Nitrate Level Is High, What Can I Do?

[fishlover82]

Hello everyone!
I have a Juwel Record 60 Litre tank with Pump Set Bioflow 280, 50 watt heater and 15 watt Day-Lite lighting that was set up Feb '09. I do water change once a week and feeding twice every other day. My problem is with my NITRATE level which is constantly between 40ppm and 80ppm, those readings are almost identical before and after water changes. I don't know what else I can do, my NITRITE is 0ppm. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks

My fish tank consists as follows:
1x Platy
1x Neon Tetra
3x Tiger Barbs
4x Lyretail Guppy
6x Diamond Tetra
5x Harlequins
2x Golden Zebra Danios
13x Fancy Guppy
1x Armoured Shrimp

About 2 inches gravel
5 plastic plants
1 bog wood

 

[hollanda88]

how big water change do you do and with what water?

andrew

 

[fishlover82]

I do 25%-30% water change with just a normal tap water. I don't have bubbles in my aquarium just water aggitated from filter circulation...just wanted to add that incase its got something to do with it.

 

[three-fingers]

My solution would be: add live plants. Get some plants growing well, they will redce the nitrate signifigantly. At least floating plants, which will require no extra care at all. Fast growers like hornwort and Hygrophila species would do the trick. Just make sure you know what species your buying, don't want to waste money on plants not suited for your tank .

If you don't want live plants for some reason, then I would do nothing. There's nothing really bad about those nitrate levels (especially for the fish species in your tank), and its not surprising considering the lack of live plants.

 

[fishlover82]

My solution would be: add live plants. Get some plants growing well, they will redce the nitrate signifigantly. At least floating plants, which will require no extra care at all. Fast growers like hornwort and Hygrophila species would do the trick. Just make sure you know what species your buying, don't want to waste money on plants not suited for your tank .

If you don't want live plants for some reason, then I would do nothing. There's nothing really bad about those nitrate levels (especially for the fish species in your tank), and its not surprising considering the lack of live plants.

Today my hubby bought me Limnobium Laevigatum. Can anyone tell me how to take care of them? Or can I just leave them floating around my tank? Thanks

 

[three-fingers]

Leaving them floating around the tank is fine, preferably try to place them under the light .

Basically any liquid fertiliser would benefit them in your tank (since you already have plenty nitrogen, and likely phosphates), so whatever brand works out cheapest at your LFS will do for traces. If you have soft water and you get them growing really well, you may need to add a potassium fertiliser as well.

 

[Thommo]

the floating plant will most probably suck up the nitrate like a sponge. It may even go bonkers if you have a high level of nitrate. Test the water in few days it will be interesting to see what the nitrate level is then.

Three fingers has given some good advice. Hygrophilia or similar are nitrate sponges too. The only downside to these types of plants is that they do tend to grow quickly compared to most other plants. Just means more trimming but they do do the job and look nice too. I personally like hygrophila rosae if you can get it around your area. Has a nice pink tip when it gets closer to the light.

 

[Dave Spencer]

Plants really aren`t considered nitrate sponges, not even in a high plant biomass tank full of fast growing weeds. I reckon I can shift circa 5ppm daily in my heavily planted tanks.

Water changes are the real answer. If your tap water is high in nitrates, then you will have to live with it. Provided the fauna are happy, then you don`t have a real problem.

P.S. Potassium has nothing to do with the hardness of the water.

Dave.

 

[three-fingers]

Got to disagree with you on the weeds, especially floating plants, not being useful for lowering nitrates. They are even used as such in commercial applications such as sewage treatment plants.

Even if she only used submerged low-light weeds and as a result only got around a few ppm of nitrate being shifted daily, it could possibly result in lower nitrate levels than you would think anyway. In non high-tech tanks, plants can effectively change the tank ecosystem. Less gravel cleaning, more mulm, more bacteria and so on can lead to the tank becoming more natural and, along with the plants, shift more nitrogen from nitrate.

And I ever said it did Dave .

