Nitrate issues

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Dutchz

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Nov 25, 2012
Messages
305
I am a new member and have a 15 gal tank not planted and nitrates are 100 ppm. Is there a way to remove them without doing a water change. Thanks for any future input.
 
Not really. You see sites advertising online that they do, but he only sure fire way is water changes. If you do a 50% change today, they will drop in half, if your tap water is nitrate free. Some people's tap water does have nitrates in it, so you might test it. But in a 15gallon, water changes should be fairly easy. I hate to think what they will be once I upgrade my 55 to a 125.
 
I've been working on this for 4 months. The nitrate filter pads don't seem to be good at removing it. Plants only use about 10ppm per day, but that won;t lower the nitrates over time. I think the best way to level off the nitrate is to reduce the ammonia to 0. This will limit the nitrites to the amount of ammonia produce by the fish every day. And, in turn, level off the daily nitrate production to the amount of nitrite produced by the ammonia the fish produce.

Weekly water changes of 40% pretty much keeps the NO3 level the same in my experience. This is saying that when I do a water change, the NO3 is 20ppm. A week later when I do a water change, the NO3 is at 40ppm before and 20 ppm after. You've got it easy with a 15g tank. If you changed 1/2 the water every two days, you should be able to get the NO3 down to the level you want it and only "spend" 45=75 gallons. For me with a 125g tank, 3 40% water changes costs 125-200 gallons.

There is a natural system call a deep bed where you have a dark and oxygen free gravel bed that's like 6-8 inches deep. This can cause the bacteria to use the oxygen in the NO3 and release N into the atmosphere for use air breathers. But with most aquariums, the bacteria are getting their oxygen from the H2O and not the NO3 because there just some much oxygen in the water.

So, water changes is the easiest and most effective way to remove the NO3 from the tank.
 
I do a water change every 2 days I am trying to upgrade soon.
 
Dutchz said:
I do a water change every 2 days I am trying to upgrade soon.

You do changes every 2 days and your trates are 100ppm? Are you using a liquid test kit, or test strips? The test strips are not accurate. I would upgrade to the liquid test kit. Most of us here use the API master freshwater kit. They are much more accurate, just make sure you follow the directions, especially for the nitrate test in regards to the shaking of the solution.
 
Ok I used api nitrates to get that and also my tap water is 15ppm. My tank stock is 1.5 platies5 neon Teteras 2 zebra danios1 glow fish aghost shrimp and 3 guppiesits been setup for like 3-4 years
 
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