Nitrate!

[RaBzZ]

Hello everyone this is my first thread as i just joined the site

I have a problem - I am breeding crystal shrimp and have been doing so for some time but recently i seem to be having problems with nitrate?

Usually it was around 5-10 ppm which is fine but it seems to just sit at 20-30+ atm... i do up to 50% water changes (with pond water 0ppm) and it just rises back up every time....

I thought i would do a test... i took a bucket of pond water and left it in my room - when it was fresh @ 58F it has 0ppm but when it has warmed up in my room to around 70F it suddenly has 40ppm+ again... how is this possible :S

my tap water has around 20ppm so i try not to use it...

Im looking into RO aswell as having 2 planted sumps as plants use nitrate to grow any ideas???

 

[blert]

...
I thought i would do a test... i took a bucket of pond water and left it in my room - when it was fresh @ 58F it has 0ppm but when it has warmed up in my room to around 70F it suddenly has 40ppm+ again... how is this possible :S

my tap water has around 20ppm so i try not to use it...
...

Doesn't surprise me at all that the pond water has high nitrate. Lots of fertilizers in the ground, especially if you live near any farms. Don't know why the temp difference would have an effect. The water from my well comes at about 10-20ppm depending on the time of year.

20 is better than 40.

 

[RaBzZ]

the pond water is 0ppm... but it changes once it warms up :S would a heavily planted tank be sufficient to use up nitrates? and then pump that water into the shrimp tank?

 

[Steelhawke]

Plants love nitrates so yes, a heavily planted tank would help.