I set up an anoxic filter on my tank about 2 years ago give or take a month. From the beginning, I had an additional sponge filter and air stone for some water movement. I also added plants. My experience was this... root feeding plants didn't do well at first. I added root tabs and this didn't help much for the heavy feeders. My conclusion is, that the substrate just didn't have or hold enough nutrients. After around four months, once mulm started to accumulate and get into the substrate, the plants went crazy. In fact, they still grow like crazy, and it can be a pain keeping on top of the stem plants. I should probably mention this is a 29 gallon temperate tank. I don't cool it in the summer, and I let it go down to around 66*F in the winter. Plants still grow. The second problem hit when I noticed some plants struggling and leaves yellowing. It's a nitrate deficiency. This is a problem I still struggle with. I fix this with the occasional water change as my tap water has 15-25ppm nitrate, however, this rather defeats the whole point of the aquarium, where I wouldn't have to do water changes. So I dose a fertilizer which contains nitrate, and if need be, I can add pure nitrate ferts. So, this system, which has the benefits of stripping nitrate out of the water, has the problem of... stripping nitrates out of the water. So I have to ask myself, would I rather manage a tank to remove them, or add them? On balance, It is probably a little bit easier to add them, because it's just a capful of ferts, while to do a water change, I'm starting with tap water which is 20ppm. So do I have regrets? No, because once the tank was fully settled after about 9 months, plants grew well. Long before that, the water was crystal clear - looking the length of a three foot tank, the only tint is from the green of the glass, which I haven't cleaned in about a year but is clean. It's cheap to run; I have two double output air pumps running it, which is massive overkill, but it gives me redundancy. So when I set up my fish room (which is actually, just a wall of my living room), I will be using the same system of a deep-bed, under-gravel filter, plus one small sponge filter. For the record, before I had ever heard of Father Fish, some old timer told me to get some gunk from a fish pond as a starter, to get all the little bugs and bacteria. So I did that, and have been actively cultivating a "food web" since before this tank had fish in it. It's something I still do, collecting leaves from a garden pond just yesterday. I suspect this is very good for the fish, but have no idea how it might throw out the 'anoxic system' experiment. All I know is that I entered the hobby 20 years ago, when hi-tech was all the rage, and I spent a load of money chasing one problem after another. What I'm doing now is far cheaper and given me far fewer problems.
Really bummed your first go round with the anoxic just didn't take. I have six and am enjoying them immensely. Leaving out the fact as you mentioned in your last video that I'm running full plants and REALLY never gave the anoxic system a shot as a stand alone filter. Very happy to see you rolling this experiment as a stand alone so we can all see this works or isn't as magical as I think lol. I'll definitely stay tuned!
Thanks for the update Bentley. I was traveling during this update but looking forward to the results. I pretty much know what your results will be but I’m glad you’re documenting every step so everyone will see.
My tap water here in Wichita Kansas has a PH of 8.0. It's basically liquid rock. I'm old school and have been using undergravel filters for 36 years now. Looking forward to the results of this test.
Neat. I love livebearers, and get (nearly) slightly chlorinated, distilled out of the tap. It's a process to harden and buffer for every water change. Your tap water is probably good for your bones though!
@@CatFish107 The only thing I don't like is they use Chloramine but Prime takes care of that. It does taste good though with all of the minerals it has in it and my African Cichlids love it.
If you want more flow, it's easy to tee in another air line, and put another sponge filter in at the other end of the tank. I often have several bubbling away, ready to be moved to a new tank as a pre-seasoned filter.
