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- Aug 14, 2019
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Pouring out a Dr. Tim's for Donovan... Wow. Read this entire thread over the past few evenings, great stuff.
This thing seems pretty amazing. I have a few questions, hopefully they're not all insanely stupid:
1) This seems a lot like cycling a new tank to get through the nitrogen cycle and populate the same bacteria in your live rock/sand/filter. What is the actual difference? Could one use this system to jumpstart a cycle?
2) How many people have been able to quit dosing eventually, once the colonies are established?
3) Similarly, how many of you are no longer using a skimmer? I plan to eventually scale up greatly, and that would be a huge cost savings.
4) Also similarly, how many of you stopped using a refugium with this thing? It sounds like it's robbing the chaeto/algae of nutrients anyway, which is the point -- to export those nitrates, right? I also wonder how this affects the growth/population of pods, although adding the beneficial bacteria may actually help with that.
I guess, finally, other than the steel wool, how have others manage phosphates once you've had this thing up and running for a while?
I only got an answer to #1: When you cycle a new tank you are establishing mostly aerobic bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrates. With this you are establishing a different type of anaerobic bacteria that takes that nitrate and turns it into nitrogen gas. This does have an aerobic zone so if you matured one on a developed tank and moved it to a new tank it would probably jump start the cycle. But the main point of this device is denitrification, not notification.