However, a lot of areas with soft water usually have less minerals overall in the water, unless your taking hard water and then softening it. Which is why I said she may have to add it...
It's like saying KH has nothing to do with GH.
Completely true, but areas with water of a high GH also tend to have a high KH.

 

[fishlover82]

Got to disagree with you on the weeds, especially floating plants, not being useful for lowering nitrates. They are even used as such in commercial applications such as sewage treatment plants.

Even if she only used submerged low-light weeds and as a result only got around a few ppm of nitrate being shifted daily, it could possibly result in lower nitrate levels than you would think anyway. In non high-tech tanks, plants can effectively change the tank ecosystem. Less gravel cleaning, more mulm, more bacteria and so on can lead to the tank becoming more natural and, along with the plants, shift more nitrogen from nitrate.

And I ever said it did Dave .

However, a lot of areas with soft water usually have less minerals overall in the water, unless your taking hard water and then softening it. Which is why I said she may have to add it...
It's like saying KH has nothing to do with GH.
Completely true, but areas with water of a high GH also tend to have a high KH.

I live in Southeast of England (Brighton to be precise) and water around this area is very hard and we don't use water softener either, so do I need a bit of fert or not at all as my nitrate level is high anyway. And should I stick to my 25%-30% once a week water change or 25%-30% every two weeks? What would be the best thing to do putting the new plants in consideration?

 

[Dave Spencer]

I only recommend adding plants if people want a planted tank, and enjoy the look. There is no point in filling a tank with plants to combat NO3 if you don`t want a planted tank, plus it really isn`t an effective method anyway.

Nitrate removal in a planted tank is not that great, and NO3 certainly doesn`t get soaked/mopped up, or however it is worded. I know what NO3 I put in my tank, and can measure the drop in a lab at work.

The bottom line is that those NO3 levels shouldn`t be any problem to the vast majority of fauna.

Dave.

 

[three-fingers]

I live in Southeast of England (Brighton to be precise) and water around this area is very hard and we don't use water softener either, so do I need a bit of fert or not at all as my nitrate level is high anyway. And should I stick to my 25%-30% once a week water change or 25%-30% every two weeks? What would be the best thing to do putting the new plants in consideration?

Will most likely be fine without anything then .

I only recommend adding plants if people want a planted tank, and enjoy the look. There is no point in filling a tank with plants to combat NO3 if you don`t want a planted tank, plus it really isn`t an effective method anyway.

Nitrate removal in a planted tank is not that great, and NO3 certainly doesn`t get soaked/mopped up, or however it is worded. I know what NO3 I put in my tank, and can measure the drop in a lab at work.

The bottom line is that those NO3 levels shouldn`t be any problem to the vast majority of fauna.

Dave.

Already mentioned that if you read above , but plants were added anyway so I would assume they want the plants .
I'm going to assume your planted tank doesn't have floating plants in it .
Still disagree about plants not being useful for nitrate removal, depends highly on species and the type of tank.
I notice significant nitrate removal in my main low-tech tank full of plants, from 10-20ppm down to 0ppm.
My high-tech tank has different species and I bump up the nitrates by 5ppm every second day to avoid deficiency (as there were signs when I was adding less before). I've not bothered to test for nitrate on that tank though, test kit is just out of date.

 

[fishlover82]

I only recommend adding plants if people want a planted tank, and enjoy the look. There is no point in filling a tank with plants to combat NO3 if you don`t want a planted tank, plus it really isn`t an effective method anyway.

Nitrate removal in a planted tank is not that great, and NO3 certainly doesn`t get soaked/mopped up, or however it is worded. I know what NO3 I put in my tank, and can measure the drop in a lab at work.

The bottom line is that those NO3 levels shouldn`t be any problem to the vast majority of fauna.

Dave.

I do want a planted tank just not heavily. This is actually the first step for my planted tank but I want the change to be slow so I can do a lot more research and don't really want to waste money on a heavy planted tank just in case I can't keep up with it.