This a very interesting experiment and I am looking forward to seeing your updates on it, I am glad to see that you did not just ditched the anoxic filtration system because it didn't went as expected when you started it, my tanks are currently running a undergravel filter running slow to promote anoxic filtration, I think for me is working well, specially on my 20G tank, not so good on my 10G tank, however I don't have any cyanobacteria with this system after 3 years so that's a plus for me and it was easy to set up and zero maintenance to the filter plates, I still occasionally do water changes, but I stopped for about 8 months due to work related reason and nothing died so cool 😅
Sweet i think you will like it. I have anoxic undergravel and i followed Novac's plan to the tee but used kitty litter in the 40G , Turface MVP in the 90 G and a 60G. Going to use Saf-T-Sorb in a 180 G. Running mostly Sumps and one corner matten with a double jetlifter in the 60 G. I never see any Nitrates unless i add liquid to the water column a few times. Lots of plants. I added Laterite to my substrates though because i think that helps with the bacteria in the substrate. If you use a a canister try a BCB basket in the canister that would be cool . I have a BCB in a 20 g with a sponge filter and the Nitrates always at zero for over a year. BCB i made from litty litter. I think that Turface you are using is sucking up all of the Nutrients. Thanks for your updates.
Will be interesting to see this project progress. I was, for a while, intrigued by the anoxic filter idea, but opted for dirted deepsand largely because of the simplicity of not having any moving parts to maintain. Also, on closer study of Novak's explanations of anoxic filtration, he seemed to do a lot of rambling with scientific terms thrown in at random and in ways that appeared inaccurate to the meaning of those terms... This caused Novak's explanation of the process to lose legitimacy for me. He also had plants in all his tanks... During the experiment, it may also be worth considering if any potential denitrification is taking place by other processes such as assimilatory denitrification. Looking forward to your 'plantless' experiment 👍
I had issues with KH and PH at first, it took several months of adding cuttlebone to the tank for it to start rising. I use a cannister in tandem too. But agree a sponge is best for this experiment. My nitrates are low but not zero. I expect it will take a few more months. But plant growth has been great.
To be honest, I'm thinking plant growth. But I have now way to quantify either. What I do believe is that the drawing of nutrients into the substrate via the ugf aids the roots systems of most plants.
I am looking to set up a tank with a anoxic plenum type filtration system working in tandem with a sump filter with various sponge filters within it and biomedia. I also want to add biomedia under the planum for bacterial growth. I'm waiting for Gils experiment results from Gils Fish Room channel. He is adding baskets of kitten litter to his sump tank I believe, so will be interesting to see the results. 🤔
Ok so I mentioned in a previous video I have 5 tanks with slow moving plenums. 4 have next to no nitrates. The 5th one however is a 75 gal with larger fish and so higher fish food load. I have always had problems with nitrates in that tank. I can't use plants in the tank because they decimate them. I do however, have a few emmersive plants on the back of the tank which are doing fine. Prior to adding the plenum I used a bcb bag in the canister filter and could really not see any change in nitrates. Now i was using the api test kit and i can't tell the difference between 40 and 80ppm. I since have purchased a hannah nitrate tester for more accurate results. So after adding the plenum to this tank and using the hanna I have found the nitrates to be 50-60ppm on weekly testing. So not sure how much the plenum has made a difference because i did not have the hanna before the plenum. But it seems to be holding there, with exception of last week which was at 45ppm. I did a decent job with the plenum however I found out after the gravel size I used which was pea gravel was too large. It needs to be 1-3mm for best results. Not sure if that means my tank can't be as effecient but my nitrates are definietly not at zero. The plenum has been running for 6mo. At this point I am probably not going to redo the substrate. I may experiment will an overhead sump and bcb baskets.
I have a couple of emmersive plants. That is it. However, the nitrates lately have gone down to 20ppm without me doing anything different. So I am happy with that.
