DIY "Anoxic Filtration System" eliminates nitrates? Anyone tried this?

[discusnow]

ok, i've got my anoxic baskets running for 6 weeks now and i see no improvement with my nitrate reduction, keeping in mind that i have the anoxic running in parrallel with my existing biomedia(K1, ceramic rings and seachem matrix).
so here is my observation and thought so far. i think anoxic filter do work but at a much slower rate than the traditional biological filter, so if you have both running then the traditional biofilter will most likely outcompete and will convert all ammonia to nitrate making anoxic not effective which is likely to be my situation.
so the only way to make use of anoxic filter is to remove the existing biomedia, but since the conversion rate of anoxic is much more slower than traditional biomedia so you really need to balance out the amount of bioload in the tank and be very mindful about the feeding, because if you do over feed and if anoxic can't convert those ammonia fast enough then you are likely leaving ammonia in the tank instead of the traditional nitrate (because normal biofilter is much faster at converting ammonia but will leave behind nitrate), this might also be the reason why Dr Novak advice beefheart doesn't do well with anoxic because beefheart will degrade and foul the water much quicker than anoxic can handle.
so my take is, if you have light bioload say a display tank with adult fish and only feed 1-2 times light meal like fdbw then anoxic is much better than traditional filter since it will get rid of ammonia and leave no trace of nitrate. but if you are a heavy feeder of beefheart with alot of juvenile fish then you might need to think twice or be prepared to increase your anoxic filter capacity if required untill you hit the sweet spot.
I'm also wondering about the anoxic filter media size, because I did sieve my cat litter to greater than 4mm and less than 8mm to prevent compaction as part of my bonsai practice. so i wonder if this is indeed a mistake. because particles of the same size will create more voids and promote more flow and oxygen which is less favourable by facultative anaerobic heterotrophic bug that live in anaerobical zone in the centre of the anoxic basket. and if you look further you will notice most koi pond user replace API laterite with JBL’s Aquabasis, and JBL's aquabasis have very fine particle almost like sand which create the perfect environment for facultative anaerobic heterotrophic bug. because i haven't seen much article talking about this so i'm not sure if this will make any different to the performance of anoxic, but i will make sure to create my new basket with non-uniform particle sizes.

here is my current setup.
I use a 4ft sump for my 6ft tank
sump has 3 compartments, 1-(prefilter with filter sock and K1), 2-(ceramic ring and seachem matrix), 3-(heater and return pump)
anoxic was setup on the 6/05/2018. 2xbaskets(240mmx240mmx150mm) in compartment 1 and 2xbaskets in compartment 3, co-exist with my existing bio media.
feeding around 4-5 times with 1 or 2 times being beefheart, other time is either FDBW or colorbit.
water change around 60% weekly and nitrate is normally around 10-25, tested with sera nitrate kit.

yesterday on the 17/06/2018, I removed all of my K1 from 1st compartment leaving only 2 baskets of anoxic, so we will see if there is any improvement. this will also tell us how efficient is anoxic filter before i replace the 2nd compartment with 2 more baskets of mature anoxic basket.

Regards
George

[farebox]

Hi discusnow, I was running the same bio media like you, then one day decided to remove all of it and just let the BCB's take over. I'm only 30 days in and all I can is that my take has never looked as good as it today, also went 10 days between the last water change. Also I did an Plenum per Salty Sphynx diy method in her video. Bottom line is that Dr. Novak's system works and I not an slave to my tank anymore. Check my video: https://youtu.be/cInaC-pXZm4

[Jack L]

mine are still running, have NOT noticed any benefit yet, its been several months

[Pices]

I just added a little fountain pump to help circulate my water. I had removed all bio media and have had my baskets running since April 6.
Like Jack, I hadn’t seen any difference. I then happened upon the video of Dr Novak talking about adding a pump. I think that may do the trick. I have bb tank so I’ve not done a plenum.
I’ll let you know if my nitrates go down. My water is very clear since adding the bcb’s
Patty

[Loku]

mine are still running, have NOT noticed any benefit yet, its been several months

What are the results that you want?

I have my 1 foot cuebe BCB for 6 months and I don't have the 0 ppm reading of nitrates... T.T I usually have 10 ppm of nitrates... BUT... I feed with my DIY food... I`m doing 1 wc every 3 weeks.

