High Nitrate Levels, Hard Water.

[TenSpeed]

Hey all,

I'm hoping somebody can give me a hand with my dilemma. At my job, we have a freshwater tank that's been there for a very, very long time. Apparently it hasn't been very well taken care of, and is fed by many different people who tend to overfeed. Myself and another guy that works here are intending to take better care of it, but we don't want nor have the time to break the whole thing down, and move the fish about, and spend all sorts of (our own) money getting this tank back into health.

We've been testing the water with strips, and so far, the water has come back as very hard, with very high nitrate, almost immeasurable. Nitrite levels are ok, as is the alkalinity and pH. I just swapped out perhaps 25% of the water in the tank and I removed a very scuzzy looking fake coral rock.

We've been changing the charcoal filters religiously at 2 weeks for the past month. The fish in are what appears to be 2 neons, a barb, some sort of sickly looking guppy, a tetra and some sort of algae feeder that is only ever seen swimming under a novelty sunken ship. There are three plants, and perhaps 1 to 2" of coarse gravel in the bottom of the tank.

Any suggestions for how I can remove more Nitrate?

[Andos99]

Do another 50% water change and make sure you use dechlor. You seem to be on the right track.....just keep an eye on the levels. Just curious.....how big is the tank?

[TenSpeed]

Ten gallons.

[TomK2]

Well, changing the filter cartridges too often can be worse than not often enough. The nitrifying bacteria will live on the sponge and charcoal in the cartridge, so when you change it, out they go. Asuuming that any filter that has cartidges does not have a seperate bio-media compartment. I would not change a cartridge unless it is clogged up and a rinse in dechlorinated water or old tank water will not clean it up. Otherwise you are essentially relying on the gravel in the tank to host your biologic filter, since you throw out the filter cartridge every two weeks.

Test strips are notoriously inaccurate, consider getting a liquid reagent test kit, such as by Aquarium Pharmacueticals, about 15 bucks online. While you are at it, you could pick up an aquaclear mini filter for about the same amount, and those filters have a seperate sponge for mechanical filtering, and seperate biomedia for biologic filtering. Thus, when you clean the sponge, you don't disturb the biomedia bacteria.

Temp and pH stability are the most important things for a tank. AFter a tank has cycled, ammonia should be zero, nitrite zero, and nitrates elevated. Partial water changes are used to lower the nitrate. Most would keep it less than 40 ppm. Don't trust your test strips on this. Not overfeeding would help slow the rise in nitrates.

Don't worry about the hardness.

[tropicfishman]

yeah just rinse the cartridges out real good, rub your fingers over it to remove and build up, keep up the water cahnges, I would steer away from strips though, I've heard that they can be ruined shortly because moisture ge5ts in the bottle and what not, if you don't havea geravel siphon one I would get one to remove dirt from the gravel while its in the tank, and if theres and under gravel filter, i'd remove it also, apperently all they are good for is making nitrates, unless took care of properly which can become time consuming

[TenSpeed]

Ok, I'm going out today probably to take a look at a gravel siphon or something to that effect - we have a very helpful mom and pop pet store in town here so finding what we need shouldn't be a problem.

I suppose it would be good to know how a tank cycles and keep an eye on it, so we don't end up with a whole bunch of dead fish.

Thankfully, though, these guys are real troopers.