Dear Perran and co-workers,

please excuse the delay in my response, I was shortly out of office.

As you noticed, one of your reviewer has only minor concerns about your study while the second raised some important issues. I understood that you will be able to address these concerns by conducting an additional experiment under stirred conditions. With that in mind I feel confident that the overall quality of your manuscript will be significantly improved after revision.

Please let us know in case you need an extended deadline to conduct the new experiment and upload the revised manuscript. Once uploaded, the manuscript will be send back to the most critical reviewer.

Cheers
Tina

Tina Treude
BG Editor

Dear Perran and Co-workers,

the reviews of your revised manuscript are back. One referee reviewed the manuscript for the second time and is now very pleased with your results and interpretations. The other referee reviewed the manuscript for the first time and suggests major revision, but is overall very positive. I am confident that you will be able to address the remaining concerns. Please submit your revised manuscript with track-changes visible. It will make it easier for me in case I decide (depending on your responses) to make an Editor review.

Best
Tina
BG Editor

Dear Perran and Colleagues,

your revised manuscript is now suitable for publication in Biogeosciences provided that you take care of some minor technical corrections listed below.

With kind regards
Tina Treude

Minor technical corrections required:
- Line 75-77: Please clean up this sentence. The listing has too many "ands" and the readability could be smoother.
- Line 77-80 (and throughout the manuscript): Please be consistent in whether you capitalize (Site 1,2, 3) or not (site 1,2,3) your sites. Either way is fine with me.
- Line 200-201: This sentences has two "oxygen concentration"
- Line 219-230: The terminology "oxic" or "anoxic denitrification" does not exist. "Oxic/anoxic" describe the presence or absence of oxygen (water can be oxic/anoxic) while aerobic/anaerobic describe metabolisms using oxygen or not. Denitrification is an anaerobic metabolism per se, so it can not be aerobic. It also can't be oxic, as it is not an environment. Best here would be simply to separate between "denitrification under oxic or anoxic conditions".
- Fig.1: The font size of "1 mm" is too small. Please increase for better readability in the final figure size (which is likely smaller than at present)