[sayid]

ok, i've got my anoxic baskets running for 6 weeks now and i see no improvement with my nitrate reduction, keeping in mind that i have the anoxic running in parrallel with my existing biomedia(K1, ceramic rings and seachem matrix).
so here is my observation and thought so far. i think anoxic filter do work but at a much slower rate than the traditional biological filter, so if you have both running then the traditional biofilter will most likely outcompete and will convert all ammonia to nitrate making anoxic not effective which is likely to be my situation.
so the only way to make use of anoxic filter is to remove the existing biomedia, but since the conversion rate of anoxic is much more slower than traditional biomedia so you really need to balance out the amount of bioload in the tank and be very mindful about the feeding, because if you do over feed and if anoxic can't convert those ammonia fast enough then you are likely leaving ammonia in the tank instead of the traditional nitrate (because normal biofilter is much faster at converting ammonia but will leave behind nitrate), this might also be the reason why Dr Novak advice beefheart doesn't do well with anoxic because beefheart will degrade and foul the water much quicker than anoxic can handle.
so my take is, if you have light bioload say a display tank with adult fish and only feed 1-2 times light meal like fdbw then anoxic is much better than traditional filter since it will get rid of ammonia and leave no trace of nitrate. but if you are a heavy feeder of beefheart with alot of juvenile fish then you might need to think twice or be prepared to increase your anoxic filter capacity if required untill you hit the sweet spot.
I'm also wondering about the anoxic filter media size, because I did sieve my cat litter to greater than 4mm and less than 8mm to prevent compaction as part of my bonsai practice. so i wonder if this is indeed a mistake. because particles of the same size will create more voids and promote more flow and oxygen which is less favourable by facultative anaerobic heterotrophic bug that live in anaerobical zone in the centre of the anoxic basket. and if you look further you will notice most koi pond user replace API laterite with JBL’s Aquabasis, and JBL's aquabasis have very fine particle almost like sand which create the perfect environment for facultative anaerobic heterotrophic bug. because i haven't seen much article talking about this so i'm not sure if this will make any different to the performance of anoxic, but i will make sure to create my new basket with non-uniform particle sizes.

here is my current setup.
I use a 4ft sump for my 6ft tank
sump has 3 compartments, 1-(prefilter with filter sock and K1), 2-(ceramic ring and seachem matrix), 3-(heater and return pump)
anoxic was setup on the 6/05/2018. 2xbaskets(240mmx240mmx150mm) in compartment 1 and 2xbaskets in compartment 3, co-exist with my existing bio media.
feeding around 4-5 times with 1 or 2 times being beefheart, other time is either FDBW or colorbit.
water change around 60% weekly and nitrate is normally around 10-25, tested with sera nitrate kit.

yesterday on the 17/06/2018, I removed all of my K1 from 1st compartment leaving only 2 baskets of anoxic, so we will see if there is any improvement. this will also tell us how efficient is anoxic filter before i replace the 2nd compartment with 2 more baskets of mature anoxic basket.

Regards
George

My experience is almost the same ,i started with my BCB in feb alongside my conventional media and i gradually reduced my conventional media i.e seachem matrix , sponge and waited for my BCB to mature, last week my last of conventional media came out and i am 100% anoxic now .
My observation is that conventional media changes ammonia to nitrate quicker than anoxic has the chance to so your nitrate level does not change much .
My tank is cleaner, the water is more clear and the fish look happier and healthier than before.

[zhuls1]

Hey George, are your BCB's located before or after your other filter media?

[discusnow]

thanks Farebox for sharing your experience, plenum is definitely on my todo list when I happen to redo my tank again.

hey sayid, yeah I'm starting to reduce my conventional media but just need to make sure the anoxic is mature and work as expected first. because after reading below experiment done by some very knowledgable koi keeper and the result didn't show as expected and noone could figure out what could've caused BCB to be ineffective at removing nitrate. so I just need to make sure i don't end up with that same problem and have an anoxic basket that will not work. but at least that shows the worst case scenario where BCB will act just like a normal conventional filter that will produce nitrate at the end.
here is the link, sorry if we are not allowed to post link from other forums but i find this very interesting and definitely worth a read if you are interested in anoxic filter.
http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...mparison-Study

hey zhuls1, the BCB is in the first chamber to have the first crack of ammonia, my conventioanl is in the second chamber. then i have some more BCB in the third chamber.


because I have so much flow in my first chamber so i wonder if that contributes to my BCB problems, too much oxygen and completely destroy the anaerobic zone and turning all zone into aerobic(turning BCB into a conventional biofilter). (may be the experiment done by the koi keeper was having this simiar problem with too much water agitation in the BCB chamber) if you look into most of the anoxic filter design for koi pond you will notice most of that is in rectangular shape with gravity fed water flow from one end to the other end so the BCB at the other end will have less water agitation creating a perfect environemnt for anaerobic zone.

and I also notice most of the working BCB from other koi members have a very fine particles so that reassure sieving particle is not a good idea, so it's best to have unsieved particles to stop any flow to reach the core where the anaerobic zone is.

now I'm going to move my conventional media into the third chamber and dedicate the first 2 chambers to BCB for now. meanwhile I will create 2 more basket with unsieved particles and will seed those in my other tanks. these will be used to replace my conventional media later on.

note: i also have another BCB in my 3ft flowhorn tank that failed to remove nitrate as well, and that one also coexist with my conventional media. so I will be removing the conventional media on that tank tonight and will monitor closely.

