What is the difference in?

[Joeyt66]

i have test kits for nitrite but not nitrates. Can someone tell me what nitrates are and what they do?

 

[Dragonscales]

Nitrate is generally the end product of ammonia breakdown (Generally being the main word, more on this further down).

Certain bacteria utilize ammonia and in doing so break it down into nitrite. Both ammonia and nitrite are poisonous to fish in small quantities. Bacteria further breaks the nitrite into nitrate, still harmless but far less so.

There is also a fourth level to this process, more commonly seen in marine tanks, especially those using a deep sand bed. The flow of water through a deep sand bed is very slow, thus the level of oxygen is less the deeper the bed goes. In the lower levels, the bacteria has no oxygen so must rely on other means of fuel, namedly the three substances mentioned above. They utilize these materials and further break it down into nitrogen which, in it's gaseous state, floats through the water column to be expelled into the air.

That is a brief outline on the subject, I could go on, but I don't want your eyes to fog over lol It should, however, be enough to give you a fair understanding as to the principles behind why maturing a tank is so important before adding livestock. Without the bacteria your fish will either die or be severely weakened from ammonia poisoning.

 

[sylvia]

To add on to that, the reason you must test for nitrates is to determine how often you need to do partial water changes and how much. Though nitrate is not as harmful as nitrite and ammonia, it is still unhealthy at higher levels and some fish are especialy sensitive to it.

You should always aim to keep nitrate below 40. Sometimes the tap water you use to fill up your tank will already contain nitrates so it can be difficult to lower them. Plants help in this as they use nitrate up.

Algae also uses nitrate which is why a tank with high nitrates will have more algae.

Generaly, high nitrates are also an indication of over-stocking and not enough maintainance.

If you have not over-stocked and have adequate filtration, a cycled tank should only require one partial water change of around 25% to keep nitrate levels under control. Of course, this varies depending on the water you use to re-fill your tank and whether you have plants or not etc.

 

[Cheese Specialist]

Waste etc turns into amonia, amonia turns into nitrIte, nitrIte turns into nitrAte. NitrAte can only be removed through plants consuming it or water changes.

Many people use only their NitrAte test regualrly as this is a good indicator of how stocked your tank is and how much maintainence you have to do.

 

[Joeyt66]

Thanks for the reply Dragon scales. So I should really go out today and get a Nitrate test kit.


I am becoming a fish junkie 3 tanks set up now ( 65 G .12 G and a 3G) My wife looks like she is gonna kill me when i start looking at the other aquqriums in the LFS

 

[Joeyt66]

wow thanks cheese and sylvia as well. Thanks for dumbing it up for me cheese

 

[maestro]

Make sure you test your tap water too, here in london nitrate levels are 50ppm out of the tap

 

[Cheese Specialist]

Thanks for dumbing it up for me cheese

Ha ha, no problem.

 

[Talisman]

yeah same here my tap water nitrAte levels are normally alot higher (about 25mg/l) than when i actually do water changes (about 12mg/l)