I've always found this concept interesting. We know for a fact, it's a process that occurs in nature. There's far to much pier reviewed literature to doubt it. However, Getting it to work in a small volume of sediment is a mixed bag. I've tried sand beds (with and without plenums) and 'BSB's' in planted tanks with only anecdotal hints it may have worked. I mostly thought it was a fun exercise because I had extra space in my sump tank, and I figured why not put something like this in an empty chamber and then grow duckweed floating above it for nutrient reduction and reduce my water change frequency. Yet, proving any denitrification took place is another matter all together. But, I never had it in isolation, and could never tell if it was the anoxic zone, the duckweed, or the abundance of other plants in the display uptalking it. All I knew is that I layered multiple things to develop a strong system over all. Much like in nature where theoretically any slow moving body of water can easily exhibit an anoxic zone in the sediment layer along side any macrophytes or aquatic plants, and it will also likely have a riparian zone. I wanted to mimic that. So long as there is sufficient secondary macro nutrients in the substrate, they should eventually establish (90-120-ish day seems to be a general recommendation). The question is: how much of an area are facultative anaerobes actually occupying, that are actually using an anoxic pathway? If they have to much O2, they don't denitrify. The sweet spot is the layer of sediment where free O2 has been used up, but they still have oxygen containing compounds to reduce for an electron carrier (things like NO2- & NO3-). Once you pass that sweet spot and they run out of things to reduce, they they go full anaerobic. One tip I can lend is that you can detect the optimal range by putting a OPR probe in the plenum. It may not be a nutrient related issue you're having, they may just be getting to much oxygen. A probe would rule that out. Beyond that, best of luck with your experiment. This one isn't easy to set up.
It does happen on much larger scales in sewage plants. And yes, there is scientific literature on anoxic denitrification, However Mr Novak’s book has never been reviewed by PhDs , nor has he ever published anything about anoxic filtration in any reputable scientific journal, and his book is largely anecdotal in nature.
@@DelkaSablethe idea without plants is to make his own determination, using a basic scientific method, to see if Novak is full of baloney or not. All his “zero nitrate” plenum tanks that I have seen have plants in them.
Hey Bro! Been keeping up on your experiment. Ive been looking over my Uncles GROSSLY overstocked 200 gallon pond. Water tests stayed at 0 NH3, 0 NO2, and 80ppm NO3, a few years ago I built a bucket filter, It did clean up the water. That pond gets very little water changes due to the fact Uncle hates wasting water. I did however plumb the filter so it would accept a garden hose to water his plants he's slowly warmed up to water changes but still very few. I decided one day (7 months ago) to plop a big bag of kitty litter along with another bag with carbon purigen and GFO in it ( I decided on GFO due to 4 ppm's of phosphate. Left bag in for 3months and removed it so now it's just kitty litter in it.) It barely fit. The 5 gallon bucket filter has 1 course sponge and 2 medium sponges along with the BCB bag almost the size of a volley ball.. I tested the water 2 weeks ago 0 nh3-0 no2 -40ppm NO3, Phosphates 2ppm. Mind you this 200 gallon pond has 7 12" Koi, and a crap load of gold fish. I'm planning on building a bog filter on the lower half of a 50 gallon drum and dropping another 5 baskets of BCB's with the extra room. I'm sold. I also have a Fluval spec 5 with 6 mountain minnows, no plants yet with full on snap together wall to wall plenum, 2 inches of litter. had that set up for 1.5 years zero ppm all across and zero phosphates. Good Luck!
Have you ever considered just loading a canister filter with clean lava rock and adding it to an established tank with fish? While I'm not a biologist, it just seems logical that the porosity of the lava rock would lend itself to provide the anoxic conditions that the bacteria you want to cultivate. Further, the constant flow provided by the canister filter would maintain the high nitrate environment the bacteria need to thrive. Back in the 1990s, there were some articles in the hobbyist magazines of the day discussing anoxic bacteria in aquaria and how they might be able to lower the nitrate levels. I believe that it was postulated that lava rocks in a canister filter might be a possible approach, but at the time cannisters filters were expensive and beyond the means of most aquarists. Also, in the 2000s, the deBryn filter (an air driven wet-dry filter mounted inside the aquarium) was mentioned for use in tanks with larger young killifish populations to maintain high water quality and decreasing the need for frequent water changes.
