Stupidly high nitrAtes again - help! Is Byron about?

Pufferfish22

A while ago I had problems with my nitrates in my 15g tank, (80ppm) tried everythinh to lower them and eventually struck on Prime which helped. My tap water is naturally 40ppm, we are very rural and agricultural where we live which I think causes the naturally high nitrates in the water.

I managed to get my nitrates to around 30ppm using prime, planting Java Ferns (I'm brackish S.G. 1.006) and 20% water changes every 3rd day but today when I checked my nitrates they were around 100ppm!!!!!!!!!!!! What am I doing wrong?

I feed my F8 puffers (x4 @ 1.5 inches long) every other day 1 cube of frozen food 1cm square or a cockle/mussel.prawn and they have 12 snails a week. All food is immediately eaten, nothings left to root, they are hoovered weekly and have a 20% prime water change once a week.

What should I do? I've just put them into a 40g tank do you think this will help drop the nitrate level as their is more water to dilute the nitrates? I don't even need to measure my Nitrates to know they've gone to high again as one of my little guys gets a dark stress line as soon as they go to high and he loses this the minute I water change.

I need urgent help on this as I'm worried for my stressed fish

Byron

I am not the best person to help with this, as you are dealing with brackish water. In fresh water I would do more significant water changes (these, plus live plants, are the best ways to reduce nitrates). A larger tank will help for the reason you mention.

As you have nitrate in the source water, if it were me i would try an experiment with diferent water (nitrate-free) for 2 weeks and then monitor any change in the nitrate level in the tank. This would at least isolate the source. Use RO or distilled water or rainwater, with salt mixed obviously, for the next two week's water changes. And change more of the water, 40-50%, and see what that does.

Byron.

Pufferfish22

Thank you Byron, your advice is always spot on, will give it a try, off to buy some RO water tomorrow

BrandonJ

Yeah try some R/O water and see how that goes for you, 40ppm out of the tap is pretty high.

Mikaila31

44ppm nitrate is the legal US limit for drinking water, so you might want to watch that if you drink that water. That level is mainly for infants though....

Pufferfish22

It's stupidly high isn't it, everytime I test it I get the same results tho, spoke to the water board and they said nothing they could do as I live in an agricultural area and that was what caused it. Think I'll go with RO water and see if that helps.

With regard to US limits - I raised 3 kids on this stuff, hope there's no repercussions for the future

Byron

If you are using the API nitrate test, you need to shake Regent #2 for 2 minutes in order to avoid a possibly inaccurate 9and too high) result. The instructinos say 30 seconds, but many have experienced false readings. Shaking the regent 2 minutes seems to overcome this. Thought I'd mention that just in case you were not aware of it.

Nitrates in ground water is usally due to agriculture/animals.