[APD] Getting shot of Nitrate Xperiment

[Stuart Halliday <stuart at mytriops_com>]

I've been trying various methods of cycling a tank and at the end of a 
recent experiment I had a empty 15L tank with a nitrate of ~80pm.

Rather than simply throwing the water away and going onto my next one I 
decided to do another experiment.

I have been reading up on Tetra's EasyBalance and its offshoot - NitratMinus.

Tetra don't want to tell me what's in EasyBalance (I asked them) of course. 
But I had read on the Internet that someone posted that its mainly sugar.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=168546

Tetra did tell me that it encourages the growth of nitrate eating bacteria.

So I went out and bought some Fructose.

The tank had just a heater (set to 27C), overhead light, gravel and a small 
internal filter for the last 40 days.
(I had added ammonia and bacteria from an established filter 40 days ago.)
Regular testing had shown me it was fully cycled.

So a day after the sugar was added, the water turned very cloudy indeed. It 
looks like dense smoke. After the 2nd day I tested for nitrate and it's all 
gone. Absolute zero.

Now I'm not for 'reducing frequent water changes', a water change does far 
more than diluting nitrate. But I was interested in finding out if this 
stuff actually works. Now I obviously used too much sugar, a few small 
ramshorns snails are trying to escape the water, so I guess the O2 is very low.

What's in EasyBalance?
It's suppose to have plant benefits (though quite how is unclear).
It has a KH agent and produces CO2.
Tetra says "EasyBalance contains everything that healthy plants require".
But then says it reduces phosphate to zero over time... :-)

It's MSDS claims:
Sodium Hydroxide (up to) 2.5%
Tartaric Acid (up to) 2.5%
Formaldehyde (up to) 2.5%
and Sucrose (89%)
http://msds.walmartstores.com/cache/2258_1.pdf

and Tetra pointed towards this patent.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7244358/fulltext.htmlhttp://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7244358/fulltext.html

Yes, EasyBalance 250ml is selling just sugar and a KH agent and few 
unspecified chemicals for plants for £6!

Cute.

-- 
Stuart Halliday
http://mytriops.com/
200 Million years in the making...

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