We're specifically testing a method that is fairly popular on the Internet. Yes, that is an alternative way to attempt to get a similar result, but we're after a very specific use case here.
Good question, so as the water moves into the substrate, from my understanding, the slower flow allows oxygen to be consumed and then gets it to the lower oxygen levels needed.
Mmmmmmm That's some nice, thick, dinge. Does anyone else enjoy the aroma of filter bac? It reminds me of healthy garden soil, pulling weeds, and seeing tomato vines thrive
I no longer use strips or liquid PH testing methods. They are highly inaccurate. Invest in a decent PH meter and keep it calibrated and take the guess work out of PH testing
I agree. So much unnecessary fussing and farting around. I run deep substrate tanks with nothing but water top offs. Never a problem and I get to enjoy my aquariums instead of being a slave to them.
I set up an anoxic filter on my tank about 2 years ago give or take a month. From the beginning, I had an additional sponge filter and air stone for some water movement. I also added plants.
My experience was this... root feeding plants didn't do well at first. I added root tabs and this didn't help much for the heavy feeders. My conclusion is, that the substrate just didn't have or hold enough nutrients.
After around four months, once mulm started to accumulate and get into the substrate, the plants went crazy. In fact, they still grow like crazy, and it can be a pain keeping on top of the stem plants. I should probably mention this is a 29 gallon temperate tank. I don't cool it in the summer, and I let it go down to around 66*F in the winter. Plants still grow.
The second problem hit when I noticed some plants struggling and leaves yellowing. It's a nitrate deficiency. This is a problem I still struggle with. I fix this with the occasional water change as my tap water has 15-25ppm nitrate, however, this rather defeats the whole point of the aquarium, where I wouldn't have to do water changes. So I dose a fertilizer which contains nitrate, and if need be, I can add pure nitrate ferts.
So, this system, which has the benefits of stripping nitrate out of the water, has the problem of... stripping nitrates out of the water.
So I have to ask myself, would I rather manage a tank to remove them, or add them? On balance, It is probably a little bit easier to add them, because it's just a capful of ferts, while to do a water change, I'm starting with tap water which is 20ppm.
So do I have regrets?
No, because once the tank was fully settled after about 9 months, plants grew well. Long before that, the water was crystal clear - looking the length of a three foot tank, the only tint is from the green of the glass, which I haven't cleaned in about a year but is clean. It's cheap to run; I have two double output air pumps running it, which is massive overkill, but it gives me redundancy.
So when I set up my fish room (which is actually, just a wall of my living room), I will be using the same system of a deep-bed, under-gravel filter, plus one small sponge filter.
For the record, before I had ever heard of Father Fish, some old timer told me to get some gunk from a fish pond as a starter, to get all the little bugs and bacteria. So I did that, and have been actively cultivating a "food web" since before this tank had fish in it. It's something I still do, collecting leaves from a garden pond just yesterday. I suspect this is very good for the fish, but have no idea how it might throw out the 'anoxic system' experiment.
All I know is that I entered the hobby 20 years ago, when hi-tech was all the rage, and I spent a load of money chasing one problem after another. What I'm doing now is far cheaper and given me far fewer problems.
Really bummed your first go round with the anoxic just didn't take. I have six and am enjoying them immensely. Leaving out the fact as you mentioned in your last video that I'm running full plants and REALLY never gave the anoxic system a shot as a stand alone filter. Very happy to see you rolling this experiment as a stand alone so we can all see this works or isn't as magical as I think lol. I'll definitely stay tuned!
Thanks for the update Bentley. I was traveling during this update but looking forward to the results. I pretty much know what your results will be but I’m glad you’re documenting every step so everyone will see.
My tap water here in Wichita Kansas has a PH of 8.0. It's basically liquid rock. I'm old school and have been using undergravel filters for 36 years now. Looking forward to the results of this test.
Neat. I love livebearers, and get (nearly) slightly chlorinated, distilled out of the tap. It's a process to harden and buffer for every water change. Your tap water is probably good for your bones though!
