High Nitrate

[m00ms]

hi all

i have a 120 lt tank running a eheim 2224 filter with a rena smart heater and a tetratec air pump.

my fish are: 6 glass catfish
2 silver tipped tetra
2 full size corys and think 7 baby corys
1 full size bristle nose and 1 young bristlenose
2 panda garras
2 bolivan rams
1 bulldog pleco
1 zebra botia
1 dolmation molly
the tank has been running since january this year.i always use ro water from my local lfs.i do 25 lt water change every 2-3 weeks and clean filter out approx every 4 weeks.i dont do water stat checks as i thought i be ok with using ro water.

every thing seams to be ok then i lose some fish.every time i have had problems i get my lfs to check my water and they say ph,ammonia,nitrite all ok but my nitrate is high which is causing the problems.

today my lfs has recommended i put jbl carbomec activ and jbl bio nitratex into my eheim which i have done. i hope this cures it as its geting me down as i seam to be trying my best to keep a healthy tank.

is there anything else i can do to help keep nitrate lower? am i feeding to much by feeding daily as ive read over feeding can cause high levels.

any help be most helpful

thanks

 

[Gvilleguy]

From what I have read on this forum, high nitrate levels are best controlled by regular water changes, perhaps even 20-25% every week. If you are only changing every 2 - 3 weeks, that might be part of the problem. I would recommend you get a freshwater test kit and determine exactly what your nitrate levels are. Then you can do a water change, testing before and after, and see how much improvement you can get by doing x% water change every x days.

I'm still a newbie to this, though, and I'm sure more experienced users will chime in.

 

[fshinggrl]

I just had some issues with high nitrate levels, which also included high nitrite levels and it was from a bad case of overfeeding! I did some big water changes to control it with heavy gravel 'vaccuming' to get all the food out of there.

 

[Gvilleguy]

My aquarium is still very new (only 10 days with fish), but my initial schedule will be 25% water change every 7 days using a gravel siphon.

 

[DJ Day 1]

i've read that plants are meant to be good for keeping nitrates and phosphates out the water, while putting oxygen into it... but i could be wrong