Nitrate Nightmare!

[michaelwgroves]

I've had my tank for about 6 months now, the first 2 months of that were fishless cycling.

Once I completed my fishless cycle my ammonia & Nitrite were zero, and my Nitrates about 5.
For the first few months I was naughtly as I did not do any water changes, as my tank is 900l I did not have the equipment to do it, so I just topped up the evapouration, typically 40 litres per week. I have lots of plants and the Nitrate stayed about 5ppm. Then I purchased 2 * Arcadia 250W Metal Halides, my Nitrate shot up to 20. I thought it was my lights, but after a post I was advised it was not, although I'm still not sure.
So back on with my lights, and full steam ahead with my resovior tank project.
I purchased an 80 litre tank just to do water changes, since then I have performed two 30% water changes and two 10% water changes. However, my nitrates are steadily increasing, tonight they have reached somewhere between 40 & 80. Sorry I can't be more accurate, these test kits don't seem to be very good, either that or I'm not very good at matching colours. I've tried both the Nutrafin & Sera kits, can anyone recommend something a little more accurate?
I clean my filter every week in old tank water, I also have both blue & White filters. I replace these monthly, is that okay?

A few weeks ago I purchased some Hornwort & Frogbit to help reduce Nitrates, but its still does not appear to be reducing. Although the plants are both growing fast!
I tested my tap water again, in the summer it was zero, today it is 10. Would I be correct in saying with all this rain lately running off the fields, it brings along with it the nitrates the farmers use for thier crops, hence the rise this time of year?

I know from my fishless cycle the best way would be a massive water change, but with the tank now fully stocked and being so big, this is just not possible. That said, putting 10ppm back in is fair from ideal!

Also buying RO water would be a nightmare because of the quantities I need, ahhhhhhhhh............

Help!!!!!!!!!!!

what should I do, one thought is to buy an RO unit, what do you think?

Finally, could I be feeding too much, I feed 3 times a day with different food each time. Breakfast is 2 pinches of Aquarian Tropical flake food & 2 Tetra Tabimin. Lunch is 2 pinches of Tetra Pro colour & 2 pinches of Tetra Prima. Diner is usually frozen blood worm, not sure of the make but i give a whole compartment and 2 sinkable wafers. Once or twice a week I add a slice of cucumber. All the food goes in under 1 minute

Please see my signature for tank details.

Thanks in advance
Michael

 

[Liam]

First thing to say is that even the best nitrate tests are not that accurate. The drop ones are the best. but you still may only get a rough idea. Many people in planted tanks run nitrate at 100ppm with no known ill effects on fish, shrimp are said to be more sensitive. There may be long term effects doesn’t seem to be too much info on that that I know of. Here in London nitrate levels in the water are usually between 40 and 60 ppm, like you say it can depend on the amount of run off from land etc.
I don’t know what you mean by blue and white filters, I am assuming the white ones are made of filter floss, once a month should be fine to change those, if the blue ones are sponge then there is no need to change those just wash them in tank water like the other filter media.

Your tank doesn’t look over stocked at all so that’s not a problem, most people only feed adult fish twice a day, that’s plenty for them. Yeah all food being eaten in under a minute is good.

Water changes and plants are the only ways to get rid of nitrate hornwort; Egeria densa and Hygrophila species are good at using it. You could go down the RO route, but it is not necessary for that level of nitrate, the 10% in the tap is not much. I don’t think you need to worry about the nitrate, with your stocking a 20-30% water change per week should be more than enough, that’s still a lot of water. I ran a moderately stocked community tank (kribs Rainbowfish mostly) with plain London water for years and only 15% water changes per week with no problems, most of the fish I gave away when I moved abroad were over five years old, did have a lot of plants but the nitrates were probably at the 50 ppm most of the time (according to my test kits).

 

[LisaLQ]

The only equipment you need to do water changes is a bucket or a hose. With our big tank we syphon off using a garden hose, the other end being in the kitchen sink. It doesn't take long - my tank isn't quite as big (around 700L I think), and it only takes an hour max to do a 30-40% water change and gravel clean. And that's because our hose isn't a kink free one - it'd be quicker with a decent one. We do them weekly, sometimes twice weekly depending on how messy the plecs are being.

I dont understand the part about not being able to do a water change because of having fish in there. Dont we all? The only certain way to get rid of nitrates is to do water changes. All the cure alls in the LFS wont shift them, it just means putting some work into it

Do what I do, get the other half to do the dirty work LOL

 

[noshybabs]

Just make sure you turn the filters and heaters of and you can syphon water away, Some people use a pump.

Then just fill the tank up with a hose from the tap, treat the whole tank with tapsafe then turn it all back on.

If you dont do a 30% water change a week then your gonna have high nitrates, FACT

 

[Miss Wiggle]

good way to do super quick water changes in a big tank is to get a powerhead and a hose, stick the hose running from your tank out to the garden/sink powerhead in the tank and on the end of the hose and it'll blast water out the other end, much quicker than a siphon and next to no effort, then to fill back up by sticking the hose on a tap and running water back into the tank, you can add your dechlor straight to the tank so don't worry about that.