@@CatFish107 Our water (not Kansas) is the same "liquid rock" ph 8.1 8-3, and GH < 1. Teeth are melting, bones crashing. Not good for bones, no :(
@@CatFish107 The only thing I don't like is they use Chloramine but Prime takes care of that. It does taste good though with all of the minerals it has in it and my African Cichlids love it.
If you want more flow, it's easy to tee in another air line, and put another sponge filter in at the other end of the tank. I often have several bubbling away, ready to be moved to a new tank as a pre-seasoned filter.
This a very interesting experiment and I am looking forward to seeing your updates on it, I am glad to see that you did not just ditched the anoxic filtration system because it didn't went as expected when you started it, my tanks are currently running a undergravel filter running slow to promote anoxic filtration, I think for me is working well, specially on my 20G tank, not so good on my 10G tank, however I don't have any cyanobacteria with this system after 3 years so that's a plus for me and it was easy to set up and zero maintenance to the filter plates, I still occasionally do water changes, but I stopped for about 8 months due to work related reason and nothing died so cool 😅
I think that the anoxic works best on 20 G and above. I don't why though. Love your videos Sinserg, and learned so much.
Sweet i think you will like it. I have anoxic undergravel and i followed Novac's plan to the tee but used kitty litter in the 40G , Turface MVP in the 90 G and a 60G. Going to use Saf-T-Sorb in a 180 G. Running mostly Sumps and one corner matten with a double jetlifter in the 60 G. I never see any Nitrates unless i add liquid to the water column a few times. Lots of plants. I added Laterite to my substrates though because i think that helps with the bacteria in the substrate. If you use a a canister try a BCB basket in the canister that would be cool . I have a BCB in a 20 g with a sponge filter and the Nitrates always at zero for over a year. BCB i made from litty litter. I think that Turface you are using is sucking up all of the Nutrients. Thanks for your updates.
Loving this experiment thanks:) And game show prize model hand move for the filter gunk addition was perfect!
I have played with plenums and tried to make it work. If it does work, it doesn't use enough nitrate to make a difference. Good luck, though.
Will be interesting to see this project progress. I was, for a while, intrigued by the anoxic filter idea, but opted for dirted deepsand largely because of the simplicity of not having any moving parts to maintain. Also, on closer study of Novak's explanations of anoxic filtration, he seemed to do a lot of rambling with scientific terms thrown in at random and in ways that appeared inaccurate to the meaning of those terms... This caused Novak's explanation of the process to lose legitimacy for me. He also had plants in all his tanks... During the experiment, it may also be worth considering if any potential denitrification is taking place by other processes such as assimilatory denitrification. Looking forward to your 'plantless' experiment 👍
What type plenum? 1/2 or 1 inch? Hang in there be patient. Thanks for doing this. Did you use laterite?
Maybe run an internal polishing filter in the anoxic tank to keep it clear?
It will clear up within a week most likely
I had issues with KH and PH at first, it took several months of adding cuttlebone to the tank for it to start rising. I use a cannister in tandem too. But agree a sponge is best for this experiment. My nitrates are low but not zero. I expect it will take a few more months. But plant growth has been great.
Are you saying your nitrates are low because of anoxic bacteria or your plant growth?
To be honest, I'm thinking plant growth. But I have now way to quantify either. What I do believe is that the drawing of nutrients into the substrate via the ugf aids the roots systems of most plants.
I am looking to set up a tank with a anoxic plenum type filtration system working in tandem with a sump filter with various sponge filters within it and biomedia. I also want to add biomedia under the planum for bacterial growth. I'm waiting for Gils experiment results from Gils Fish Room channel. He is adding baskets of kitten litter to his sump tank I believe, so will be interesting to see the results. 🤔
Wow I like it old school under gravel filter used that 50 + years ago maybe I was getting anxious bacteria and never knew it.
