Products and Information for the Natural Marine Reef

A Comparison between the NatuReef® cyclic denitrifier, electrical denitrators and live sand.

Cyclic Biological Denitrifier	Electrical Denitrators
Spreads denitrifying bacteria into tank on constant daily basis. Denitrifying bacteria consume free organic material.	Electrodes get clogged with Calcium Carbonate deposits from the addition of Kalkwasser. This prevents the electrodes from functioning properly.
Under normal operation does not produce any toxic gases.	Produces Dinitrogen Tetroxide "a poisonous gas that on contact with water reacts to form nitric and nitrous acid."
Maintains alkalinity - maintains stable pH.	Under low pH conditions chance of producing Chlorine exists.
Produces Carbon Dioxide. Good for macro algae growth.	Any trace metals will be plated on electrodes and re-released in great concentrations when power is removed.
Very little maintenance required..	Constant maintenance required to prevent fouling both chemically and biologically. Frequent maintenance required. Some units leak.
A natural process involving natural denitrifying bacteria.	Very unnatural method of eliminating nitrate. Not a naturally occurring process.
Time tested and proven since 1970’s. Hundreds of units in use right now!	New product with no successful track record.
Phosphate control available to reduce phosphates too	No phosphate control
Operating Costs: The average person can run a denitrifer for an entire year with about 1 gallon of Nitragone.	Electrodes have to be replaced once a year. Cleaned with acid every month.
	Using Copper voids warranty and destroys electrodes.
Summary:	Summary:
Eliminate and maintain Zero Nitrates
Click here for more information on NatuReef® Denitrifiers

Live Sand

A natural method in which denitrifing bacteria colonize the gravel in an aquarium. The Nitrates produced by the aquarium inhabitants are then broken down by the bacteria in the sand.

Live sand costs up to 3 or 4 dollars a pound. Just like live rock, in the Florida Keys new restrictions are in place concerning the collection of live sand.

Live sand has a limited capacity for dentirification. It is a completely natural system with a dentirification capacity limited to the amount of surface area and volume of sand available. These limits translate to a limit on the number of fish and corals you can have in your tank.

The best live sand systems have fewer live rocks sitting on the sand. These rocks use up valuable real estate on the aquarium bottom. When the live sand is covered by rocks its effectiveness is decreased.

The original quality of the live sand is very important to the initial success of this method of dentirification method. If the bacteria in the sand was allowed to die off during collection and transport you are no better off than just purchasing standard gravel and waiting for it to become "live gravel."

For more information on our products and our denitrifier check our web page for more information. For questions email us at natureef@juno.com or call after 6:30pm Eastern time at 561-496-1088.

05/10/04 08:07:46 PM