Biohome Ultimate - Nitrate Removing Filter Media

No but if you do I'd love to hear the results. I'm trialing polyfilter at.

Pond guru is a very obliging bloke. I emailed him about something last year, can't remember what it was now but I recall e was very helpful

I've definitely added this to my shopping list once I've moved house. Not buying anything else til then other than essentials 

Hello all. I've had this in my tank for a year, initially internal then moving to an external filter. Has not made the slightest difference to the nitrate levels.

Thanks for sharing Pelajuch.

I felt it's claims must be too good to be true.

I'd still be interested to know if anyone has had a positive experience with it.

How do you compare experiences with different media? I guess the only way to tell how good it is at homing bacteria colonies is to put mature Biohome Ultimate into a brand new filter/tank and do a fishlees cycle to see how quickly it cycles compared with other media?

I think it would make a mint if they found one that actually worked

I'd like to know how this works if it does. Does it actually remove nitrates or convert them into something else? The description just seems to imply that it is a filter medium that somehow has the mysterious ability to reduce nitrates. Normal filter bacteria don't actually remove ammonia or nitrites but convert them eventually to nitrate.
Of course, the "other half" of the nitrate cycle involves converting nitrate back to nitrite, but that is hardly what we want. If there were some bacteria that could convert nitrate to nitrogen and oxygen, that would be the ultimate ......................
Does it ever need replacing?
From Darren's post it certainly seems to work ........

Just reading up, it seems that this is mainly for use in external filters and the amount used is quite a bit, recommended 1 kg per 100 litres of water, not really practical for an internal filter which would have to be huge relative to the size of the tank. I don't think externals are worthwhile or economical for anything less than 180 litres.

How it works (apparently):

Facultative anaerobic bacteria have the “facility” to live anaerobically (where there is no oxygen) provided they can get a supply of oxygen by “stealing” it from some chemicals that happen to be floating by.  We can make use of these guys.  Nitrate has the chemical symbol NO3.  This means that it is one atom of nitrogen with three atoms of oxygen stuck to it (N + O3). All we have to do is put a colony of facultative anaerobic bugs deep inside a hole where there is no oxygen but plenty of nitrate and they will get their oxygen by taking it from that nitrate as it floats by. If all three oxygen atoms are removed from the nitrate, all that will be left will be the nitrogen atom, and since nitrogen “prefers” to be a gas, it will bubble away into the atmosphere at the first chance it gets.  All we have to do is give our little facultative bug friends the right media, and they will remove the nitrate for us. This media is called denitrifying media.

http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/html/reducing_nitrate.html

So the anaerobic bacteria remove the Oxygen atoms from NO3 and so a Nitrogen atom is left, in gas form and therefore it's vented.

Hi Folks,

Just spotted this interesting thread. And it's almost three years old. I have been doing a lot of internet digging on the subject of denitrification. There have been times recently when I have not been able to keep up with water changes to maintain nitrate at less than 20ppm. So, I currently use ion exchange resins (in an internal filter) such as Fluval Clearmax. JBL has recently brought out a product called BioNitratEx, which is a filtration media designed to encourage growth of denitrifying bacteria. No doubt similar to Biohome Ultimate. If I get time, I'll try to set this up.

JPC

I've got Seachem De-nitrate media in several of my filters.
However, as my tap water has a nitrate level of 40ppm, I ended up getting Pozzani filter cartridges to deal with it from the tap.

I've got Seachem De-nitrate media in several of my filters.

Hi Littlefish,

Please tell me more about the Seachem De-Nitrate. I know of this product but I've never used it. Was it effective?

JPC

Quote from: Hampalong on February 13, 2019, 05:18:00 PM

The bacteria involved are Nitrobacter.

It seems strange that Nitrobacter can also work as denitrifying bacteria. Nitrobacter is a nitrifying bacteria and, until Dr Tim Hovanec came along, Nitrobacter was considered to be the bacteria responsible for converting nitrite to nitrate. Perhaps I've misunderstood you. Quite possible - it's been a long day!

JPC

Nitrobacter are still one of the bacteria involved with nitrite->nitrate conversion, but only in an aerobic environment. In an anaerobic environment they’re able to get their oxygen from nitrate and nitrite.

Nitrobacter and Nitrospira are involved in cycling, as well as probably others that haven’t been catalogued yet. In a mature filter most nitrification, in most cases studied, is actually not done by bacteria at all but Archaea, a much under-studied kingdom similar but distinct from bacteria. Nitrobacter, Nitrospira and Nitrosomonas are still always present (in the limited studies done so far), usually in the minority, but sometimes in the majority. Much more work to be done there though, and our “knowledge” of all this is still in its infancy.

Let me start by saying I’m no chemist.

NO3->NO2->N

It doesn’t produce ammonia but it does produce nitrite. To have significant denitrification in practice you need a lot of porous media, and ideally a slow flow so they take the oxygen off the nitrite aswell (NO2->N).

When Siporax was released on the market there was a booklet available with info about the product, it’s concept and manufacture etc, which also detailed (with pictures) a test setup of their own. The tank was about 2’ x18” x18”, lightly stocked and moderately planted, and the denitrifying filter, which came after an ordinary nitrifying canister, was essentially a large biorb. This was required to give zero nitrates.
I tried a homemade one once with a tapped off trickle from a canister into a 2gallon bucket with about 4-5” of siporax (The outlet was just above the siporax so that the water ‘lingered’). I couldn’t make the incoming flow constant with that method and the tank was reading 1ppm of nitrite (big tank with adolescent Oscars).

A friend of mine set up a slow sand filter in his tank for nitrate removal. 
Don’t know how they work but it was quite effective. Took an extremely long time to get the flow rate through the media correct (if the flow was too slow it caused hydrogen sulphide to be produced).

Slow sand filters are definately effective, and in some places are still used for drinking water treatment. I didn't know about the hydrogen sulphide though!!!