Lewiscouse
Fish Fanatic
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- May 13, 2012
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Yeah I thought that was a good sign but I will test water later and if any rise or still the same I will perform a 50% water change
Sounds right.
Your tap water most likely has nitrate in it, it does in most places, so you'll never be able to get the tank nitrate below that level (unless you have loads of plants and few fish, or start messing around with nitrate filters). 0ppm is a perfectly acceptable level anyway.
It might be worth testing your tap water for nitrate, just so you know what your 'base level' is.
If you are talking about the water change bringing the ammonia and nitrite levels down it is simple math. All water has some impurities in it. So when we say a fish tank has 2 ppm ammonia what we are saying is for every million parts of water 2 of them are ammonia. So if you want to cut that ammount in half you would take out half of the water and put the same amount of pure water back in. Now what comes out of our tap is far from pure water so unless you have no ammonia in your tap water it will take more than a 50% water change to cut the ammonia level in half. The same goes for nitrite. If you want to drop from .5ppm to .25ppm you need a 50% water change with pure water. Now if your tap water already contains some ammonia or nitrite (which it may very well, you have to check it) you will have to do more than a 50% water change to cut it in half. No water change will ever get you below the ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate that your tap water already contains.Explain again I'm not sure what you mean?