With Seachem De Nitrate, you can reduce nitrate levels, along with ammonia and nitrites, in your fish tank.
The microscopic pores of the pebbles will become clogged up over time, especially if you don’t regularly rinse off any slime of detritus, making this filter media ineffective.
You can take a look at this guide at Aquarium Blueprints to see how you can recharge and regenerate the Seachem De Nitrate.
Do you need to recharge or regenerate De Nitrate?
If the Seachem De Nitrate pebbles have completely dried out or have been covered with wastes for a very long time, then we recommend that you recharge or regenerate the stones.
Otherwise, the filter media won’t be very effect at consuming ammonia, nitrites and nitrates due to the clogged up microscopic pores.
Can you use an oven to recharge and regenerate De Nitrate?
You can recharge and regenerate Seachem De Nitrate in an oven as the high temperatures will burn the waste buildup that is clogging the stones of this filter media.
However, the rocks may explode, damaging your oven. Therefore, you should cover the pebbles so that they won’t fly all over your oven.
For a safer method, we recommend that you boil De Nitrate in hot water.
Can you use bleach to recharge De Nitrate?
You shouldn’t use bleach in order to recharge or regenerate De Nitrate. Even if you thoroughly rinse off the filter media after dipping it in bleach, there is a chance that the bleach will remain inside the microscopic pores and leech into your tank waters.
Therefore, we recommend avoid using any bleach solution.
How to recharge and regenerate De Nitrate with hot water
As you can see above, using hot water is the safest method for recharging and regenerating De Nitrate. In order to do so, you can try taking the following steps:
1. Place the De Nitrate pebbles in a stainless-steel pot, ceramic bowl or another container that can safely hold hot water.
2. Next, pour hot water into the same stainless-steel pot, ceramic bowl or container.
The hot water will burn off any organic waste buildup blocking the pebbles.
3. Wait for several minutes until the hot water becomes warm. You may want to stir the pebbles around by using a clean chopstick or fork to stir to speed up the process of unclogging the pores.
4. Once the water has become warm, you can carefully pour it out of the stainless-steel pot, ceramic bowl or container.
5. If you like, you can repeat the first four steps over and over again until you are satisfied with unclogging the pores.
6. Next, we recommend letting the pebbles sit until they are completely dried out.
7. Afterwards, you should be able to reuse the De Nitrate in your filtration system.
8. Keep in mind that if the pebbles were dried out and/or have been exposed to hot water, then the beneficial bacteria that have been living on the media will be killed off as well.
Therefore, it can take weeks or months for the beneficial bacteria colonies to reestablish themselves on these pebbles.
To speed to reestablishment of these bacteria, we recommend that you add live bacteria with a product such as Seachem Stability.