Water Analysis

[Griz]

I've been doing some more reading on this subject and have decided that, excluding a breeding situation, it seems that healthy fish are indeed able to handle much higher Nitrate levels than those I generally see recommended. One wonders where this number of 40 ppm came from then. It seems that I'm pretty fortunate to have Nitrate levels that are barely detectable and therefore keeping it under 20 ppm or so isn't a problem at all with my regular maintainence routine. Based on my personal situation, a level of more than 40 ppm raises a red flag and that's what I based my advice on. That number, which is what you often see recommended, seems to match pretty well with my own experience. If get lax about water changes or vacuuming, my nitrate level can reach perhaps even exceed 40 ppm. So, that number made perfect sense to me. Obviously, for many people this isn't any cause for concern and it is in fact quite normal.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

personally i don't think nitrates affect all fish that badly either. when we got our marine set up (bought neglected but had been running for several years) the nitrates were easily up at 100ppm if not more, that was just the highest reading on our test kit and the lfs's. all the fish and corals in there were fine. Now as our tap water has a relativley low nitrate content and we've got an RO unit we've done what we can to get them down especially as we wanted to add inverts. They're now nice and low and we're not having any problems, however if nitrates that high really are as bad as people say they are, then surley the fish and corals would have been dead??

at any rate when I'm advising people about ntirates i just say opinions vary on how much is acceptable, but if possible keep it below 40ppm and you know they'll be safe.

 

[andywg]

I've been doing some more reading on this subject and have decided that, excluding a breeding situation, it seems that healthy fish are indeed able to handle much higher Nitrate levels than those I generally see recommended. One wonders where this number of 40 ppm came from then. It seems that I'm pretty fortunate to have Nitrate levels that are barely detectable and therefore keeping it under 20 ppm or so isn't a problem at all with my regular maintainence routine. Based on my personal situation, a level of more than 40 ppm raises a red flag and that's what I based my advice on. That number, which is what you often see recommended, seems to match pretty well with my own experience. If get lax about water changes or vacuuming, my nitrate level can reach perhaps even exceed 40 ppm. So, that number made perfect sense to me. Obviously, for many people this isn't any cause for concern and it is in fact quite normal.

I have often wondered about nitrates and their effects and have mused over the below 2 points:

Are there other aspects in play? Is there something else in the water that builds up along with nitrates that causes the problems? I couldn't hazard a guess at what it could be, but there may be somthing we aren't testing for which builds up roughly at the same rate as nitrate? Have the fishkeepers overlooked something else (heavy metals in the water supply, or an increased chlorine level from service by the water company) and blamed any problems they have on a slight rise in nitrates?

Has fishkeeping swung too far to "soft"? People used to regard the fish they kept as fairly hardy and wouldn't change the water and such like and found little problem. It now seems that a lot of people go too far in the other direction and believe the fish should be wrapped up in cotton wool, as it were. One only needs to see the amount of people saying that water change temperatures must be identical as an example.