High NitrAtes

[Emi929]

My nitrates are really high in my 10 gal. Livebearers tank, I don't know why?! I've had it running for a year and a half, with 3 guppies, 2 little mollies, 9 ghost shrimps, 1 bristle nose, and a snail. The only change I've made was put a sponge on the filter sucker thingy and its a penguin biowheel. Parameters are: AMMO: 0 NITRATE: 40 NITRITE: 0 pH: 7.4 HARDNESS: 110 TEMP: 74always SUBSTRATE: normal aquarium gravel. No live plants. A 9" piece of mopani drift wood, has bounced around 2-3 tanks over the course of 3 years. FEEDING: between Top Fin tropical flakes, TetraColor, algae wafers, frozen blood worms 1 a week, shelled peas on weekends. I have done a 20% PWC and the nitrates went down to 20, so I did another one and it went down to 10. I wanted to give the fish a break from the stress, so I went about my business for about 4-5 hours. Rechecked the params and nitrate was 30! What is happening?!!! And why is there NO nitrItes and NO ammonia? How can that be?

 

[Homedog98]

Those nitrate readings are still perfectly safe. Do an extra water change if your concerned though.

 

[Emi929]

But why would it go up by 20 in 5 hours?!

 

[Homedog98]

Fish poo... Lots and lots of fish poo. When and how much do you feed them?

 

[siva]

Maybe you tested too soon after the pwc to get an accurate reading?

 

[ejaramillo01]

Maybe you tested too soon after the pwc to get an accurate reading?

Agree with Siva, maybe you tested to soon. But also don't panic, 30ppm of Nitrates are still safe, nothing that you can not control with a PWC to avoid that they reach more than 40 ppm.

 

[doogle]

goes to show you need time before retesting and pwc

 

[Emi929]

Okay so I'll test tomorrow after a PWC and I'll wait longer. I feed them a chip of bloodworms the size of a thumb nail, and the flakes I measure and it's 1/8 teaspoon, like a small pinch, each day.

 

[doogle]

think about it, you shouldnt need to retest if you change out 20% of the water, you most likely took out 20% of your nitrate

 

[Emi929]

Oh yeah, duh lol

 

[Rosenweiss]

And why is there NO nitrItes and NO ammonia? How can that be?

That is a sign of a fully cycled tank. Congrats!

 

[siva]

Yeah there should never be nitrites or ammo now

 

[Emi929]

Oh cool, lol. You would think I would know that by now lol, 5 tanks running and never really dawned on me why there were never ammo or nitrites! Haha. Is there anything I can do to keep them down other than siphoning gravel and feeding small amounts (already do that) like, something I could add to my HOB?