Public aquarium nitrate levels and removal methods?

jrpark22000

jrpark22000

Premium member
What do public aquariums do to manage nitrates? Any have first hand knowledge? What about the nitrate levels they keep in fowlr and reef systems? The web has anecdotal numbers of 200-1000(s)ppm for public fowlr aquariums.

Google is full of DIY coil and sulfur denitrators, carbon dosing, but what do the big boys use? I can only find a few references to some using sulfur systems.
 
jrpark22000 said:
"but luckily NO3’s have been below 1ppm with no work on my end. There must be enough denitrification within the rock and substrate to handle the large bio load "

With a tank that size, quite an impressive feat.
Click to expand...

i might think the opposite on first glance. It seems to reason that, all things being equal, a larger and more diverse tanks would come closer to mimicing the actual conditions present on the reef. Average reef NO3 levels are <0.2 in general but only dangerous at much higher levels. He's running that tank with a ton of mechanical and biological filtration. If we assume that NO3 is not truly a toxin, but rather an indicator of relative water "cleanliness" then his water changes and other filtration are probably removing the background junk well enough to allow an efficient denitrification cycle (pull stuff before it fully breaks down to create amonia in the first place). In a smaller tank, like say 2000 gallons, it might not be as easy to acheive enough surface area to handle the load. Ever cubic inch of LR we cram into our tanks is that much more bacteria/inhabitant (a porous cubic inch of live rock has a whole lot more than a square inch of surface area). I would think a large tank with good surface area for probiotics would more easily acheive an efficient denitrification cycle than anything smaller and when you look at the magnitude of that tank and the exponential increase in surface area for every inch/gallon you add to the measurements of a tank, it sort of makes sense.
 
I like your view Herbie. I think our largest tanks are still a long way off from mimicking reefs, we just cannot compare with the ability to dilute and move water/nutrients like the ocean can.

I view elevated nitrates as an incomplete job on our part to remove the biological additions to our tanks, whether the no3 is from food itself or the old, dead bacteria from each step of the nitrogen cycle for example. That wasn’t the reason for me stating the thread, instead I’m curious to know what ways the big guys, who cannot do big WC, manage no3. We can and do target some of this with mechanical filtration, but what is left can build up over time increasing no3. Quote from the article “Detritus accumulation has been a never ending problem in the tank and some more mechanical filtration should minimize that problem.” With a tank the size of his or for public aquariums, how can they effectively remove this buildup? It’s easy to create a water storm in a 200 gal tank, dislodge some rock detritus with power heads, and keep substrate or BB clean. In massive tanks the many hours it would take each month would really seem to me to be too much to do and probably not get done well if at all.

When comparing his large tank to our smaller tanks, I don’t see more surface area per gallon. I’d agree he has the potential to have much more rock than ours due to his 6.5’ depth but he only has 1.5lbs of dense limestone and .5lbs of LR per gallon from his numbers.

One interesting fact is he does 20-40% WC monthly with NSW. Using NSW in that volume might bring in enough ocean bacteria to keep a more natural selection of better performing bacteria.

With all of that and his pictured bioload, I am quite surprised he keeps no3 so low.
 
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