Nitrate from the tap!!!!

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Spoor3773

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
Messages
143
Hi all I ve had problems with my fish not growing and colours looking bland for a while. I ve been pulling my hair out to say the least. I feed them often with good flake food, do weekly 50% water changes and got three filters running simultaneously. After starting numerous threads on here to find out what the problem is to no avail I decided to go back to basics and get the old water test kit out. To my surprise my nitrates were really high, how is this possible with me doing 50% regular water changes. Firstly I thought it was a duff test so I did another, however the results remained. Confused still I decided to check the tap water to see what I'm putting into the the tank and it reads 20ppm which is way too high. What chance have I got of low nitrate levels if the stuff I'm putting in is too high in the first place. Anyone know how you can get round this dilemma?? Cheers.
 
Firstly, What type of fish are in your tank and how many, what size is it, what's the temp, what and how often are you feeding them?

Take a glass of tap glass of your tap water let it sit out 8-12 hours then test it and see of you get. Then well go from there.
 
Mogurako said:
Firstly, What type of fish are in your tank and how many, what size is it, what's the temp, what and how often are you feeding them?

Take a glass of tap glass of your tap water let it sit out 8-12 hours then test it and see of you get. Then well go from there.

It's a four foot tank that holds 63 gal. There is about 25 fish with a mixture of haps and peacocks. I have my temp at 28c and I feed them once a day. I'll take a glass of tap water tonight and leave it.
 
Just been reading another forum and it mentions "purigen" you heard anything?
 
Just done another Tap water test and it Says I have between 20 and 40ppm of nitrates in the water.
 
It may yield the same results but leave it out for 8+ hours and let me know what it reads. If its the same your going to need to add some fast growing floating plants to help use up the excess nitrates.
 
It's about 80ppm. I don't over feed I do 50% weekly water changes and have the lights on only 5 hours a day.
 
It's a little high but there are some products like Nitra-Zorb, nitrate removing media pads that will reduce the nitrate dramaticlly without going through the effort of RO water. I have used Nitra-Zorb before with good results, it's not expensive and can be recharged as well.
 
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