Regards
George

[lastflea]

My BCB's seems to be completing the nitrogen cycle AND removing nitrate. I have 3x 6x6x6" and 3x 12x12x6. I did have a sponge filter in my return chamber, so I had something cycled for my grow tank, but I was getting nitrite readings up to 5ppm and nitrate readings between 5 and 20ppm. It made sense that the sponge contained nitrifying bacteria, so nitrate would naturally appear, so I took that out. I also took all my pre-filter out, and the tank has nothing in it, just water. Did a big water change and sure enough, nitrite appeared, then disappeared, but no nitrate readings. At the moment my tank is empty with the return pump just running a loop in my sump. I'm adding about 2ppm ammonia every day, and nitrite comes and goes, nitrate reading is ever so slightly off bright yellow, so maybe 1 to 2ppm. This is about a week running like this. So there's nitrifying bacteria in the outer perimeters of the BCB's, but then de-nitrifying bacteria inside. My understanding is the process with BCB's is that ammonia is drawn into the baskets, not the water, where it's converted to nitrogen gas, skipping the nitrogen cycle and stopping nitrate from being produced. So I'm a bit puzzled. Where is the nitrate going that's being produced from the nitrite, if only ammonia can be drawn into the centre of the BCB's? Only explanation can be that nitrate is also drawn in, and used in place of oxygen to feed the anaerobic bacteria, turning it then into gas as well. I don't know how else to explain it. Unlike many, I cycled my tank with BCB's right from the start. This would explain, maybe, why I have nitrifying bacteria, because the nitrogen cycle starts much quicker than it takes the BCB's to cook inside. Nitrifying bacteria will grow anywhere, so the outer perimeters of the BCB's is a perfect spot, and that would have started long before the anaerobics got their act together inside.

[zhuls1]

Hey discus now, is their room around the BCB's for the water to flow freely around it? Or is water being forced through it?

[farebox]

I guess I’m lucky that my sump has no chambers. It’s an 20 gallon long tank, so my BCB are lying in a row supported a few inches off the bottom for good water flow around the baskets. Water just drops thru the pre filter, then return pump back to tank.

[discusnow]

hey zhuls1, yes there is room around the BCBs, so i have about 20cm gap to slot in a 150 micron filter sock and have the weir flow directly to the filter socks. but i'm just not sure if the filter sock is enough to defuse the water and stop it from forcing through the BCB media or not.

[sayid]

Hi discusnow;
My observation on anoxic filtration is that it is much slower than conventional to mature so in my case some of my BCB took 10 weeks to mature , i have canister filter which had to be replaced with BCB so i ended up placing BCB 's in the display tank and discus swimming around them for 8 weeks to mature so if i was you i would make your BCB 's and put them in your tank and when you are ready replace them with your conventional media in their chamber .

[lastflea]

Hi discusnow;
My observation on anoxic filtration is that it is much slower than conventional to mature so in my case some of my BCB took 10 weeks to mature.

I found my cycle to finish in fairly standard time. 6 weeks approx from start to finish. Al made a great point earlier in this thread. There are so many variables that aren't the same with each person trying this method. Off my head here are the variables...

Tank size
Sump size
Flow rate
Basket length, width and height
Added how many with existing filtration?
Removed how much existing filtration?
Time frames for the above two points?
Bioload
Tank set up (BB, planted)

That's just off my head.

I don't think it's fair to say you can stick a few baskets of cat litter in your sump/canister, and expect nitrate to disappear. One thing for sure though. I been topping up ammonia in my sump 2ppm per day and all parameters read 0 (or near as damn it) before I add the next daily dose.

[Shaun's Discus]

Hey guys, a quick update. My obs,,, if you have enough BCBs you may find that nitrate readings will buffer. Meaning that in my tank,, I've never seen more than 10ppm even a after not doing a water change for 2 weeks. Its like the BCB's have a nitrate stop limit to them. So my theory is if your tank gets to a point and still produces a small amount of nitrate, simply add another BCB. I am about to experiment with this and see if will pull down the nitrate to a lower limit say around 5ppm and hold it there. We are all learning but one thing for sure, I would never go back. Since using the AFS my Discus have turned into beasts and are almost show quality. I have 3 tanks running BCSs. A 220g system with Oscar and pleco and RT shark,,, my Discus display tank 120g system, and my Jaguar cichlid tank 100g system,,, soon be moved to a 150g system. All run BCB's. The 220g with Oscar produces about 5ppm nitrate a month. without WC