High Nitrates!

[robinsanyal]

Hey there SimplyDiscus'ers..
Myself Robin, having problems with high nitrate from my tap water..
i have RO but i have a 300gallon daily WC, hence full that capacity from RO is coming out to be expensive and the membrane will give up soon with that kind of daily filtration as it's just a domestic 200g RO system and the water is quite hard . And i just don't see the point because it's just the nitrates rest ammonia and nitrite are all zero.. hence just to remove nitrates filter everything esle then re add those trace elements is kind of frustrating! And yes, did i mention my nitrates are around 80mg/l! yes that's right! and yes i have complained to the respective authority, but still no action, but till they react can't leave my babies to suffer, right?
So, then someone suggested me to use "ion exchange resin", but now the question is which one cause as the name suggest it's "exchange", if it will take something then it will give too..
Then, researched a bit, seems there are two types one which will take nitrates and give back Na+ ions and the other will give chloride ions back.
So guys now i am in a fix what to use, which elevated levels are comparatively less harmful - NA+ OR CHLORIDE!
or there is some other method by which i can control/treat this nitrate from tap, may be treat it in the storage tank with lava rocks and some plants and stuff for 24-48hrs before adding it to the aquariums, as the lava i a nice porous host for the de-nitrification bacteria, and the plants as we know will.....
So guys please give me some ideas, what to use in this situation, resins - then which one or some other methods.. help me brainstorm!

[robinsanyal]

brewmaster, would love to hear your input on this.

[robinsanyal]

btw for now I am just using Prime and RO-Tap mixture

[plecocicho]

You could connect more RO in one sistem, so the waste water goes into the next ro and so forth. A friend managed to get 66% yield out of 4 connected ROs.

[Skip]

is the tank cycled?


how did you measure? is the ppm the standard unit.. i haven't seen nitrites measure in mg/l

[robinsanyal]

skip, its not about the tank.. its the problem out of the tap

[Skip]

skip, its not about the tank.. its the problem out of the tap

nevamind :)

[robinsanyal]

i have 10tanks,all are cycled.. but the nitrates rises as soon as i do a water change.. and that's because of the tap water nitrates

[robinsanyal]

???

[GeauxDiscus]

I know it's been a while since the last post on this, but... I've been having the same problem, except I have high nitrites in my tap instead of high nitrates. The thing that helped me the most was to replace the airstone in my water staging container with a sponge filter. Eventually, the sponge filter cycled for nitrites and nitrates, so my water stager now has a bio-filter of its own. Hope that helps.

[OC Discus]

Nitrazorb removes nitrate, but I'm not sure what it puts back in the water. I saw another thread on this a few weeks ago. Try the search tool while you wait for replies.