Natural Nitrate Removal -> DSB

In addition to adding many important things, water changes remove more than nitrate, and more than just nitrate is harmful to your fish long term. Most fish give off growth inhibiting hormones. Without removing these the fish will be stunted. There are also dissolved organic compounds that build up that are also harmful. Without plants nitrate is a good indicator of these other harmful chemicals and exactly why nitrate is obsessed over. However, if there are other things reducing the nitrate concentration you cannot rely on this and still need to keep up a good water change schedule.

There is no replacement for water changes. You can setup a tank to keep them minimal, but they will always be needed for long term success.
 
I used clay as an under layer in my 29 gallon DSB, and I am happy with it. I mixed it with topsoil, under play sand. It is a rich substrate, so you probably want to start out heavily planted, and do regular water changes at first, until the tank stabilizes. That helps prevent algae, I think. I have recently seen a couple youtube videos of guys with huge planted tanks like yours, who have used clay in the substrate very successfully. The more I learn about it, the more I think it is a good idea. Please keep us updated!
 
reptileguy2727 said:
In addition to adding many important things, water changes remove more than nitrate, and more than just nitrate is harmful to your fish long term. Most fish give off growth inhibiting hormones. Without removing these the fish will be stunted. There are also dissolved organic compounds that build up that are also harmful. Without plants nitrate is a good indicator of these other harmful chemicals and exactly why nitrate is obsessed over. However, if there are other things reducing the nitrate concentration you cannot rely on this and still need to keep up a good water change schedule.

There is no replacement for water changes. You can setup a tank to keep them minimal, but they will always be needed for long term success.
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absolutely! i'm reminded of the aquaria version of "no replacement for displacement"... "the solution to pollution is dilution".
 
reptileguy2727 said:
In addition to adding many important things, water changes remove more than nitrate, and more than just nitrate is harmful to your fish long term. Most fish give off growth inhibiting hormones. Without removing these the fish will be stunted. There are also dissolved organic compounds that build up that are also harmful. Without plants nitrate is a good indicator of these other harmful chemicals and exactly why nitrate is obsessed over. However, if there are other things reducing the nitrate concentration you cannot rely on this and still need to keep up a good water change schedule.

There is no replacement for water changes. You can setup a tank to keep them minimal, but they will always be needed for long term success.
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In the context of a planted tank, this is woefully incorrect.

The non CO2 method is one such method and has been extremely successful for over 2 decades.

I've bred a number of fish in such tanks, so called sensitive shrimp etc etc.

A few examples:
a0b318c9.jpg

cubenonco21.jpg


What do you have that falsifies these tanks?
Sort of hard to do since they do exist.

Plenty of other examples abound all over the world, not just the USA.
It is a simple 2 box model, but you leave out the plants and filter cleaning, bacterial break down of organic matter etc..... they you really end up missing the point/s.

Plants are sequestering and exporting waste.
Water is added for evaporation obviously, but this is very small.

Same thing for good active root growth, there is no anaerobic regions when the roots and plants in general are healthy.
Folks do not think about the plants.



Regards,
Tom Barr
 
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So no water changes (just top off evaporation) for decades and the fish thrive?

There are growth inhibiting hormones excreted by many fish and as far as I know plants do not use up these hormones.

Most of the planted tank people I have talked to say even small water changes are important to remove certain types of waste and add beneficial trace elements and micronutrients.
 
reptileguy2727 said:
So no water changes (just top off evaporation) for decades and the fish thrive?

There are growth inhibiting hormones excreted by many fish and as far as I know plants do not use up these hormones.

Most of the planted tank people I have talked to say even small water changes are important to remove certain types of waste and add beneficial trace elements and micronutrients.
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Yes, essentially none for 1-2 years are common.

I've bred a lot of fish, a friend in LA area bred discus for that matter, 2 years without any water changes.

Can you quantify those growth inhibiting hormone and cite some references that we can rely on? How much growth inhibition occurs in the presence of plants/decent plant biomass?

Something tells me that aspect was NOT included in any such study, but I could be wrong. I need much more convincing that heresay or someone's word.... and that includes Heiko's etc.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?h...don+&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=1

Few test involve any plants in their treatments.


We have enough myths floating around these days in the hobby. And I've falsified plenty. Finding cause is much more difficult, but we still gain a lot of knowledge of knowing what something does NOT do. All I need to show is a few cases where a hypothesis is falsified to reject it and toss it into the myth barrel. If you suspect something, then test it and see if you can falsify the hypothesis, if so, reject it and test something else/another different treatment etc.

Plants are extremely useful for waste removal, they are used in wastewater treatment, in Reef tanks that routinely never get any water changes as refugiums. If they are not cared for, they end up adding waste to these systems however.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q...ants&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on

Here is a specific paper on some hormones and algae and duckweed:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k2542h076g777438/

Seems they do help, and is a small system with relatively few fish and high plant biomass, this would support my contention. Without plants?

I agree with you:idea:

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
I think many plant folks that use CO2 gas use water changes mostly as a way to manage ppms/dosing of nutrients without having to test multiple parameters often. I do that, but not to do with waste, more to keep the nutrients are the right range, and also to remove 1-2ft of water so I trim and clean/garden......without sloshing water and getting the scuba gear out.

EI is an article I wrote and and a concept I've suppoorted for 15 years or so and is based on this pragmaticuse of water changes, it's not for waste removal though. For non CO2 and non Excel, there's no need.
Rates of growth are fairly easy to match with the fish load.

Obviously if you stuff 10 discus into a 30 Gallon tank and expect them to bred without any water change with the same cube plant biomass above in the tank example, it ain't gonna happen. You can and many do overload too much fish, and add not enough plants and fail to keep the plant's needs. So that is a lot of the problem.

Likewise, I see many planted tanks without any fish, often due to the aquarist having killed most of the fish with CO2/low O2. Poor management of CO2 is the no# 1 killer of fish in this part of the hobby.

Likely always will be.

Hope this clarifies/informs more.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
I finally broke down and purchased diana walstads book "the ecology of the planted aquarium" or.. whatever its called. It was talking about allepopay(spelling?), and how plants use it to fight off other plants. The chemicals plants excrete to help themseleves flourish inhibits algal growth, and/or other plants. The kicker is this stuff degrades overtime/broken down by bacteria/absorbed by other plants. She also talked about disolved organic compounds being good for the tank. I am inclined to agree with Tom Barr, and assume that when this tank is all up, and running it will work great. minues the excess filtration.
 
I think denitrification via DSB is negligible at best. As Tom pointed out, a well-planted tank will keep nitrate low anyway. DSBs rely on anaerobic bacteria to break down nitrate. Unfortunately, the contact between the nitrate-laden water and the anaerobic bacteria is minimal in most instances. A decade or so ago there were several products on the market which were advertised as nitrate-removers which relied on the same contact between tank water and anaerobic bacteria. Some of these were based around extremely long coils of tubing through which tank water was pushed at a very low rate... so low that by the time the water reached the end of the tube it was devoid of oxygen and anaerobic bacteria could do their work. IMO these systems amounted to "the next new thing", and actually did very little, if anything, to mitigate nitrate in the aquarium.

Mark
 
I agree with Mark--DSB doesn't work with FW & is a gas releasing problem just waiting to happen.
 
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