Ian does our two big tanks (which probably total close to 900l) in about an hr with this method.


nitrates are a funny one though you'll find no end of information about what is an acceptable level, the truth of it really is there's no definate answer as yet, i've always been told keep it below 40ppm, however recent studies and information i've got from people's personal expeiences are that in actual fact levels much higher than that are acceptable for most community fish. yes if your keeping something very sensitive it might be an issue but for you i don't think it's a problem.

i use the API test kits, i find them quite good. you do have to be very careful with nitrate tests though and make sure you follow the instructions exactly.

on the plus side your tank sounds really awesome, get some pics up for us soon!

 

[michaelwgroves]

Thanks for the comments everyone.
Went to my LFS today, they have done a test on my water and think it is about 50ppm
I will reduce my feeds to 2 daily.
I have just done a 20% water change and I will do another 20% this weekend, hopefully that will get it below 40ppm.

On the water change front, I was concerned about putting cold chlorinated water directly into the tank.
Hence my issues with large water changes. For that reason I purchased a dedicated reservoir tank.
I was gonna ask how long the de-chlorinator needs to be in the water before going in the aquarium and how much mixing should I do, I guess the response will be very little.

I'll try out the API test kit; see if I get on any better with that.

I think I'm going to go down the RO Unit route, but I'll create a new post dedicated to that.

I tried to add a picture to both my signature and userid with no success. I even tried inserting a picture directly I the post in a previous post, but it was massive and looked awful.

Let me know how to do it and I'll glady show off my tank.

Thanks
Michael

 

[Miss Wiggle]

dechlor acts almost instantly so don't worry about loads of mixing, on my smaller tanks i just squirt some into the bucket before i add it to the tank, on the bigger ones Ian runs a hose into the tank and just adds dechlor straight to the tank. we've never had any problems.

also don't worry too much about the temp drop, someone posted the science of it once which i can't remember or find, but basically on an average 30% change with water cold from the tap the overall temp of the aquarium won't drop by more than 1/2oC which isn't an issue at all. if your doing a slightly larger change then maybe you can heat it. if you put a heater into your reservoir tank, then get a powerhead and a length of hose you can just shoot it back up into the tank.

for pics register with a site like photobucket, you create and online album and upload pics from your pc there, there's an option to reduce the size if they're coming up too big. then for each pic it will give you an address that's surrounded by img tags just copy and paste it into your post.

it should look something like this but with these square brackets [] replacing the normal brackets ()

(IMG)http/i67.photobucket.com/albums/h285/miss_wiggle/2006-11-09/P2090133.jpg(/IMG)

hope that makes sense!

 

[dogfood]

The temp drop can be pretty drastic actually. My tank drops 5 degress F with 30% water change. It really depends on how cold the replacement water is. My replacement water is around 65F.

 

[andywg]

But even a 5 degree F change is not a lot. The fish would experience that in the wild with no ill effects. Even Reef fish can take a change on that small level. Cooler water is a way to make a number of fish spawn.

The theoretical maximum temp drop with tap water at 6 degrees C (the coldest I am aware of it getting to in Scotland in winter) on a tank at 24 degrees C is 3.7 degrees C. This assumes no heater being present in the tank and no ambient heating taking place, nor any waste heat generated by plants and pumps.

I pull around 40% at a time out of my 6 foot tank (around 60 imp gallons) and never heat the water going in. The most I have ever witnessed is less than a 2 degree C drop. In a larger tank it will take longer for the water to get into the tank and therefore any cooling effect will be lessened.

 

[dogfood]

But even a 5 degree F change is not a lot. The fish would experience that in the wild with no ill effects.

It's not a lot over a time span of several hours, but it's a pretty drastic difference in the few minutes it takes to refill the tank.

 

[Underwurlde]

I clean my filter every week in old tank water, I also have both blue & White filters. I replace these monthly, is that okay?

That just virtually leapt off the page at me!

I change the white one every week - it should be the first filter media in the chain and basically filters out bits of crud that are floating in the water thus stopping it getting into the other filters. It is not intended to perform any biological or chemical function - it's a bit like the air filter on a car).

Now the BLUE filter you should leave well alone ONLY ever replacing it when it literally starts to fall apart (I guess about every year) - even when replacing it you must be careful: DON'T just swap out old for new, do this by placing the replacement blue filter next to the old one for about a month so that the new filter gets quickly colonized or 'seeded'.

The blue filter contians all the ammonia & nitrite munching bacteria that has taken you months to build up (cycle if you like) and you are then just throwing it out and starting the cycling process again!!!!!
(Note: there will be more of these bacteria in the substrate and on the side of the glass, so you're not really starting again from scratch).

You can clean the blue filters in old tank water but I don't. Ask yourself why you'd want to wash out this bacteria? It gets filled with some kind of brown sludge but this I think is the good stuff!

Constantly changing your blue filter media in my mind could be the root cause of some of your problems.

Andy