Sparkling gourami Nitrate requiments and DPRO systems

[Attloyden]

I recently had a sparkling gourami pass on due to high nitrate levels, but it was my mistake.

I did not know you were supposed to shake the second bottle of test solution for 30 second before adding it to the test vial, so I was getting a false 0ppm reading for my water so I did not change the water for 2 months. It is the master test kit made by API

However i started doing water changes with tap water testing after each 25-50% water change and i did not notice a difference, the test stayed red 80-190ppm nitrates. Turns out that my tap water has at least 80ppm nitrates straight from the tap and i realized this was too high.

So I bought an RO buddy reverse osmosis system and got the water down to 40ppm nitrates, and down from 450 TDS down to about 40 TDS.

My question is this, is it worth purchasing a second reverse osmosis membrane and filtering the water a second time, turning my system into a double pass reverse osmosis system? I'm asking because my mixed bed resin that removes the remaining nitrates is more expensive than any other part of the entire system and it will be used up in about two more uses, even after flushing the membrane for 5 minutes to stop TDS creep.

 

[Colin_T]

Look for a Pozzani filter to remove nitrates. There are a couple of threads about them on the forum.

You can also put the Filtered water into a holding container and add some floating plants. The plants will use the nitrates and then you will have water with 0 nitrates that can be used for water changing the main tank.

--------------------------
And if your tap water has more than 50ppm nitrate, you should contact the health department because nitrates are poisonous and cause cancer in large amounts.

You and your family and pets should be drinking bottled water or water that is free of nitrates.

 

[Attloyden]

I'm also wondering if it's possible that my test bottle is now displaying false positives, since i used over 100 drops without shaking it.

We have well water so, we would have to drill the well deeper to fix the issue or no longer use it for drinking.

 

[Colin_T]

If there is high nitrates in the well water, there will probably be other chemicals/ minerals that you don't want to be ingesting. Get a Pozzani filter and drink the R/O water after it has been through the Pozzani filter too.

Another option would be distillation. You can make a solar still out of a plastic storage container. Put it in the sun and half fill it with water. Put a clean bucket in the middle of the storage container and put the lid on it. Put a small rock or weight on the lid of the storage container so the condensation runs into the middle of the lid and drips into the bucket.

----------------------
Test kits can become faulty if they are out of date or kept in warm areas or exposed to sunlight.

Take a sample of the water to your local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Take your test kits too and test the same water at the same time, then compare your test results to the pet shop's results. If your kit has no nitrates but the shop's kit shows nitrates, then your kit needs replacing.