Nitrates destroy cycle

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cd5

Aquarium Advice Activist
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Can excessive nitrates cause beneficial bacteria in the cycling process to be destroyed collasping cycle

another question can using prime on to declorinate water cause cycle crash because it detoxifies the ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates
thanks
 
Not sure about the nitrates killing off beneficial bacteria, but I know that I wouldn't use any products that effected ammonia or anything else. The bb do a good enough job themselves. Someone else can hopefully jump in and give you better advice.
 
Nitrate, since it is the end product of the nitrogen cycle, would not be fatal to bacteria unless it was at a level high enough that the bacteria suffocated from a lack of oxygen. It is true that high levels of ammonia or nitrite can effectively stall a cycle.

Using dechlorinators that detoxify ammonia, nitrite or nitrate are nice to have. Some break down the ammonia into the less toxic ammonium but the bacteria will still be able to utilize it. The problem we have is when we test for these. In most cases, you will get a false/positive result, especially for the ammonia test.

There are only a couple of things that will stall a cycle (bacteria die-off). Excessive gravel vac's, disturbing the filter media, adding untreated tap water to tank and high levels of ammonia (above 5ppm).
 
Prime is definately safe to use. That's what I use and it didn't effect the cycle or the benificial bacteria.
 
You have to use something like 3x normal Prime dosage before it will detoxify anything but chlorine/amine.

And nitrates would have to be absurdly high. I've seen tanks that didn't get a waterchange in a year, 100+ppm of nitrate, but not ammonia or nitrite, so all the bacteria was still safe.
 
The only reason I ask was I got a little behind on the maintence of my 55 gallon, I tested the ammonia and it was off the chart, My nitrites was zero and my nitrates very high, i immediately did a big water change and basically dump a small bottle of prime in my tank, (the ammonia was so high that the it formed a color beyond the chart and after a 75% water change was the 8.0 color), I been testing and the ammonia is going down, It was like the cycle in my tank just died, I also added another filter to my tank,
 
cd5 said:
the ammonia was so high that the it formed a color beyond the chart and after a 75% water change was the 8.0 color

that reading could be a "FALSE" reading.

Do you use Ammo-lock or any ammonia binding products ??
The exact same thing happened to me when I used Ammo-lock.

It could be the water conditioner you are using.
I suggest you buy PRIME - SEACHEM, you will never have water problems again.
 
As far as interferences with the nitrate test, the below is all I could find out. As usual, all I know about aquarium testing is at: http://home.comcast.net/~tomstank/tomstank_files/page0018.htm


Exerpt:
Cadmium metal (says Hach), or perhaps Hydrazine (says TheKrib.com), or maybe even Sodium Bisulfite (says the AP MSDS sheet), is used to reduce nitrates to nitrites. Nitrite ions react with sulfanilic acid to produce an intermediate diazonium salt, like in the nitrite test. The diazonium salt then forms a red-orange complex with chromotropic acid. The reaction after the cadmium, hydrazine, or bisulfite (or whatever it is!) reduction is the same as shown in nitrite testing above. Thus, the test actually measures nitrate by the amount of nitrite it can be converted into.

Interference: (not a complete list, where interference levels are given they are for the Hach Co test, and might not appy to Aquarium Pharmaceuticals)

Calcium (100ppm), Chloride (>100ppm cause low results) which means your saltwater test will yield too high a result in freshwater (SW kit calibrated higher to compensate for the lowering effect of higher chloride), Ferric ion

Nitrite – since the test measures nitrite, any nitrite present will add to the observed nitrate level. Since your nitrite should be near zero, this usually doesn’t matter. Also, since your Nitrate kit is testing for greater than 5ppm, you wouldn’t notice the nitrite effect unless it gets very high, at which point your tank is really out of whack and nitrates are your last concern.

end exerpt

No mention of ammo-lock or amquel interfering with the test, like they will with a nessler based ammonia test. So what kind of ammonia test do you have? If its a test strip or a one bottle test, it is probably a nessler reagent based test and will give off the chart high results if an ammo-lock or amquel like product are in your tank. Also, if your nitrate test is a SW test, it will give results at least twice what you have, since it has been calibrated for high chloride SW.
 
that reading could be a "FALSE" reading.

Do you use Ammo-lock or any ammonia binding products ??
The exact same thing happened to me when I used Ammo-lock.

It could be the water conditioner you are using.
I suggest you buy PRIME - SEACHEM, you will never have water problems again.

I added prime to the tank but I tested it before the prime was added, My water conditioner I use is just the warley cl remover, I was using prime but my plants started doing poorly

No mention of ammo-lock or amquel interfering with the test, like they will with a nessler based ammonia test. So what kind of ammonia test do you have? If its a test strip or a one bottle test, it is probably a nessler reagent based test and will give off the chart high results if an ammo-lock or amquel like product are in your tank. Also, if your nitrate test is a SW test, it will give results at least twice what you have, since it has been calibrated for high chloride SW.

Liquid test by Aquarium pharmaceicals for both nitrate and nitrate
Thanks for the good information and link
 
Well then, if you used the two bottle salicylate based ammonia test, then the amquel or ammolock did not cause a false high ammonia result. That only happens with the iodine one bottle test (nessler reagent).

So, guess you have high ammonia. Bummer. Something else got your nitrogen cycle out of whack. either you lost biologic capacity (pH crash, antibiotic use, cleaned/removed all your filter material at once, added something toxic to the bacteria, or ???) or you had a nutrient surge that outstripped your tanks capacity (overfeeding, excess detrius in the substrate, dead animal decaying somewhere you haven't seen, or ???? ).

You may never know why. Hope it settles down quickly for you.
 
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