DIY Coil Denitrator Plans
Monday September 14, 2009
Tired of spending all of the time and money on performing endless water changes to keep your nitrates in check? Here are simple, inexpensive DIY Coil Denitrator plans from Don Carner.
More: What Is A Coil Denitrator and How Does It Work? Nitrate isn't good for our systems, be they FO (fish-only) or reef. You can buy a commercial denitrator that cost a ton of money, or you can ...
Graphics by Don Carner
Comments
I built the coil denitrator about 4 months ago and followed the specs from don carner …..conclusion it just doesn’t work !!!!!
i built the coil denitrator about 7 months ago , i am still waiting to see any difference in the nitrate levels in the tank and the nitrate levels coming out of the denitrator please respond and explain this to me ………Bill
When I first search for and found this article over a year ago, I was overjoyed. Much to my dismay, I feel I have been somewhat lead astray. After reading the article, I attempted to email Don Carner at the email provided and received NO responses. The item in question are several; how big a pum( how many GPH), what type of fittings are used to connect the tubing on both sides of the PVC? ANyone, please fill in the blanks!
Has anybody made one of these and had it work?
Would be nice to know before I built my own…
Thanks!
I am going to build one of these but honestly the plans seem rather weak. Using Chemistry basics it seems that it won’t be able to handle the bio-load. It would be nice for the author to surface and for someone out that to tell us of some success.
i has build this 2 times…. and both of them has 0 nitrate output…. but we must be patient… because the Denitrator need to has a nitrogen cycle too… and need 1 month to archive 0 nitrate output….
Happy to say that after 1 week of operation the output of my denitrator is 0ppm!
I used 1m of 100mm pipe with an inspection flange top and bottom, 30m of pre coiled air hose filled with bio-balls.
All of the pipe fittings can be found here:
http://www.johnguest.com/range_spec.asp?a=PIPM&rs=1&id=23
I have also been feeding the denitrator with 12ml/day of 1:3 vodka/water mix.
I just built my first denitrator. After studying several different plans, I spoke to my LFS, a chemist, and a biologist. I made changes to this plan based on their professional advice and comments I’ve seen on forums.
I have a 2-foot length of 4-inch PVC with 100 feet of tubing coiled inside. I filled the center with crushed dolomite with a plastic screen on top. The return line has a tee connector. The water runs straight through, and a very small air pump bubbles into the “T” part. Final output goes to the intake venturi of a power head. Air and water valves control output rate so precisely that I can set it to drops per minute or steady stream.
I hooked this up about a week ago. I plan to test nitrates and seed it with BioZyme after tonight’s water change. Will keep you posted.
OOPS! Water coming out of this thing is showing nitrate level at SIXTY ppm. Thank goodness the tank level was much, much lower!! I slowed it down and used BioZyme to seed it. Will check it again this weekend. If this doesn’t fix itself, it’s death to this unit. Anyone has suggestions, I’ll take them.
OK. A week later, with a slower flow, Nitrates coming out of the cylinder are down to 40 ppm. I tested all I can except Calcium. The pH (8.2) is just a little bit lower than the tank (8.4) and the KH (10) is a bit lower than the tank (12). Ammonia, Nitrites, and the dreaded Phosphorus are all zero, as expected. Tank Nitrate level is up slightly, but not as much as I feared it could go.
Maybe I wasn’t patient enough? A different plan from another site says to seed it and stop the flow. I am a little uncomfortable with that. I’ll give it another week or so.