# nitra-zorb?



## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

does anyone use it? and does it help to reduce the ammount of nitrates between water changes? i am good at regular changes, but i would like a way to protect from any abnormal excess nitrate spikes, either from an over feed or anyhting else that may cause it


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## Morcs (Jun 1, 2009)

I was just reading the instructions on one of these yesterday, they are rechargable, and need to be soaked for 2 hours in a salt water solution to recharge, but when the grains turn brown you have to ditch it.

I might actually start measuring what my nitrates get up to over a week, then maybe give one a try.


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

if they work at all it seems like it would be a great precautionary device


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## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

I have used it before on my 55 gallon and it does work but it is limited.
The largest pouch they make isn't enough to reduce nitrates to any large degree, I remember it removed 2-3 ppm but that is 1/2 the amount of nitrate produced daily in my tank.
Then you have to recharge it and so forth, over time it becomes exhausted and is ineffective.

It really isn't a good nitrate reducer for a fully stocked tank so plants, water changes, and responsible feeding would do much better.
A water change would be a much better precautionary measure. :thumb:


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

no water changes are part of regular maintainance, that is not considered precautionary


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## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

You could do a water change as a precautionary measure, it would ensure the results you are looking for. 
One small water change in between would be just fine if you felt over feeding caused a water quality problem.
The nitra-zorb doesn't make any measurable difference in a medium to large tank that is fully stocked( it may work better on smaller lightly stocked setups) so you may be just wasting money on this product.


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## chris1187 (Sep 6, 2009)

I've opted for the "Natural" route of Nitrate reduction with anaerobic bacteria.

From my reasearch I've found that Seachem Matrix has had many good reviews/success stories of Nitrate reduction - so I've gone for that! Here's the sales bumph:



> Matrixâ„¢ is a highly porous media designed to provide exceptionally efficient biofiltration for single site removal of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate from freshwater, marine, and reef aquaria. Each liter of Matrixâ„¢ provides over 160,000 cm2 (170 sq. ft.) of surface, equivalent to over 40 L (10 gallons) of typical plastic ball media! This product is sold by volume.


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## smellsfishy1 (May 29, 2008)

chris1187 said:


> I've opted for the "Natural" route of Nitrate reduction with anaerobic bacteria.
> 
> From my reasearch I've found that Seachem Matrix has had many good reviews/success stories of Nitrate reduction - so I've gone for that! Here's the sales bumph:
> 
> ...


Anaerobic bacteria needs to reside in an environment that is free of oxygen.
How you plant to achive this and still have living fish is beyond me.


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## cjacob316 (Dec 4, 2008)

well also the bacteria at work in your system convert ammonia to nitrite to nitrate, there is nothin in the system to remove nitrate except algea or plants which i don't want lol


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## chris1187 (Sep 6, 2009)

The oxygen-poor area exsists within the Matrix itself...

It's had some good reviews here in the UK:

lakemalawi.co.uk/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=194&t=10167&hilit=seachem+matrix


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## JacobF (Aug 21, 2009)

_Apologies for the excessive post, after reading this thread, coupled with some of my own problems I got thinking, so;_

Plants are one of the best ways to keep nitrates under check, my heavily planted tetra tank regularly has nitrates levels less than the tap water i use for water changes, (an unfortunate 30-40ppm from the tap), yet this tank is normally at 10-20ppm.

That being said the plant density i use in that tank is not suitable for my most African tank setups.

For me this is a problem with my tap water having such high nitrates water changes are somewhat limited in their usefulness.
For the moment the limited plants I have in my Malawi tank keep nitrates bearable (along with large water changes) but I can never yet near to where I would like.

Iv been looking at a few options and the most practical & cost effective seems to be special nitrates removing media such as nitra-zorb, i have in fact just ordered 2x Interpet NITRASAFE pouches which are basically the same thing. It is my understanding that these nitrate removal products work by chemically binding nitrate to solids.

These are stated to remove 7000mg of nitrate each over a few hours, this seems like i lot and in fact for my 240L is ~ 30ppm, not bad so il be giving these pouches are proper test over the next few weeks and we will see how good they really are.

The seachem matrix does look interesting, and if indeed does work as advertised probably the better option for continuous removal of nitrates.

Interestingly my tank has large quantities (~100kg) of highly pours limestone which should be capable of housing very high quantities of anaerobic bacteria. (Basically the same as live rock in a reef aquarium). It is my understanding that seachem matrix works in the same way. Currently I donâ€™t notice this effect at all, but iv just done a little thinking along with some research.

In order for the anaerobic bacteria method of nitrate removal to work the ammonia > nitrite > nitrate needs to occur in the same media. This gives a high concentration of nitrate on the surface of the media to aid in diffusion into the middle of the media. If you have aerobic bacteria creating nitrate in one filter/media and in a different filter/media have anaerobic bacteria the only method these bacteria will get nitrates will be diffusion from the water column. Needless to say this method will be somewhat less efficient as the nitrate has since been diluted.

Therefore to get the best results form anaerobic bacteria, all your aerobic bacteria must be living on the same media.

This seems far too simple so I am probably missing something.


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