Hi all,
As
@tam says by far the easiest way to achieve a low nitrate environment is to have plenty of plants, including some with the <"
aerial advantage">. If you have a lot of plant growth you won't ever have much build up of NO3-, the plants will convert it into more plant. When you remove the plant material, you export the nitrogen (N). You won't ever get to an NO3 free environment, but I don't see any advantage in having "no NO3" over having "some NO3".
The Leaf Colour Chart (LCC) is really useful as a measure of nitrogen content, put simply the plants don't lie. I'm not sure how much NO3- I have in my tanks, but if the conductivity reading is 120 microS., and the <"
Amazon Frogbit rosettes are a mid green"> I'm good. One reason I know I don't have much NO3, is because I don't have many ions of any description.
How achievable is a Nitrate free environment.
If you decided you did want a nitrate free environment there are ways of achieving it. It is possible using an <"
anion selective resin"> to polish the water after initial treament.
whether it's a costly task?
It is a costly option, we tried scientific grade <"
amberlite resins">, when we used to work on waste water, but they fouled really quickly. This the <"
blurb for them">. You would have to measure NO3 levels to tell you when the resins needed re-generating, or whether the plenum etc. is working.
@alto would be the best person to advice you on the <"
best test kits">.
Add these Nitrogenous compounds to those from organic matter in the tank breaking down, what are the tools available to use up these compounds to have a 'complete' Nitrogen cycle in the tank?
You can use <"
denitrification coils, or a Berlin or Jaubert plenum>, to complete the denitrification arc.
Sellers of Matrix, Biohome etc. will tell you that you can have <"
simultaneous aerobic nitrification and anaerobic denitrification"> in the same media, with a steep oxygen gradient across a small spatial separation. There are a number of reasons why this isn't a good idea, the primary one would be that you are always teetering on the brink of low oxygen levels, leading to incomplete nitrification, which leads to <"
ammonia and/or nitrite levels rising and killing all your fish">.
It is pretty likely that you will get some anaerobic denitrification in the substrate, even if you don't have a plenum or <"
biocenosis bucket.">.
By far the easiest way to achieve a low nitrate environment is to have both
- a substrate and
- plenty of plants.
cheers Darrel