corallife mini bioballs.

[b]I have no measurable nitrite or ammonia in the tank.[/b]
good :D

[b]From all the reading that I have done. 1-2 drops/second is suppossed to be about right.[/b]
nope its about right to cycle the unit, but its not best for a running unit. you should of course test the water, and you should NOT make fast changes

[b]The coils are made from appox 75' of .170 ID ice maker tubing (polyethylene). The center of the chamber is filled with Corallife mini bioballs.[/b]
sounds like a typical setup should be rated for aprox 75 gallons max (want more power add more coils)

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by rsman [/i]
[B] dual coils for a 125 is better than 1, and more is generally better. longer is not better and will not increase processing ability. [/B][/QUOTE]

As in more separate units? Longer not better, due to oxygen being long gone and the biobals being the limiting factor? I am kinda lost here. How can 2 "small seperate units" be better than one super large unit with a lots of wraps of coil and a large diamter?

BEan

prugs, did you have no nitrate in your tank before or after you installed the coil? If you had some nitrates before what were they and how long did it take for them to go down.

[b]As in more separate units? Longer not better, due to oxygen being long gone and the biobals being the limiting factor? I am kinda lost here. How can 2 "small seperate units" be better than one super large unit with a lots of wraps of coil and a large diamter?[/b]

ok so clearly i didnt clear anything up :D

the bio-balls are almost never the limit, the coils supplying the bio-balls is almost always the limit(within some reason).

as soon as the O2 is removed from the water, the water *should* be outside of the coil and in a reduced flow area(but still sealed from O2). if your coils are longer it has a number of effects, mostly effeciency until you get really really long, then it gets nasty. if its short you get nitrite and nitrate and no good.

you dont need a large amount of media outside of the coils for the work to be done, so if your in design mode build 1 unit with 2 or more coils, if you already have a unit then either upgrading (tearing the one you have apart and adding more coils) or adding an additional unit.

even when you get longer larger diameter coils your still better with multiple coils, its still an effeciency thing.

Guys,

The BioBall limited surface area might be the limiting factor for your DIY denitrator here. Try a different substrate like Seahem Denitrate or Matrix. (and, no, these are not chemical filters or mechanical filters like Polyfilter). Denitrate will work better than Matrix, it has more surface area. More info is available at Seachem website:

[url]www.seachem.com[/url]

With either substrate you should be able to increase the flow rate too. The original Seachem recommeded flow rate for Denitrate is <50g/h. But I am sure a number lower than that is probably better in this application, but still way fast than the rate prescribed here ;)

And if the coiled tube didn't consume all O2 with higher flow, the bottom layer substrate will.

cheers,