Great Job Bentley! Love this detail!!
Ok so I mentioned in a previous video I have 5 tanks with slow moving plenums. 4 have next to no nitrates. The 5th one however is a 75 gal with larger fish and so higher fish food load. I have always had problems with nitrates in that tank. I can't use plants in the tank because they decimate them. I do however, have a few emmersive plants on the back of the tank which are doing fine. Prior to adding the plenum I used a bcb bag in the canister filter and could really not see any change in nitrates. Now i was using the api test kit and i can't tell the difference between 40 and 80ppm. I since have purchased a hannah nitrate tester for more accurate results. So after adding the plenum to this tank and using the hanna I have found the nitrates to be 50-60ppm on weekly testing. So not sure how much the plenum has made a difference because i did not have the hanna before the plenum. But it seems to be holding there, with exception of last week which was at 45ppm. I did a decent job with the plenum however I found out after the gravel size I used which was pea gravel was too large. It needs to be 1-3mm for best results. Not sure if that means my tank can't be as effecient but my nitrates are definietly not at zero. The plenum has been running for 6mo. At this point I am probably not going to redo the substrate. I may experiment will an overhead sump and bcb baskets.
What about using alge scrubbers to remove nitrates?
@@jp9646 I thought about that but they are too pricey.
@@jp9646you have to have VERY large algae scrubbers to make a dent in weekly nitrate acct
Do your 4 tanks with no nitrates have plants in them?
I have a couple of emmersive plants. That is it. However, the nitrates lately have gone down to 20ppm without me doing anything different. So I am happy with that.
I've always found this concept interesting. We know for a fact, it's a process that occurs in nature. There's far to much pier reviewed literature to doubt it. However, Getting it to work in a small volume of sediment is a mixed bag.
I've tried sand beds (with and without plenums) and 'BSB's' in planted tanks with only anecdotal hints it may have worked. I mostly thought it was a fun exercise because I had extra space in my sump tank, and I figured why not put something like this in an empty chamber and then grow duckweed floating above it for nutrient reduction and reduce my water change frequency.
Yet, proving any denitrification took place is another matter all together. But, I never had it in isolation, and could never tell if it was the anoxic zone, the duckweed, or the abundance of other plants in the display uptalking it. All I knew is that I layered multiple things to develop a strong system over all. Much like in nature where theoretically any slow moving body of water can easily exhibit an anoxic zone in the sediment layer along side any macrophytes or aquatic plants, and it will also likely have a riparian zone. I wanted to mimic that.
So long as there is sufficient secondary macro nutrients in the substrate, they should eventually establish (90-120-ish day seems to be a general recommendation). The question is: how much of an area are facultative anaerobes actually occupying, that are actually using an anoxic pathway? If they have to much O2, they don't denitrify. The sweet spot is the layer of sediment where free O2 has been used up, but they still have oxygen containing compounds to reduce for an electron carrier (things like NO2- & NO3-). Once you pass that sweet spot and they run out of things to reduce, they they go full anaerobic.
One tip I can lend is that you can detect the optimal range by putting a OPR probe in the plenum. It may not be a nutrient related issue you're having, they may just be getting to much oxygen. A probe would rule that out.
Beyond that, best of luck with your experiment. This one isn't easy to set up.
Similarly we can make it function in koi ponds, but it's that question of can we capture it in something like a 40B.
It does happen on much larger scales in sewage plants. And yes, there is scientific literature on anoxic denitrification, However Mr Novak’s book has never been reviewed by PhDs , nor has he ever published anything about anoxic filtration in any reputable scientific journal, and his book is largely anecdotal in nature.
so how are you going to understand, was the water filtered by anoxic layer or by sponge filter?
Anoxic is supposed to naturally consume nitrates, that's what we're looking for as aerobic bacteria does not.
@@BentleyPascoe Nitrates? why do we need it in planted aquarium? Or the idea is to test its de-nitration power for non-planted environment?
@@BentleyPascoe TY!
@@DelkaSablethe idea without plants is to make his own determination, using a basic scientific method, to see if Novak is full of baloney or not. All his “zero nitrate” plenum tanks that I have seen have plants in them.
Hey Bro! Been keeping up on your experiment. Ive been looking over my Uncles GROSSLY overstocked 200 gallon pond. Water tests stayed at 0 NH3, 0 NO2, and 80ppm NO3, a few years ago I built a bucket filter, It did clean up the water. That pond gets very little water changes due to the fact Uncle hates wasting water. I did however plumb the filter so it would accept a garden hose to water his plants he's slowly warmed up to water changes but still very few. I decided one day (7 months ago) to plop a big bag of kitty litter along with another bag with carbon purigen and GFO in it ( I decided on GFO due to 4 ppm's of phosphate. Left bag in for 3months and removed it so now it's just kitty litter in it.) It barely fit. The 5 gallon bucket filter has 1 course sponge and 2 medium sponges along with the BCB bag almost the size of a volley ball.. I tested the water 2 weeks ago 0 nh3-0 no2 -40ppm NO3, Phosphates 2ppm. Mind you this 200 gallon pond has 7 12" Koi, and a crap load of gold fish. I'm planning on building a bog filter on the lower half of a 50 gallon drum and dropping another 5 baskets of BCB's with the extra room. I'm sold. I also have a Fluval spec 5 with 6 mountain minnows, no plants yet with full on snap together wall to wall plenum, 2 inches of litter. had that set up for 1.5 years zero ppm all across and zero phosphates. Good Luck!
good work!
Have you ever considered just loading a canister filter with clean lava rock and adding it to an established tank with fish? While I'm not a biologist, it just seems logical that the porosity of the lava rock would lend itself to provide the anoxic conditions that the bacteria you want to cultivate. Further, the constant flow provided by the canister filter would maintain the high nitrate environment the bacteria need to thrive. Back in the 1990s, there were some articles in the hobbyist magazines of the day discussing anoxic bacteria in aquaria and how they might be able to lower the nitrate levels. I believe that it was postulated that lava rocks in a canister filter might be a possible approach, but at the time cannisters filters were expensive and beyond the means of most aquarists. Also, in the 2000s, the deBryn filter (an air driven wet-dry filter mounted inside the aquarium) was mentioned for use in tanks with larger young killifish populations to maintain high water quality and decreasing the need for frequent water changes.
We're specifically testing a method that is fairly popular on the Internet. Yes, that is an alternative way to attempt to get a similar result, but we're after a very specific use case here.
Thank you Bentley!!!!
Here in central Florida we have bacteria that produce H2S rotten egg smell in anoxic conditions. I hope you don't get those.
Here’s what I don’t understand: if you need oxygenated water to support animal life, how could that water then be used for anoxic denitrification?
Good question, so as the water moves into the substrate, from my understanding, the slower flow allows oxygen to be consumed and then gets it to the lower oxygen levels needed.
Mmmmmmm
That's some nice, thick, dinge. Does anyone else enjoy the aroma of filter bac? It reminds me of healthy garden soil, pulling weeds, and seeing tomato vines thrive
Or the whiff of good smell when repotting a houseplant with healthy roots. It's the "good" smell, vs what rotted roots smell like.
I no longer use strips or liquid PH testing methods. They are highly inaccurate. Invest in a decent PH meter and keep it calibrated and take the guess work out of PH testing
Try ash
Remove it
That fix everything 😂
So why not take a sample of your substrate, put it under your microscope and find out if you have anoxic bacteria, or not.
To much work
I agree. So much unnecessary fussing and farting around.
I run deep substrate tanks with nothing but water top offs. Never a problem and I get to enjoy my aquariums instead of being a slave to them.
@@RoyalMetal9 conducting an experiment requires work. Most of my tanks (aqua soil+ lots of plants) need minimal work.